E.A.T., abbreviated for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is a concept used in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. It was a concept that made it easier for search quality raters to assess websites. However, it was not an official ranking factor!
The concept of E.A.T. has been around since 2014. The latest update, however, added the extra E of “Experience” in December 2022. So, how is E.E.A.T helping, and what can you expect by aligning your SEO and website content writing services to its guidelines?
Let’s delve into it right away!
E.E.A.T- Beyond The Abbreviation
As mentioned above, E.E.A.T isn’t a particular ranking factor specified by Google. Rather it’s kind of a framework that search engine quality raters use to assess the credibility of a website and its overall content.
Let’s walk through each of the elements and understand their particular roles-
1. Experience (E): Every website deals with a set of products or services. Google has strict instructions for its quality raters to detect whether the content of a website is based on a first-hand experience, or is just a generalized piece of writing.
For instance, quality raters will look at whether the writer has personally dealt with the business they’re writing about or whether they have personally used the products or services.
2. Expertise (E): Expertise refers to how much impact a content will have on the reader. For that, the quality raters will look for reputable source citations and relevant experiences to ensure factual accuracy.
If your business deals in sectors like legal, medical, journal, or government-aided industries, you WILL have to provide official proofs and citations.
3. Authoritativeness (A): Expertise deals with you proving your expertise as a website content writer. But with authoritativeness, it’s a whole different story! Authoritativeness is all about what others think of your expertise in the digi-verse.
Constructing string author bios along with credentials, earning backlinks from trusted and reputable sources, etc., helps establish website authoritativeness.
4. Trustworthiness (T): This is the final metric among E.E.A.T that Google puts the most importance of all. Trustworthiness depends on how reliable and valid your given information is, and how easily is it accessible.
Maintaining a professional website design, avoiding providing any kind of misleading information, and providing clear contact details are all signs that your website is trustworthy!
How Does E.E.A.T Impact Content Writing Strategies?
Now that you know what E.E.A.T is, let’s delve into how it impacts content writing strategies-
- Quality, Not Quantity
Professional content writing services ensure their abidance by the qualitative aspects more than the quantitative ones. E.E.A.T places strong emphasis on informative content nowadays, that will provide some value to the reader. So, investing more time in research and providing supported arguments and reputable sources will ensure that your content is informational and useful.
- Niche-Specific Writing
Niche or genre-specific content is a great way to determine a target market and be an expert in a particular field or genre. So, if you’re hiring a white label digital marketing company in Kolkata, make sure they instruct their writing team to focus on creating relevant content for your niche. Also, make sure they provide useful information and insights into the particular industry.
- Employ Qualified Authors
This might be a little challenging, but if you do so, your website will gain higher credibility and trust from users. If possible, hire qualified authors or subject matter experts (SMEs) to create specific content for the genre you’re dealing with. This will help loads as each piece of content will reflect the author’s knowledge and will help to add credibility to itself.
- References And Citations
As mentioned above, no matter what kind of content you are dealing with, always choose to cite credible references and citations from reputable sources. Such citations portray that the claims you’re making in the content are backed up by credible sources. Added to that, these also demonstrate that the piece of content has been researched and is trustworthy.
- High-Quality Backlinks
If you’re choosing to outsource web content services, make sure to take a look at their content first. Discuss with them about your requirements and make sure that the content they create is of high value. When other reputable websites detect that your content is reliable, they’ll provide backlinks which are enough for search engines to ensure that your piece of content is valuable and unique.
To Conclude
Imbibing E.E.A.T strategies while writing a piece of content is not just about ranking higher in SERPs. Rather, it’s about building a foundation of trust with your users, and search engines alike. The more your website gains credibility, the more will it go up in rankings as users will try to find your website for a trusted piece of information!