Definition: EEAT

EEAT is an acronym for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness These are the four key elements for search engines to evaluate the quality of a website. They are taken into account by Google’s algorithm when ranking sites in search results.

• Expertise refers to the knowledge and experience of the person or team developing the site. It can be demonstrated through the publication of expert articles, participation in industry conferences, or possession of graduate degrees.
• Experience refers to the experience of the person or team developing the site in a particular field. It can be demonstrated by the number of years working in the industry, the number of projects completed, or the number of awards received.
• Authoritativeness refers to the site’s reputation among users. It can be demonstrated by the number of visits, backlinks and positive reviews.
• Trustworthiness refers to the trust that users have in the site. It can be demonstrated through the use of SSL encryption, privacy policies and refunds.

Create EEAT-compliant content on your website

With each passing year, Google is becoming more stringent in evaluating the quality of sites in terms of whether they contain valuable content. The concept of EEAT and a number of guidelines associated with it were created as guidelines to help create content that builds trust with users.

Google, in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines document, presents us with a series of questions that we should answer as content creators for websites. These questions are divided into two main groups – those related to content quality and those related to content credibility. You can review the list of questions at developers.google.com

The first group of questions listed can be summarized as follows – high quality content according to the EEAT rule that the search engine gives preference to is that which is:

• 100% original
• created using reliable sources
• comprehensive, helpful, interesting
• stylishly and orthographically correct
• those that users want to share with others
• editorially correct
• content is published to convey something, not in a mass and random manner

The second of the aforementioned group of questions concerning credibility, specifies that credible content is content that:

• contain evidence of knowledge in a particular area
• answer the user’s questions in such a way that they can trust us
• the content creator is an expert in the field or has sufficient experience
• do not contain factual errors that are easy to verify

Creating content in “Your Money or Your Life” topics – YMYL

Several years ago, in order to protect search engine users from consuming content with questionable credibility that could affect important decisions they make on life topics, Google created the concept of Your Money or Your Life (YMYL for short) pages. It is a way of classifying websites that cover important topics such as health, finance or personal comfort.

The purpose of these very specific guidelines is to ensure that only sites that have a high level of authority on a given topic, and whose authors have experience related to the field, will rank high in search results.

When running an online store, or a website that clearly falls into the YMYL category, in order to gain and maintain a high page ranking, for the keywords you are interested in, you must take special care with the quality of your content and create it according to EEAT principles.

The importance of the author in content creation

The most important factor in ensuring the substantive accuracy of content on websites is the authority of the author. Google evaluates the quality of a website indirectly through the credibility of whoever signs off on its content.

Therefore, the texts added to your site should contain information about their author – it is essential that this is a person who has a good reputation within the field and experience that can be easily confirmed in a Google search (ideally, the article itself should contain links to such additional information).

Google also leaves us a gateway if we want to generate content using AI. It turns out that Google’s algorithm will not penalize such content if we independently check its factual correctness and sign it as created by artificial intelligence.

If we want to generate content with the help of AI, we can use Google’s algorithm.

Reasons to create content for websites

Google also decided to ask us why we actually create content and publish it online, and here the correct answer has to be only one – we want to communicate something interesting and valuable to other search engine users.

Google makes it clear that the content you add to your site must not be created solely for SEO purposes, especially if they are YMYL pages.

Summary

To improve your site’s EEAT, you should focus on the following actions:

• Publish high-quality content that aligns with the interests of your target audience.
• Participate in industry events and forums where you can share your knowledge and experience.
• Participate in industry events and forums where you can share your knowledge and experience.
• Gain backlinks from other sites that are considered authorities in your industry.
• Apply SSL encryption, privacy and refund policies to ensure user security and comfort.

By improving your site’s EEAT, you can improve its ranking in search results and increase the number of visitors.