What is Google E-E-A-T?

In 2014, Google introduced the E-E-A-T process to evaluate the quality of a web page. With Google Quality Assessment Guidelines and the EEAT principle, you can rank higher on search results pages.

The EEAT principle is very important for evaluating an online content. Additionally, SEO experts also attach great importance to this term because it affects the reliability of a website.

EEAT does not directly affect your ranking on the search engine results page. However, it gives information about Google’s expectations regarding the content on your website.

EEAT; It can be explained as experience, competence, expertise and authoritarianism. This term became especially important with the Google Medic update that Google made in August 2018.

What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T, known as experience, expertise, competence and reliability, is among the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines set by Google for a real user to evaluate search result quality.

We can describe these people as quality assessors. Feedback determines the success of Google algorithm updates. E-E-A-T is not a direct Google ranking factor. Google aims to deliver results with a strong EAT and therefore it becomes an important concept in terms of SEO.

If  Experience Expertise Authoritativeness ve Trustworthiness is high on a web page, it will increase the user’s trust. In this way, you can get more conversions on your website. On average, Google updates its Search Quality Rater Guidelines every year.

In March 2013, Google officially announced its Search Quality Rating Guidelines. In March 2014, E-A-T was added to the guidelines as expertise, competence and reliability. In December 2022, he added the title “Experience” as E and E-E-A-T came together.

Google prioritizes trust the most within EAT. Because no matter how high E-E-A-T appears, untrusted web pages have the lowest E-E-A-T score.

First, E-A-T started to appear in search results after the Google Medic algorithm update in 2018. It first affected medical and health-related websites. Later he also moved to YMYL industries.

YMYL industries cover every channel that can have an impact on an individual’s well-being. Websites that did not display Google E-A-Ts after the update fell behind in organic rankings.

When ranking a YMYL’s content, Google takes into account the details of expertise, competence and reliability. First of all, it checks whether the main content was created by a subject matter expert. It then looks at the credential to prove expertise. Apart from this, it checks whether the content comes from an author, brand or website that is an authority or leader in people’s minds. It also looks at trust in the author and the website. Google considers E-A-T as an absolute requirement in YMYL queries.

Why E-E-A-T is Important?

In the past, websites stood out in SERPs through methods such as keyword stuffing and increasing the number of links. Now Google takes the user into consideration and wants to give him valuable information. That’s why E-E-A-T becomes very important for Google.

It looks at what the user is looking for, focuses on the quality of the experience the user will have, and expects the content to be helpful to the user.

Trust in the eyes of the user must be achieved by demonstrating experience, expertise and authority according to Google search quality evaluation guidelines. Google says that if you want to find tax information in the Google Search Center Blog, the content produced by the accounting expert is useful for you.

A tax consultant or accountant has experience, expertise and authority on this subject. Therefore, the sources containing these people will be reliable and provide solid information. Since Google wants to provide accurate information to its visitors, you need to highlight EEAT and show it to Google to rank high in the SERPs.

Google pays attention to E-E-A-T, especially in YMYL content that affects money and life. Content that affects a person’s medical, legal or financial well-being may harm the person if not created by an expert. That’s why E-E-A-T is required in life, finance and legal content. In summary, if you have a YMYL content, you need to create E-E-A-T instructions.

When a user evaluates your website, they will first look at expertise. He will then take into account experience and competence. Finally, if they feel comfortable with these, they will trust you.

Google EEAT proves the quality and reliability of a web page in the eyes of Google and the user. Your web page can then come to the fore in search engine results pages.

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The Elements Of E-E-A-T

As the world’s largest search engine, Google uses Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. In these guidelines, E-E-A-T comes to the fore in the content. A content must contain a high level of experience, expertise, competence and reliability.

We will give information about the elements of E-E-A-T that are necessary for Google to list your web page at the top. If you understand these elements, you can learn how your website can stand out in the eyes of both Google and the user.

Experience

The amount of time a content creator has had knowledge about a subject is called experience. Experience has become important following the Product review algorithm update that Google rolled out as an attempt to publish real reviews and separate them from duplicate reviews.

A significant portion of websites feature product or service reviews in other posts. It creates its own review pieces, aiming only for ranking. Reviews are generic and don’t give much information about what potential customers can expect in real life. Experience doesn’t just apply to product reviews. This term is valid in all sectors.

If first-hand participation and experience come to the fore, search engines can understand the content created by artificial intelligence. People can have real life experience on any subject. Experience along with expertise is very important, especially for websites in the YMYL sector.

You can use the detailed author bio and mentions in various sections of the website to reveal the experience. Instead of a single content, you can develop multiple content on the same subject. You can showcase your first-hand knowledge or experience with videos, images, and other types of content.

Experience is the newest element of E-E-A-T. It reveals that a writer or creator has first-hand experience. Recently the Search Quality Rater Guidelines were updated. With this update, creators must have first-hand or life experience on the subject.

Experience can be demonstrated if different types of pages are reliable and created by people with rich personal experience.

Since content created with artificial intelligence is increasing day by day, Google attaches importance to content developed by a content writer. In order to differentiate the content in this regard, it is necessary to give importance to experience.

Expertise

Having high-level experience, skills or knowledge in a specific field or subject is considered expertise. Google does not generally look for expertise on a website. It asks you to demonstrate expertise at the page level. In short, they want every content to be produced by an expert on that subject.

As a content writer, if you are going to produce content on a subject that you are not an expert on, Google will consider this as against  Experience Expertise Authoritativeness ve Trustworthiness. Therefore, a person with expertise needs to produce this content. In order to prove expertise to Google, the biography must be well written or expertise must be demonstrated through the employee profile.

When you cannot find an expert to prepare a content for your website, you can find an expert who will review that content and say that the content is reliable. Producing content by an expert always increases trust. Trustworthy content always ranks high in Google’s eyes.

If your website is related to the medical, legal, journalism, security, and public sectors, it is considered money or life related and is considered YMYL content. In this case, you definitely need to demonstrate official expertise. Even if your website is on a different subject, showing that you are an expert will add value to your website.

You must present professional associations, licenses, or degrees to show Google that you are an expert, especially in the YMYL categories. For example, if you are a family therapist, you must be able to offer a diploma or license in this field on your website.

There will be a difference between the content produced by a hobby blogger providing income tax information on a website and the content produced by a tax expert. Specialization generally connotes academic degrees, official licenses. Even if you do not have a specialist degree at Google, it may be sufficient to show your experience in a certain field.

Authoritativeness

Your expertise in a subject, industry, or niche qualifies as authority. If you are the first source people turn to on a particular topic, your authority will be high. If people provide backlinks by citing what you say on a particular topic, this can be seen as valuable.

Experience and expertise can be considered as the starting point in establishing an authority. In order to gain authority and reputation on a particular subject, you need to be referenced and trusted by other people.

Share your findings with professionals by applying studies and tests in a specific field. Then write content for websites and publications that are well-established in a particular industry. Additionally, you can start speaking at webinars and conferences. You can contribute to your own industry, niche and profession by making different applications. In this way, you can start building authority in a short time.

If search engine bots visiting your website associate your name with other authoritative websites that mention your name or link back to your website, Google will see you as more valuable in terms of E-E-A-T.

A creator can be an authority when he or she is a go-to resource on a particular topic. Create a strong content architecture that showcases all aspects of a particular topic. Then earn backlinks from authoritative websites. Finally, create a digital profile or personal brand that specializes in a particular subject.

Websites that have all the content on certain keywords can be seen as authorities. It is very important that the content is of high quality here. When you show Google who you are, you take a big step towards becoming an authority. When you achieve this, you can show that you are an expert on a particular subject and become an authority.

Trustworthiness

The most important element in E-E-A-T is reliability. If there is no trust in a website, E-E-A-T scores will be low. Therefore, the website needs to determine strategies to create trust in the eyes of search engines and users.

The credibility of a web page depends on the extent to which it is viewed as safe, honest and trustworthy. Google first looks at the trust status by paying attention to the purpose of the content.

Each type of business provides trust through different processes. Online stores can provide trust in search engine and user eyes with secure online payment systems and reliable customer service. Websites with product reviews should be honest and help others make informed decisions. In other words, one should not only sell the product but should also be able to evaluate the product objectively.

In order not to cause harm to a person or society, YMYL contents must contain accurate information as informative pages. Social media posts on some topics other than YMYL may not be trustworthy. For example, a social media post that wants to entertain its audience or a post that does not pose a risk of harming people does not require a high level of trust.

To establish trust on a website, you should include honest online reviews. Finally, you need to maximize the security of your website with measures such as HTTPS and secure payment. However, you must regularly publish accurate and up-to-date information on your website.

Include contact information on your website. Also make sure this information is visible and accessible. If you are a commercial website, you must offer effective, solution-oriented customer service support with a strong communication process. You can quote or reference reliable websites to give confidence to your content.

Is Google’s E-E-A-T a Ranking Factor?

Google’s E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor. In other words, Google does not rank websites by paying attention directly to these factors. However, Google attaches great importance to user experience. The better the user experience on a website, the better its performance in SERP results. For this reason, Google values E-E-A-T in terms of adding value to users.

A user makes health, life, or purchasing decisions based on their search results on Google. People think that the content that ranks first on search results pages is trustworthy. Considering this, Google thinks that content on an authoritative site written by an expert and experienced person will be trusted at the top. For this reason, it presents users with sites that are reliable but have strong SEO performance.

This will create a problem for Google when people do not believe that the important information on the search results pages was written by an experienced expert. That’s why Google E-E-A-T is important for both Google and search engines.

In short, have the content on your website written by someone who is experienced and an expert in this field. Then create an authoritative site with various strategies. Let people trust you with the quality content and service you provide. Then develop a strong strategy in terms of SEO. Let Google rank you ahead of your strong competitors by adding E-E-A-T to your SEO strategy.

Tips to Improve Your E-E-A-T

If you rely on your SEO strategy to rank in search engines, there are a few details you need to focus on to rank higher. After developing your SEO strategy, you should also develop a strategy for E-E-A-T.

If you want to get a strong  Experience Expertise Authoritativeness ve Trustworthiness that will give trust to Google and users, here are tips to improve your EAT;

Produce High Quality Content

In the past, content creators created content using keyword stuffing to rank higher in SERPs. Google has improved its algorithm over time and now ranks keyword cannibalized content directly at the bottom.

In order for your web page to rank high in SERPs, your content must be of high quality. For this, the content must be written by an expert content writer.

The content on your website should be written with users in mind, not search engines. First of all, you should produce content that answers your target audience’s questions, offers them advice, solves their problems and includes every detail about the subject they are researching.

We will offer some suggestions for you to produce high-quality content for both users, Google and E-E-A-T;

• Before producing content, conduct analysis, examine your competitors and brainstorm to discover content ideas.
• After deciding on the content topic, do keyword research. List keywords from paid and free tools. You can use relevant keywords in the same content.
• Have your content written by an experienced and expert content writer in this field.
• Determine the heading structure of your content. Include main keywords and auxiliary keywords in the titles.
• Make sure your content is of sufficient length. Depending on the subject, 500 words may be sufficient for one content, while 5000 words may be sufficient for another content.
• Keep each paragraph to 100 words or less. Make long content easier to read by dividing it into paragraphs.
• Create listings where necessary in the content.
• Be sure to include your focus keyword in the first 100 words. The focus keyword should be 1-5-2% in the entire content and distributed homogeneously.
• Answer all the questions of your potential target audience by focusing on long-tail keywords.
• Create content of a maximum of 300 words under each title.
• Test your content with a plagiarism tool and make sure it is original.

Create an Internal Link Network Among Relevant Content

Analyze all the content on your website. Then create an internal link network within the site to create meaningful links between relevant content. If you provide links between relevant content, you can demonstrate your expertise on the relevant subject.

If Google discovers a strong internal link network among relevant content on your website, it can see your depth of knowledge. In this way, you can increase the time visitors stay on your website by creating interconnected topic clusters.

For example, if you have a blog post about “E-E-A-T” on your website, you can definitely include internal links to other content on YMYL, user experience or SEO. Be sure to place your internal links in anchor text that describes the content you are linking to. You can test it later to see if the links you provide work in the anchor text. At the same time, the anchor text must be related to other content and your focus keyword.

You can test whether the anchor texts on your website are descriptive by using various auditing tools.

The points you should pay attention to when creating an internal link network are as follows:

Create a maximum of 3-4 internal links in each content. Too many internal links can cause your page to be perceived as spam. A small number of internal links may be insufficient to retain users on your website and demonstrate your expertise.

There must be relevance among the content you provide internal links to. Including an internal link to irrelevant content can reduce your credibility and authority in the eyes of users and Google.

It would be more useful to provide internal links with the link text embedded. Don’t forget to include the anchor text in a meaningful way in the content.

Provide Author Information and Create a Transparent Image

In order to see expertise in a content, Google wants to have information about the knowledge and expertise of the person who wrote the content. Especially if you have a website or blog page that produces YMYL content, it is important for both the user and Google that the content is written by experts and is a strong source of trust.

You can include author information to show both Google and users that your content was written by an expert. You can demonstrate expertise by providing detailed information about the author’s area of expertise, training, and certificates.

If you are going to create an author biography, also write down the author’s identification information. You can also showcase the author’s expertise by highlighting their past work and content.

Be sure to create an About Us page on your website to provide transparency and promote your authors. At the same time, to highlight your authors, include individual author pages that you will link to from the About Us page. You can create the author biographies we specify on these pages.

You can benefit from author expertise by contributing to websites with high authority in your niche. To do this, find authoritative sites in your niche and offer to make guest posts.

If you have the chance to write content for your website, always get support from experts. If you have a small business, you may not have the budget to hire experts. At this point, work with talented content writers who do research and can create informative, quality content.

If you received support from a non-expert content writer, you can ask an expert on the subject to review the content written by the authors. In this way, you can create credibility and have the chance to correct it if there is an error in the content or incorrect information is given.

Include Reliable Sources and Cite Authoritative Sites

You must ensure reliability when creating content on your website. There are some strategies you can do to create a reliable content image in the eyes of users and Google. To do this, you can first provide sources on your website.

When you give reliable sources directly in your content, people will trust you. In particular, the source you give may be an official source, an academic study, or an academic research article.

When linking to a trusted source, you can use blog posts from someone who is an expert in your industry. You don’t have to link to just one website. You can also link to tweets from someone who is an expert in your field.

One of the best strategies to ensure EEAT on a website is to use reliable sources. Depending on your industry, you can link to academic databases, news publications, established experts or agency sites.

It is very important that the sources are reliable, especially if you are going to produce Google YMYL content. Both Google and users attach great importance to reliable sources of financial and health content.

If you are going to reference another site in the content you will share on your website, you should do it correctly. Referring to authoritative sites that are relevant to a content will always increase your credibility.

Regardless of whether a website is your competitor or not, you should definitely cite it if it is authoritative in your industry. If you directly take the content from this site while citing it, originality problems may arise.

If you reference sites that rank top on Google for relevant keywords, Google will also think that you are trying to create valuable content. This is effective in achieving high  Experience Expertise Authoritativeness ve Trustworthiness level for your website.

Create a Positive and Strong Brand Image

User experience moved to the center with eeat Google update. For people to trust you, they need to know about your brand. Therefore, strengthen your brand’s image in the eyes of your potential target audience by using different channels, especially social media.

The more reputable a brand is, the higher the reliability of the content and website. Online reputation management is of great importance for EEAT SEO strategies.

You should constantly monitor your brand for negative comments and news. When a negative situation arises, respond as quickly as possible from a professional perspective. If you have a physical local business, you can access reviews about your business using a professional tool.

What you can do for online reputation management is as follows;

For online reputation management, first learn your current reputation. See what people are talking about your brand.

Then develop an online reputation management strategy that incorporates industry trends and real-time insights based on your current reputation.

Constantly monitor your interactions with people and stay on top of your online reputation.

Be sure to register your business on Google My Business. Here you can make optimizations on keywords related to your products and services.

You can encourage your visitors and customers to make online reviews to ensure brand reputation.

Try to solve people’s problems when they receive negative comments and reviews about your brand. Don’t ignore negative comments and use them as an opportunity to turn people’s experiences into positive ones.

You can work with influencers on social media and your blog to increase your online reputation. This can also be an opportunity to increase your credibility and expertise.

If you produce quality content on your website, your online reputation will increase over time.

Include User-Generated Content

User-generated content refers to content that internet users create about your brand. Any content created by consumers or website visitors other than a brand can be considered user-generated content.

UCG can be considered a very important trust signal about a website. It is also very important for people to become loyal to your brand. In one study, 79% of online shoppers say user-generated content influences their purchasing decisions. This makes convincing your customer base to support your brand very valuable.

User-generated content may be used in images, video testimonials, product reviews, YouTube videos, and blog posts. Within the scope of the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines announced by Google, user-generated content is seen as the main content, which is any part of the page that directly provides the right to achieve its purpose.

Google may consider any content on your web page as main content, additional content or advertising. Therefore, user-generated content is important for SEO as it is considered the main content.

You should collect user-generated content to improve the  Experience Expertise Authoritativeness ve Trustworthiness level on your website. For this, you can ask your happy customers to share product images and tag your brand.

If you want to strengthen the  Experience Expertise Authoritativeness ve Trustworthiness of your website, you can use user-generated content as follows;

Direct your customers to create branded hashtags and ensure that your brand is talked about directly.

Organize contests to get users to interact and share content, give them some discounts and special offers, or take advantage of promotional products.

Don’t forget to engage regularly and make your brand top of mind so that people create content about your brand.

Develop special marketing campaigns with the right influencers on social media and get your brand talked about.

Earn Backlinks from Authoritative Websites

When evaluating a website’s authority, Google focuses on the quality and number of backlinks it has earned. You can strengthen your SEO performance by earning backlinks from other authoritative websites. This also shows that your business is an authoritative brand in your industry.

Google will view backlinks from authoritative sites as a strong endorsement. When you earn a backlink from a globally or sectorally large website, that is, when those sites link to you by mentioning your website in a content, they provide you with a vote of confidence. Google evaluates the trust vote positively and values your website as an authority.

Basically, Google thinks that the more high-quality backlinks you earn, the more authoritative a site you are. Backlinks you earn from spam websites can harm your website. Therefore, the quality of backlinks is as important as the number. Backlinks from 10 authoritative sites will be much more effective and useful than backlinks from 50 non-authoritative sites.

Earning backlinks from authoritative sites helps Google and users trust your website. This strengthens the EEAT SEO performance of your website. In this way, you can achieve better rankings on search engine results pages.

If you want to earn quality backlinks for your web pages, you can follow these steps:

Create content that people can share and attract the attention of their visitors, such as useful infographics and video guides.

Share your images or interesting data on your social media accounts. Include links to content on your website in these posts.

Publish original, engaging, and high-quality research that people will be willing to cite and link to.

Create useful how-to content for topics and products in your industry and share it in the blog section.

Put link and share buttons on your web pages.

EEAT signals always indirectly contribute to your ranking.

Improve Your Website’s User Experience with Technical SEO

Google Quality Rater Guidelines look at content first. But how a user accesses your content and the experience they have on your website also affects your brand’s reputation as an authoritative and trustworthy web resource. If you are going to do Google E-E-A-T optimization, consider website security, site speed and mobile experience in terms of technical SEO.

Even if you are a world-renowned expert in an industry, you still need to guarantee the protection of users and data on your website. If there is no security on your website, trust in you will be low. First of all, your website must have an SSL certificate. In this way, you can encrypt users’ data.

Users access your website via the HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP. When there is an SSL certificate, your website will be marked as trustworthy in browsers. Otherwise, your website will be marked as “Not Trustworthy” and this may lead to damage to your website. If you ensure the online security of your visitors, their trust in your brand will increase.

In order for your website to be user-friendly, it must open smoothly on all brands and models of mobile devices. If you have a web page that takes a long time to load and does not work properly on smartphones, users’ trust in your brand may be shaken.

If a web page loads quickly, no matter how high quality and valuable content you write, the rate of people leaving your page without seeing the content will be high.

Make sure your website has a responsive design and is mobile friendly. In this case, your pages will work smoothly on all devices and screen sizes. At the same time, you can provide a good user experience on all pages.

Final Thoughts

Google does not use E-E-A-T directly as a ranking signal. However, experience, expertise, authority and reliability increase the quality of your website for both Google and users.

Let an expert create the content on your website. Also work with experienced writers. In this way, you can ensure that your website is reliable and increase its authority. This allows Google to see your content and website as authoritative. You can ask us anything you wonder about ymyl meaning and EEAT.

If your website looks authoritative, you can stand out on search engine results pages and establish brand reputation in the eyes of users. E-E-A-T optimization is a must, especially if you have YMYL pages.