Google E-A-T Score: Why Does It Matter for Improving Website Ranking?

Google E-A-T Score is indeed the acronym used as the structure by Google as well as an SEO services for deciding which web pages or websites demonstrate the expertise, knowledge, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic. Sites with high E-A-T ratings are the ones that communicate expertise on the issues requiring accuracy, authority via quality content, and credible awards, including trust via a positive reputation and protection. 

In 2020, setting up and developing your experience, authority, and trustworthiness–better known as E-A-T in Google’s quality guidelines–will remain a key theme. The full form of EAT is Expertise Authority and Trust. 

What Do You Mean by Google EAT Score?

Google EAT score is part of the Google EAT guidelines on Quality Rater (QRG), which are used for quality evaluation of all search results for different queries. By principle, the lower the content ranks, the higher the quality ranking. Although the Google E-A-T score is purely hypothetical and has no direct impact on search results, this input from quality raters is used to refine a Google EAT algorithm update and also understand how the changes are being performed. 

Therefore, what better way to understand how Google defines “price” than by taking the quality rater’s mentality–and analyzing content in the QRG’s way that Google instructs it?

When determining whether a page on your website contains high or low EAT content, you need to ask yourself the below queries:

Expertise: Which kind of expertise is necessary for the page to achieve its function well?

Authority: How reliable is the content published by the author and the website?

Trust: How trustworthy is this knowledge published on the website?

How Can One Improve EAT Signals of Websites?

Below are some of the crucial ingredients in E-A-T production recette:

• Each page should have a function, and that purpose should be served to the benefit of a user. The page should serve its intended purpose, but that purpose should also be user-centric (whether it’s to make the audience laugh, sell something to them, educate them, inform them, etc.).
• Solid, streamlined, easily visible About Us & Contact Us pages are crucial: Third-party feedback, testimonials & ratings, in-depth business history, and industry organizations certifications should be included on Us page. Contact information (NAP data) should be shown on-site, either in the global header or footer.
• Please do whatever you can to display information related to Google’s EAT score for your business and its authors. Don’t be afraid to praise why your business is the best, how you’ve got more experience than competitors, where you’ve been mentioned etc. The same goes for the writers. Get them written in authoritative locations. Show Google EAT score-related details in an author bio and link to a full profile of the author.
• Experts must write content, and knowledge should be communicated / visible through author’s bio & qualifications (e.g. applicable certifications, references, and professional experience).
• Metadata must communicate E-A-T, not urgency: trust, leveraging the star ratings, and verified reviews should be emphasized by SERP listing.
• Avoid clickbait when making a copy: avoid the page elements that could be deceiving the users intentionally. Disable misleading or surprising names and headlines from pages.
• Business Wikipedia page must be streamlined, comprehensive and contain an’ Awards & Recognition section: In order to obtain a high E-A-T ranking, the company must have a positive reputation as a trustworthy source’–and Google’s guidelines state specifically that raters will look at Wikipedia for specific awards & recognition while performing’ reputation analysis’ to substantiate on-site statements. 
• Combine thin/duplicate content into one high-E-A-T landing page: Google rewards reliable, detailed, well-written, factually accurate content and penalizes thin or duplicate content pages. For the site to improve its E-A-T rating, a content consolidation or a content pruning campaign may be required.

Although the guidelines for search quality are written for Google’s quality raters rather than the Google EAT algorithm itself, they also help to understand where Google is going in the short term. One cannot write authoritative content and expect it to rank in 2020–going forward, for your content marketing to succeed, you need to be an expert on a given subject.

The goal is to build the core theme expertise of your brand until you’re known as the go-to source of information about that topic–that’s the level of expertise that Google is looking for to power its findings.

Although building up the level of expertise is not an easy feat, there’s no better time to improve high-quality content craftsmanship, which boosts your Google EAT score.

Ranking YMYL Pages: Your Money or Your Life Content

Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content is the type of information that could directly impact the reader’s happiness, health, protection, or financial stability if delivered inaccurately, untruthfully, or disappointingly.

In other terms, for that type of content, the stakes are high. If you are ranking YMYL pages with lousy advice or inadequate information, that might affect the lives and livelihood of people. Google takes the material very seriously.