E-E-A-T: Google’s Method for Determining Content Quality for SEO

Even with the recent leaked data warehouse properties for Google's algorithm, attempts to figure out Google’s exact search algorithm are in vain. Not only is it terribly complicated and kept secret, but it’s being adjusted all the time.

However, that doesn’t mean we’re unaware of what Google values in content creation. In fact, they’ve been very clear with us from the start about what makes web content great in the eyes of their rankings, and this has been corroborated by tests over numerous years.

This clarity comes in the form of their E-E-A-T guidelines, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

This has implications for anyone creating content, including AI-generated content, and helps to explain why some websites consistently rise to the top of search rankings while others don’t.

What Is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

The first of those was added more recently, in 2022. The other three have been around in Google’s SEO (search engine optimization) lexicon since 2014.

Each one relates to a specific concept, which Google uses to evaluate the quality of a piece of content and entire websites.

Experience

Imagine reading a Wikipedia article about the Sistine Chapel. You’ll get a lot of historical information about the site, but it will be very clear

Now imagine that your best friend just visited The Vatican and was relating their visit to the chapel to you.

Anyone can grab information from the Wiki page, but only someone who’s been there can tell you how it felt to be there. What did it smell like? Seems an odd question, but it’s one you’ll never find the answer to online.

This is sort of like what Google’s looking for. Are you merely regurgitating information that anyone could collect? Or are you someone with specific experience in the field you’re discussing?

How can you do this? Some of the ways are surprisingly simple. Have a business address and contact information. Display your organization’s credibility throughout the site with verifiable information.

Particularly with the advent of AI-generated content, people are increasingly valuing experiential pieces of information that can’t be recreated by anyone else. If your content could only be written by you, chances are you’re doing a good job.

Expertise

This is related to experience. As we’ll see below, expertise is incredibly important in certain industries. But it matters to some extent in any field.

What does it mean to display expertise online? Well, it’s a lot like displaying expertise in everyday life.

If you’re trying to show your expertise in a field, you might cite your educational background, work experience, and present information from specialized sources, citing your references and folding in your personal experience to corroborate the information.

Doing the same thing online is important. If you’re a subject-matter expert, Google (and readers) like to see an author’s credentials. Where did they attend university? What relevant positions have they held? Maybe include a LinkedIn profile that goes into more depth.

These are the expertise markers that help to build trust and credibility.

For those who are more technical, you can also get into what’s known as person schema. Schema markup is a type of metadata that search engines can read when they crawl a website. Person schema is a specific type of schema that relates to authorship and can provide this information in an easily digestible format for search engines.

Authorless Pages

Some of you are likely wondering about the many articles, videos and webpages that don’t have an attributed author. Are these pages hurting themselves?

Not necessarily. None of these ranking indicators exist in a vacuum, meaning that while they’re collectively important, no single element is essential.

Stated differently, if a site does a good job verifying its expertise in other ways, expert authors aren’t always needed. However, they can certainly help, particularly when the topic is a more sensitive subject such as one within healthcare or finance.

Authoritativeness

Authority is related to expertise, but it’s more on an organizational level. The Mayo Clinic is a world-renowned medical organization. Their medical advice will have more weight to it than many other voices.

Google doesn’t inherently know that the Mayo Clinic is an industry authority. But how can it piece together this fact?

Expertise markers can help, but those are more geared toward individuals. What about the organization as a whole?

This is largely where backlinks come into play. If other sites trust your content to be authoritative, they’re more likely to share it and link to it within their own websites or media.

Leadflask has discussed backlinks in more detail before, but it’s a trust marker that conveys authoritativeness.

The strategies for gaining backlinks are myriad, but simply building a reputation the old-fashioned way is sometimes the best long-term strategy. The Mayo Clinic didn’t become authoritative by canvassing the medical industry for backlink opportunities. They did it by leading efforts in their field and letting the citations flow in as a result.

Trustworthiness

Remember in college when you were told not to cite Wikipedia as a source? Nevermind that it’s actually been shown to be as accurate as many other sources, including academic ones.

The point, though, is that where you get your information matters. Just as search engines try to determine how reputable your own site is, it matters what other sites you’re using as an information source.

Citing and sourcing your material, fact-checking it (and editing published works for accuracy), and using industry-recognized sources can all be markers of trustworthiness for Google and other search engines.

For example, it’s why .gov and .edu sites are often seen as more reputable than .com sites. It’s not that .com sites can’t be reputable, but that there is a wider range of reputability in them.

Ad walls can also be a red flag for Google. Many sites need to make money, and they do so through ad revenue, but hiding content behind too many can be an indicator that the revenue of the site is more important than its content, thus decreasing trust factors for search engines.

What Is YMYL?

YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life.

Does that sound a little intimidating? It doesn’t have to be. It’s simply shorthand for industries and topics that can directly affect your health or finances. Healthcare subjects would qualify, for example, as would investment advice.

Other fields that can be included in the YMYL category include weather information, emergency services, or information about prescription drugs or other health-related treatments.

YMYL isn’t a precise SEO indicator used for ranking, but it’s a general characteristic that Google has identified that affects the standards they apply to content.

To what end? Well, if your content falls within YMYL, Google’s guidelines state that E-E-A-T standards are heightened for this content. Meaning, they expect higher levels of expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness if your content is a YMYL topic.

The reason for this should be clear: a lifestyle blog isn’t going to routinely be a matter of personal safety or life-and-death health. But an online medical journal could be. Similarly, a website focused on investment advice could be comprised of experts in their fields, or charlatans looking to take your money.

Being able to parse between those two using E-E-A-T indicators is one of the ways Google aims to protect users by providing authoritative content in their search results.

Is this system perfect? Of course not. But shadier websites have a harder time proving themselves through these methods, and so it does keep a lot of suspect content from the front page of search results while highlighting the most trustworthy.

How to Practice E-E-A-T in Your Content

We’ve sprinkled recommendations throughout this article, including those related to contact information, authorship, ad placement, and experiential information.

Creating an informal checklist for your content as you develop it, and making sure you have these items standardized in your process for creation and publishing, is the easiest way to ensure you’re adhering to E-E-A-T standards.

Backlinks as a Trust Marker

The best way to generate backlinks is simply to create excellent content. People will find it, consume it, and share it as a result.

However, getting creative with your content types can be a key to generating more engagement of this type. Videos, both long-form and short-form, infographics, interesting images (avoiding stock photography, which we could actually do a better job of here at Leadflask!), and written content of various forms can all aid in this.

Other specific strategies and tactics to grow backlinks can also work, and there are many of them to discover. But Google will also dock your site if you are caught purchasing backlinks. The backlinks should be “earned” in the sense that it’s a result of your content quality, not paid for.

E-E-A-T Mistakes to Avoid

The reverse is true for a lot of our advice, that failing to do these things can damage your reputation. Here are some specific examples:

1. Hiding or misrepresenting your expertise.
2. Failing to include links to reputable sources that can corroborate information.
3. Not including formal references and citations, particularly if you’re in a field that requires certain citation standards.
4. Not providing contact info for your company.
5. Not matching the content to the title (i.e. clickbait)
6. Using duplicate content on your site, either internally or (worse) externally, pulled from other websites.

Does E-E-A-T Matter for Other Search Engines?

Google is the biggest player in the search engine space, but Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Youtube and others collectively make up a sizable chunk of all search volume on the web.

Do you need to be following E-E-A-T for each of these?

Our answer to this is that you should, but not because each of those platforms has been explicit about valuing E-E-A-T characteristics.

One reason is that because of Google’s market dominance, many other search engines model their algorithms on Google since searcher expectations are largely dictated by what they see on Google results. As a result, doing what’s good for Google is also generally going to be good for those others.

The most important reason, though, is unrelated to SEO. E-E-A-T indicates that content is authentic, trustworthy, and valuable to its readers. You shouldn’t just be trying to appear as though you have these qualities, you should embody them. Ultimately, to be successful and run your website and brand in an ethical way, you should be creating content that keeps people top of mind, not search algorithms. E-E-A-T is a great way to prioritize that goal.

Creating Good Content: The Backbone of Trust

E-E-A-T is a means to an end for Google, which is prioritizing engaging, trustworthy and useful content.

You should look at it similarly in your organization. Plenty of SEO experts will have a lot more to say about strategies to maximize your rankings, but lacking reliable trust markers that form E-E-A-T is a near-surefire way to ensure that your other SEO efforts won’t matter much, because you won’t have enough authority in Google’s eyes to warrant top rankings.