What is the EAT and how can you implement it in your business?

In SEO EAT means Experience, Authority and Reliability (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). The term EAT became fashionable in August 2018, when the update in Google's algorithm called the medical update took place. Its importance derives from the fact that in the end you can take advantage of it to make the operations profitable in your store or online business.

EAT plays a vital role in Google algorithm updates. The "Your Money, Your Life" (YMYL) sites have been drastically affected by the EAT problems. If your site doesn't fit into the YMYL category, you have nothing to fear. Still, it is essential to note that because e-commerce sites accept credit card information, they are considered YMYL pages. That said, EAT is not an algorithm, but Google's algorithms have been updated to look for signs that determine whether they are reviewing content with a good or bad EAT. The bad EAT will potentially lead to a bad position.

The point of EAT for YMYL websites is that they require a certified expert to provide the content or work closely with people who have the proper credentials. However, apart from the demanding content of YMYL - which normally deals with medical, financial, purchasing or legal information - the content of the experts that comply with the EAT standards are those that meet the needs of their audience and understand the intention that there is behind the questions or queries they raise.

EAT: There is no score and it is not a ranking factor

Don't worry, there is no high EAT score that your pages need to achieve. The Google algorithm does not assign an EAT score to sites. Don't lose sleep thinking of ways to improve that score. EAT is also not a direct ranking factor. Google has 200 ranking factors at a minimum, including page speed, keyword usage in title tags, and more. But EAT has an indirect impact on your page rankings, as the content must match EAT standards. In that way, it becomes a ranking factor.

EAT stands for "Experience, Authority, Reliability."

"Expertise" - You have to be an expert in your field. Experience means that you have to show the skill of the creator of the Main Content or (MC) and mention it in your content. Experience is less critical for humor or gossip websites, but vital for medical, financial, or legal websites. The good news is that any site can show expertise if the content is truthful and useful to users.

"Authority" - You need to show that you are an authority or the authority of the creator for the MC. And you can get this from the experience of your writers or yourself. If your page is a community or discussion forum, the quality of the conversation drives authority. Credentials are necessary, but so are personal experiences like reviews.

"Trust" - You need to show users that they can trust the creator or company of the Main Content, the MC himself and the website. Reliability is especially important for e-commerce websites that ask users for their credit card information. Everything on your site should make users feel safe while visiting it. As a starting point, you should immediately implement an SSL certificate on your site as at least 70% of the first page results use SSL (it is one of the many Google scoring signals)

You need to eat to live. And also the content of your website. A different kind of "eating," but the idea is the same.

That's right, and we are talking about EAT. We first saw this acronym when Google's Search Quality Guidelines were leaked in 2014. But with Google's official launch, we now know how vital the EAT is. This year, the EAT is destined to be big business. Our SEO services take care of making your site comply with the most essential factors of Google's EAT.

Google claims that EAT is among the top 3 considerations for page quality. So if you haven't paid attention to EAT content before, you should start doing it.

Why is EAT so important to your web pages?

So why is experience, authority, and confidence so important? After all, Google's quality guidelines don't determine a page's ranking.

Essentially, EAT determines the value of a website. Quality raters take EAT into account when judging how well a site or page provides what you need. They look to see if they are getting a good experience online and if the content meets their standards. If the raters feel that a user would be comfortable reading, sharing and recommending the content, that gives the site a high level of EAT.

Think of EAT as the reason users would choose your site over your competition. EAT could have a direct impact on how Google receives - and ultimately ranks - your website.

So how does EAT affect your site visitors?

EAT is closely related to what Google calls "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) pages. The YMYL pages are the ones that have topics about medical advice, legal, financial, that kind of thing. Anything that can positively or negatively affect the happiness, health, and wealth of the user. Examples include:

An online store that asks for your credit card information

A mother's blog that gives advice on parenting

A blog from a financial institution offering legal advice

A medical health page listing the symptoms of a rare disease

YMYL's high ranking pages will show a high level of EAT. That's because the more confident a user feels when visiting a page, and the more the content matches their search query, the more it meets EAT's needs. Sites that actually offer helpful advice or a solution to a problem will meet these needs more easily than sites that try to fiddle with Google's system.

You are what you EAT

So your site will only be as useful as what you put on it. Since EAT at both the page level and the site level, you need to make sure that every part of your website tries to meet Google's requirements. And if your pages qualify as YMYL pages, this is even more important.

But don't just take our word for it. Google says that a page or site lacking EAT is "reason enough to give a page a low quality rating." So if you are not an expert, authority, or trustworthy, your site's page could be considered low quality.

You have to create attractive, useful and accurate content. And you have to use EAT to meet the needs of both quality raters and actual users. Do that, and you'll be doing what Google wants.

Make sure to keep this page checked - you never know when you may need a reminder to implement EAT properly.

In the last few months, you've probably seen the buzzword (or the acronym, rather) "EAT" floating around. While this term has been in the lexicon of many SEOs for quite some time, since Google's big algorithm update in August 2018 (known as "the medical update"), a lot of attention has been put on the "EAT »From Google, and has since been frequently on the lips and fingertips of most SEOs.

So why am I talking about it now? Because the days when you could appear on Google overnight are long gone. To be well positioned on Google, you need to nurture your brand by building its expertise, authority, and trustworthiness - which is exactly what EAT stands for!

In this post, I'll cover the three pillars of EAT and share tips on how to incorporate each of them into your content strategy so that you can rank for the best search terms in your industry.

Initially, this "medical" update seemed to have hit scores of websites offering health and medical advice, more than any other vertical. Therefore, acclaimed search engine marketing journalist Barry Schwartz declared it "the medical update."

However, while this update certainly reached many medical websites, it also hit many other websites that could be classified into what Google calls "YMYL sites" - yes, another wacky acronym (and no, it's not a confused person singing a some success of the Village People).

Digital marketers are notorious for using jargon and having tons of acronyms, but this time, it was Google itself that added these YMYL and EAT to the ever-growing pile of potentially confusing internal jargon.

YMYL is a quality rating for content that stands for "Your money or your life." Google not only cares about providing the most relevant information, it also wants to provide the correct information. With certain types of search, there is enormous potential to negatively impact users' "happiness, health, or wealth"; In other words, if these pages are of low quality, they have the potential to impact the well-being of the user.

Therefore, when it comes to health, financial matters and security, Google does not want to offer links to pages that share advice, opinions or potentially fraudulent websites. Google wants to be as sure as possible that it recommends sites that display a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, which is what EAT stands for. It's Google's way of protecting search engines from low-quality content that has the potential to be harmful to a search engine.

If your business falls under the label of happiness, health, or wealth, then EAT may be vital for you to understand, so read on!

EAT and YMYL come from a very important Google document known as "Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines."

In 2015, Google officially published its Guidelines for the Search Quality Evaluator and this gave us an idea of ​​what is considered a high (or low) quality website, from Google's perspective.

The paper was written for your human rating team, which is conducting extensive searches around the clock and evaluating the websites that top Google results for those searches. There are reportedly some 10.000 people employed by Google to carry out these spot checks, a process designed to test the effectiveness of ranking algorithms in recognizing the quality of web pages.

The QA team teachings inform Google engineers on how to improve the ranking algorithm. As Google employees often remind us, their ranking algorithm is a process of continuous improvement, with very regular updates.

Costumer

The Oxford dictionary defines the term "expert" as "very knowledgeable or skilled in a particular area." However, possessing this knowledge alone is not going to get a flood of traffic to your website from Google.

You need to understand how to communicate this knowledge in a way that involves people. It's about not just having the information, but also knowing what your audience wants and the best way to deliver the information to them.

Whenever a Googler asks the question "How can my site improve its rankings?" The action response most often seems to be something like, "Create great content that your audience will like." While this may seem like an overly simplistic answer (and it is), it is an answer that pretty much sums up what I'm writing in this post, to be honest.

How do we create expert content? Well, here are some tips to answer that question:

Find out what your audience is looking for, and then meet and exceed their needs. This starts with keyword research.

Try to understand the intent of the search engines behind the terms you discover during that keyword research.

You need to understand what stage these search engines are at on your journey as a consumer or as someone getting involved in your industry. There are a lot of situations here, depending on your exact case, but if your goal is, for example, a search term that is clearly for someone who is new to the topic, then try not to use too much jargon and / or bullets. of view that a newbie probably won't understand.

Find the balance between being supportive and keeping it simple. This comes down to formatting the text to be digestible, using visual aids or rich media such as video or audio. A perfect example of this is Moz's "Whiteboard Friday" series. We want the content consumer to really understand the topic in the end, without making it too laborious.

Think about the next queries a search engine might have and have the content ready to answer that, too. Appropriate supplemental content must be internally linked and easily accessible. It's about becoming the source of information in your field.

Authority

Being an expert is great, but it's just the beginning. When other experts or influencers in your vertical quote you as a source of information or when your name (or your brand) becomes synonymous with relevant topics, then you are not just an expert - you are the authority.

Here are some of the KPI's when it comes to judging your authority:

Relevant and authoritative website links are of course a huge factor when it comes to ranking websites and we certainly cannot discuss any framework for SEO success without emphasizing this.

In any case, it must be emphasized that when we talk about links, it is about building the authority of your domain. This means that we want relevant websites that have already gained authority in the space to recommend us and there is no better endorsement a website can get from another website owner than a link.

Although links are ideal, simply being mentioned in the news or on authoritative websites in your space will still increase your authority, in the eyes of Google. Therefore, mentions are also something to strive for.


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