What does E-E-A-T mean?

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. The concept is a central part of Google‘s guidelines for judging the quality of a website, and it is used to assess how reliable and credible content on the internet is.

Google added the first E, for experience, in December 2022. Until then the concept carried three components and was written E-A-T.

• Experience: this is about first hand experience with the subject. Someone who has used a product, visited a place or worked through a process writes about it differently from someone who has only read about it.
• Expertise: this is about the subject knowledge and the competence of the author in a specific field. A high degree of expertise is expected above all for subjects that call for specialist knowledge, such as medical or financial advice.
• Authoritativeness: this aspect refers to the reputation and the credibility of the author or the website. Authority is earned through recognition by other experts and influential voices in the same field, and through positive user reviews.
• Trustworthiness: being trustworthy means that the information is reliable, accurate and safe. It also covers transparency about advertising, data protection and the security of the website.

How do you use the E-E-A-T concept?

To put E-E-A-T to work, website owners and content creators should keep a few key elements in mind:

• Create high quality content: content should be well researched, factually correct and up to date. It should also be cut to the needs and the questions of your target audience.
• Show expertise: authors should state their knowledge and their experience clearly, for example through relevant qualifications, publications or other proof of specialist knowledge.
• Build reputation: positive reviews, citations in respected publications and recommendations from experts in the field raise the authority of a website.
• Earn trust: a secure website, clear privacy policies and transparency about advertising and sponsoring are essential if you want people to trust what they read.

Why E-E-A-T matters for SEO

E-E-A-T plays a substantial role in search engine optimization (SEO), because Google favors websites with strong experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It carries the most weight on Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages, which deal with financial, health related or safety related subjects.

• Better positions in the search results: websites with strong E-E-A-T signals tend to have a better chance of being listed further up in the search results.
• More credibility, more loyal readers: websites that are seen as trustworthy and authoritative attract more visitors and improve their engagement and their time on the page.
• Protection against algorithm updates: websites that follow the E-E-A-T principles are better protected against the negative effects of Google algorithm updates, because they deliver high quality content.

Where your own site stands on these signals is one of the first questions we work through in our SEO services.