E.A.T. is a handy little acronym to bear in mind when producing your content
It has nothing whatsoever to do with food. Instead, E.A.T. stands for:
- Expertise
- Authority
- Trustworthiness
Basically, your content needs to meet all of these criteria if it is to be valued highly by Google. This makes E.A.T. a crucial SEO best practice that can unlock the upper reaches of the search engine results pages. Let’s look at the different components in more detail.
1. Expertise
There is no cheat when it comes to expertise. You need to be an expert in what you are writing about, and you need to make this known to your audience.
However, there are certain indicators to help you decide what kind of expertise your audience wants to see. For example, use keyword tools to research the keywords that your audience is searching for, as this will help you craft the direction for your content. It’s also important to understand the audience’s intention when they search for these keywords.
Remember to cite all the sources you use, even if the information comes from your own store of knowledge!
2. Authority
Authority is like an extension of expertise — basically, people need to agree that you are an expert in your field and demonstrate this by talking about your content or linking to it.
Of course, links are important, just as they always have been, but there is more to it than this. By getting your content and ideas out there and into the wider public discourse, you are demonstrating your authority. Don’t think that Google won’t notice and recognise this — they certainly will, and their algorithms will take these mentions into account.
3. Trustworthiness
This is the final piece of the puzzle. Users need to be able to trust your content and view you and your business as entitie0s that they can rely on. How is this achieved? Well, to start with, you need to target the expert and authoritative content mentioned above, and then you need to go about developing secure and transparent policies for your website.
Publish a terms and conditions page and a privacy policy page prominently on your website, so users know exactly what to expect. Make your website domain secure with an HTTPS protocol. Ensure that your users can always get in touch with you whenever they need to, and be sure to respond to emails and other messages in a timely manner. This will make your business transparent and trustworthy.
But how does Google recognise this?
From user reviews. Encourage your customers to leave reviews for your products and services on trusted third-party consumer sites so that Google’s algorithms can identify how trustworthy your business and your content is.
E.A.T.ing well
Keep these E.A.T. content marketing tips in mind when you craft your content and digital marketing strategy.
This will provide you with a far more focused SEO strategy that will help your business get noticed.