What Business Owners Should Know about Google EEAT

Providing your audience with quality web content is an essential digital marketing strategy, especially with tougher online competition. It helps you generate traffic for your site and earn the trust of your target customers. It also enables you to rank well on Google, which allows you to build better brand awareness and establish a more substantial online presence. 

But what exactly is Google looking for in web content? For starters, it should comply with the search giant’s EEAT guidelines. 

What is Google EEAT?

EEAT refers to experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It is derived from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which the search giant’s human quality raters use to determine the quality of search results. Published in 2013, the EEAT guidelines are geared towards helping site owners understand what constitutes a Google-friendly web page. 

Meeting the EEAT standards is crucial when creating content for what Google calls “YMYL,” or Your Money or Your Life topics. These are topics that can significantly impact a person’s health, safety, stability, and happiness, amongst other important factors. 

For instance, let’s say you provide financial advice online. Your advice or recommendation can have a considerable effect on your client’s financial health. Therefore, any piece of YMYL content you’d create should demonstrate your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, for your site to rank well on Google. 

Assessing EEAT

You might think that experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are quite identical to each other. However, there are subtle differences and specific qualities that make each of them unique. 

1. Experience

Experience is a cornerstone of authority in any industry. In the realm of establishing authoritativeness, it plays a pivotal role in building your reputation and gaining recognition within your niche.

Put simply, authority is the result of being a go-to source of dependable and insightful information in your field. When your website consistently provides valuable, reliable, and relevant content, it solidifies your status as an authority figure in your chosen domain.

2. Expertise

When you say “expertise,” it refers to having excellent knowledge and/or skills relevant to a specific niche or industry. As a content creator, you should have the qualifications or experience needed to provide your audience with the information or advice they need. 

For example, we at Springhill Marketing are considered SEO experts. Not only are we a certified Google Partner, but we also have been providing UK businesses with SEO services for more than ten years. 

3. Authoritativeness

Authority is all about your popularity and reputation, especially amongst the members of your industry. To put it simply, if your website is a frequent source of reliable information about a particular topic, you are considered an authority in your niche. 

4. Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness reflects the credibility and accuracy of your site and web content. It also refers to the legitimacy of your business. 

How to Build and Demonstrate EEAT

As Google moves to provide users with more accurate and relevant search results, it is vital to create content that demonstrates your experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Not only can it help you rank well on search results, but it can also help you build credibility and earn the trust and patronage of more potential customers. Here’s how you can create content that meets Google EEAT guidelines. 

1. Improve your link building strategy

Link building contributes to your site’s authoritativeness. As mentioned earlier, when many people are linking to you, you’re considered an authority in your niche or industry. Therefore, you should strive to create content that many people would want to link to. 

When building links, you should pay attention to their quality. According to Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst for Google, the search giant knows the links that matter. Therefore, you should focus on building high-quality links instead of low-quality ones. 

2. Update your content

Because we live in a highly interconnected and rapidly changing world, data can change in the blink of an eye. For this reason, you should always update your content to ensure that it contains the latest information. This is to avoid misleading your audience with outdated data, which could hurt your site’s trustworthiness. 

3. Always conduct fact-checking

To build and demonstrate a significant level of EEAT, ensure that your web content, especially news articles, are factually accurate. Conduct fact-checking before you publish something online. Also, it is good practice to use reputable, credible, and legitimate sources of information as your references instead of relying on hearsay or rumours. 

4. Encourage your customers to leave reviews

Google’s quality raters utilise online reviews to determine a site’s or business’s reputation. As discussed earlier, your reputation can have an impact on your authoritativeness and trustworthiness. The more positive reviews you have, the more likely Google and your prospects will trust you. Therefore, you should encourage your customers to give you positive feedback. 

It also helps to join trade organisations in your region as it can give your reputation a boost. Many of these trade organisations have an online listing or directory of their members that can serve as a reliable source of backlinks to your site. Besides helping you meet Google EEAT standards, being a member of a trade association can also add prestige to your brand or business. 

Start Optimising Your Content for EEAT

Creating quality content to demonstrate your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness is a reliable strategy that can help you earn points from Google. It also enables you to boost your credibility, which allows you to attract more potential customers. 

If you need help implementing the strategies discussed above, we at Springhill Marketing are happy to assist you. We can provide you with bespoke SEO solutions that will help you meet Google’s standards and increase your search rankings. Please speak with us today!