Your Guide to Google’s E-E-A-T and How it Affects your SEO

Content has always been important for search engine optimisation, but Google’s relatively recent introduction of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines for content have made it even more significant.

E-E-A-T guidelines impact all kinds of content, from blogs to service pages to guides and homepages, and they affect not just how you write content, but your global and local SEO success as a whole.

At Embryo, we’re always looking for ways to better our SEO strategies, both from a technical perspective and a user one, so E-E-A-T is something we’ve been working towards for a while.

To learn more about E-E-A-T, what it is, how it works, why it matters, and how to improve it, keep reading or get in touch with the expert team here at Embryo at 0161 327 2635, or at info@embryo.com.

What is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)?

E-E-A-T is the guidelines that Google uses to determine the ‘most helpful’ (and therefore the best) content on the web. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Each of these factors contributes to a piece of content being determined ‘helpful’, and so more likely to rank.

Google’s many crawlers and algorithms work together to understand the content on a web page, in order to rank them against one another whether you operate locally or have an international presence on search engines – this is what you see in the SERPs when you search for any term!

In the past, a range of white-hat and black-hat SEO tactics could be employed to encourage Google to better rank websites and web pages, including keyword stuffing, article spinning, and writing for robots rather than people.

At the time, they worked, but today, they are incredibly outdated and will hurt, rather than help, your organic SEO efforts.

Today, Google understands better than ever the messy user journey and experience. This means it is looking for content that understands and meets the needs of users first and foremost, rather than anything that is meant to “trick” search engines into ranking a piece of content better.

Why Google E-E-A-T is important for your SEO strategy

Google E-E-A-T is vital for your SEO strategy, as it is the framework to create Google’s preferred content styles. It is particularly important for YMYL sites.

Unlike in the past, E-E-A-T signals a significant change in how content is evaluated. Under E-E-A-T, there is no longer any way to “trick” Google or to write only for search engines.

What Google wants, is what users want, and what users want, is what Google wants.

In order to meet E-E-A-T guidelines, content has to be geared first and foremost towards users and what they want to see. Keyword research and strategy still has its place, but it cannot be the leading factor in content creation.

For lots of marketing teams, SEOs, and content writers, that means carrying out additional research into what it is that their users are looking for, what your content might be missing, and getting those additional experienced and expert perspectives to incorporate into the content.

  • Is Google E-E-A-T a Ranking Factor?

    Perhaps in a slightly contradictory manner, Google E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor. Or at least, not a direct one.

      There are many direct ranking factors on websites that Google can quickly and easily score and evaluate quantitatively. Direct ranking factors include things like:

    • Site speed
    • Core web vitals (CWV) scores
    • Your backlink profile
    • Website security
    • Mobile-friendliness
    • Domain authority/domain ranking (DA/DR)
    • Website structure
    • And much, much more

    E-E-A-T is different from these factors in that it often can’t be quantitatively measured, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

    Content is still king, and the type and quality of content on your site will have an impact on your overall rankings.

    Google wants its users to have the best experience possible on their site – that’s how they make money. In order for this to happen, they have to serve users the best possible results for their search query.

    Google and its algorithms are smarter than ever, and they can identify the topic, context, author links, depth, and subject matter of a piece of content with ease, so it’s important that you give them what they’re looking for!

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What is YMYL?

YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life and is something we’ve touched on a couple of times already in this guide.

YMYL is a group of websites which contain information pertaining to users’ money or their lives – things like financial advice and healthcare.

While E-E-A-T is Google’s standard practice and is required for all website content, there is particular importance placed on these factors for YMYL websites, because of the real-world impact that they can have on users’ lives.

Types of YMYL websites

There are a range of different types of websites under the YMYL umbrella, including:

  • Healthcare and medical sites
  • Financial sites, including:
    • Insurance
    • Financial advice
    • Banking
    • Homeownership and mortgages
    • Tax and inheritance
  • Legal information sites
  • Current events and news sites
  • Government guides and websites

Healthline is a great example of a YMYL site that prioritises E-E-A-T signals in order to rank well and, more importantly, to provide users with helpful, reliable information that is backed up by evidence and reputation.

For example, this guide titled “How to Find Mental Health Services When You Need More Than Therapy” very clearly meets YMYL criteria.

Among many other factors, it contains:

  • A medical expert author
  • A qualified social worker who has reviewed the piece
  • Author profiles on the site for both the author and reviewer
  • Transparency on every additional writer or editor who has been a part of the content creation process
  • Academic references
  • A clear “most recently updated” date
  • Demonstration of first-hand experience with the subject
  • A history of article revisions

Healthline itself is also highly regarded in its niche and has a considerable backlink profile with high domain authority.

6 Ways to Improve Your Website’s E-E-A-T

Get on Track with E-E-A-T with the Experts at Embryo

E-E-A-T can be pretty labour-intensive in some ways, but the benefits you see when implementing it as part of your strategies – both for SEO and in your overarching marketing efforts – make all the effort worthwhile.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the marketing experts at Embryo to see how E-E-A-T can impact your business – call us on 0161 327 2635 or email us at info@embryo.com.

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The team at Embryo is a joy to work with. They understand what we want to achieve as a business, their level of service is excellent, and they are constantly analysing metrics and data to ensure that together we overachieve in the performance of campaigns.

They have become a natural extension of my marketing department and I look forward to what the future brings.

Dan Walmsley, The Insurance Octopus