EAT Guidelines

EAT Guidelines is a term from search engine optimization(SEO) and describes three essential factors with which Google evaluates the quality of a website as well as its content.

EAT stands for: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthy.

Definition

EAT stands for expertise, competence and trustworthiness in the field of SEO. Google discusses this concept in detail in the Quality Rater Guidelines and in a white paper. In doing so, the group emphasizes the importance of EAT evaluation while confirming that it can potentially help improve Google rankings both “ON” and “OFF” a website.

Nevertheless, according to Google, they do not represent an official ranking factor!

The E-A-T principle briefly explained:

Expertise = Expertise and knowledge: Does your website offer a sound and deep expertise on a certain topic?

Authoritativeness Competence and authoritativeness – Does your website contribute comprehensively to shaping and forming opinions on a particular topic?

Trustworthiness = Trustworthiness and reliability – Can the content and promises of your website be trusted?

The role of Search Quality Evaluators

Search Quality Evaluators], often called Quality Raters, play an essential role in evaluating the factors for EAT Guidelines. These are more than 10,000 Google employees distributed around the world who manually evaluate the quality of web pages. The Quality Rater Guidelines are a guideline and specify which aspects must be included in the assessment. The EAT Guidelines are a crucial factor in this.

After the assessment, each web page receives a classification ranging from “Lowest” to “Low”, “Medium” and “High” to “Highest Quality”.

In addition to quality rater ratings, feedback from Google users, for example in the form of reviews, is also likely to be incorporated into the EAT assessment.

The importance of EAT guidelines for SEO

You should know that EAT Guidelines is a mark of quality for both the website itself and the content authors . According to Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, EAT can be transferred between authors via link. In order for authors to contribute to the reputation of the website, visitors need to be able to identify which author wrote which content and what makes them an expert in the subject area.TIPS: You can use Authorship Markup to always position an author box with basic info at the end of an article. In the best case, the author is introduced in more detail on a separate page, allowing both Google and visitors to understand the expertise and authority. The more detailed the biographical and professional information, the more credible, i.e. the better.It is also advantageous if the website and author concentrate on a manageable number of topics. An expert in his field cannot be an expert on every subject.

Good to know: since the last Core Update from December 2020, only certain areas (topics) of a website have also been “downgraded” because they don’t have the expertise in the area that is needed to the area.

So websites that are broad in subject matter are harder to grab in terms of EAT and ultimately harder to optimize.

Google admits that an algorithm can hardly determine what the truth content. Since the search engine with EAT also wants to protect users from false and questionable offers, the human quality raters are even more important. So it is important for SEOs to familiarize themselves with the Quality Rater Guidelines in order to understand what Google means by high-quality websites.

You can ‘t build upEAT “in the blink of an eye”, you have to work at it over a longer period of time. If only because the age of the domain and your link environment(backlinks) contribute significantly to trust. Continuously publishing new content, as well as updating blog articles , are signs of websites that have high quality standards for themselves – and Google rewards that!

With the increased focus on the EAT Guidelines, Google once again proves that high-quality content is important to the corporation. Properly researched, reputable and attractively presented content, ideally written by a proven expert, earns Google’s trust.

If you can’t provide this, you should enlist the help of professional copywriters and willingly invest in content and thus search engine optimization.

Conclusion

To earn Google’s trust, you should follow the EAT Guidelines. With these three factors (expertise, competence and trustworthiness), the search engine group evaluates the content of websites. Google supports websites with proven good content from reputable and knowledgeable authors. You should invest for that if need be, it will pay off!