We know that Google is constantly updating it’s search algorithms therefore SEO techniques can quickly become outdated.
To boost your SEO with EAT in 2020, here is what you need to know:
EAT represents Expertise, Authority and Trust
With these three metrics Google quantifies whether or not a website is a leader in its respective niche.
Expertise – Firstly you want to make sure that your content is accurate before you publish it.
Google does not want to send searchers to content that is incorrect or to websites that are deliberately set up to mislead users. In niche areas such as financial or medical, expertise is crucial in order to provide answers to questions that are serious and demand accuracy in order to avoid disaster due to incorrect or outdated information.
Authority – Useful content will be the best way to build authority and Google has used PageRank from the start to evaluate authoritativeness.
What PageRank does is indicate that external backlinks are one of the top signals of authoritativeness.
The quality of the links is a top ranking factor, the more links your web page or site has then the more popular and authoritative it will be.
Trustworthiness – It involves quite a bit of hard work to earn the trust of both the public and the search engines. In order for people to be willing to purchase or endorse you, they must be able to trust your brand. Factors that contribute to trustworthiness include client testimonials, awards, endorsements etc.
You can check your EAT score but unfortunately, there isn’t one tool to check your EAT ranking, you need to check your performance in each category. So in addition to checking your domain authority, you can check you EAT rank ratio of the number of search queries related to the brand, social media impressions, bounce rate, favourable to negative reviews etc.
YMYL – In other words Your Money or Your Life
These pages consist of information that may have a significant impact on the user’s wellbeing or wallet.
The likes of WebMD or eTrade will have categories that will under YMYL, for example: Health or medical advice, financial advice, government or legal topics, news and current events.
Google actually holds YMYl pages to higher standards of EAT.
Search quality raters will ensure that pages which demonstrate EAT as well as meeting YMYL requirements are actually ranked higher.
How can you boost EAT as well as your SEO ranking?
- Have a well designed website
- Update content regularly
- Create pages on single subjects
- Offer valuable and trustworthy advice that people can actually use
- Link out to other experts
Boost Your EAT & YMYL Scores by Improving Content
Content that is written by a professional and written well will enhance the quality of your website.
Also consider what makes a person trust a certain page. A few additional points to recognise and consider to improve the quality of your content and EAT or YMYL scores are:
Have an up-to-date About Us page which will enable the Search Quality Raters of Google to learn more about you and why your content is specific to a niche.
Ensure visitors to your website can easily contact you through the Contact Menu.
In order to demonstrate expertise, authority and trust audit your website to ensure the design and content reflects this.
SEO & Why YMYL and EAT are Crucial
They are all interconnected and if your business qualifies as a trusted YMYl website then you can within reason expect more organic traffic. By building EAT this will enable your website to rank higher in the SERP’s, get more traffic, reach more customers and generate more conversions.
If a YMYL website follows EAT standards then the site is assumed to be trustworthy in the eyes of the all-important Google.