Search engines are constantly evolving over time. This includes Google, which is undeniably the leader in global search. And if you want your website’s content to rank well, you have to pay attention to their ever-changing guidelines.
Google has a 175-page web page evaluation criteria document that explains how and why they rank pages the way they do. It’s a pretty dense read but has immense value if you’re serious about learning how to rank for content.
“In Google’s web page evaluation criteria, E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and is a pretty big deal,” DevriX explains. “Not only is it mentioned 137 times in the document (yeah, you’ve read it correctly – 137) but it’s the main focus of how the value of a page should be estimated.”
Put simply, E-A-T is an evaluation of the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of a page. Because if Google is going to refer traffic to a page, they want to be sure it’s delivering value to their users/customers. E-A-T principles matter for every page, but are especially important for something Google calls “Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages – i.e. pages that have information that could have real-life consequences – such as finance, law, and medical topics.
Developing a website that shows expertise and communicates your authoritativeness and trustworthiness is something that intrinsically makes sense. The question is, how do you create content that is E-A-T friendly in the eyes of Google?
Here are a few of our top tips:
If you’re like most small business owners, you’re not doing 100 percent of your marketing on your own – or at least you won’t be once you reach a certain point in your growth. But if you’re going to outsource some of your content strategy to a digital marketing partner, make sure you carefully vet them. They should know exactly what E-A-T is, why it’s important, and how to develop a content strategy that abides by these principles.
It’s hard to have a website that serves as a “jack of all trades” and still rank well. Google wants to see strong topical clusters that serve a very specific niche audience. This isn’t to say you can’t cover multiple subject matters – just that you need to have some depth on each of them.
In terms of expertise and authority, people want to know who wrote the content they’re reading. Make it a point to include the author’s name and a byline/basic profile. This should include the full name, job title, experience, and any links that help to enhance the authority of the author (like social profile links or website links).
Content freshness is something that Google takes very seriously. Newer content is always going to be more trustworthy than older content. (If you have a good piece of content that was written five years ago, it’s not going to be considered nearly as trustworthy as a similar post that was published two weeks ago.)
The best thing you can do is go back and update/refresh your content on a monthly basis. If you have a post titled “The 17 Best Digital Marketing Hacks of 2017,” go ahead and update it to read “The 17 Best Digital Marketing Hacks of 2021” and refresh any tips that are no longer relevant.
You don’t need to write a 5,000-word blog post to get ranked. In fact, the quality is much more important than the quantity of words. The goal isn’t to write the longest post – it’s to address everything the reader wants to know when they read the content. Write what’s needed to satisfy their curiosities and deliver value.
Social proof is very helpful in making your content E-A-T friendly. This includes elements like reviews, testimonials, data, and statistics, trust badges, “featured in” logos, etc. Include as many of these as you can on key content pages.
You can create compelling content, but if it doesn’t abide by the E-A-T principles outlined by Google, you’re going to have trouble getting it to rank well in the organic search results.
Thankfully, it’s fairly easy to create an E-A-T friendly content strategy. Start by implementing a few of the tips highlighted above and then gradually refine your approach over time.
If you are interested in even more technology-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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