What is E-A-T Let’s start off with the basics. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It was introduced as part of Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines – this is the document used by Google’s human quality raters to assess the quality of the search results, sites and content. But what does Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness mean? Expertise Expertise means to have a high level of knowledge on a particular subject or industry.
meaning expertise is determined
at a content level, not a site level. To display doctor database expertise, consider who is creating the content and who you are citing within it. You can get different levels of experts from scholars and professionals to self-taught hobbyists and influencers. Authoritativeness Authoritativeness means the perceived authority you have on a certain industry or topic.
To determine this, Google’s quality
raters will examine the reputation of the author and your organisation by looking at reviews, references and individual sources. Trustworthiness Trustworthiness is about the legitimacy, transparency and accuracy of your site and content. It is very similar to authoritativeness, however there are some subtle differences between the two. Whilst authoritativeness focuses on the volume of quality references, trustworthiness focuses on specific signals and sites.
For example, they will consider the
amount of information available about the author and your company, as well as the type of sources that you are citing. However, as Ahrefs rightly points out, both Trustworthiness and Authoritativeness are relative concepts. People and websites can’t be perceived as trustworthy and authoritative in all areas. For example, you can trust us to give you accurate information about online marketing, but not how to grow your own vegetables.
Is E-A-T a ranking factor? No
despite many arguments to the contrary, E-A-T is not a ranking factor. This is because it is not a quantifiable metric. Google can’t quantify or score E-A-T in the same way that it can for the likes of page speed, or the number of backlinks pointing to your pages. If you couldn’t determine from the above definitions, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness are all reasonably vague, human concepts.
As of yet, there isn’t a way for Google’s
bots to crawl and evaluate these factors. As a result, there is no E-A-T score. If E-A-T isn’t a ranking factor, is it important? The short answer is best practices in the seo landscape yes and no. Confused yet? Now you can understand why SEO specialists have spent the better part of 4 years debating the subject. Whilst E-A-T is not a ranking factor, it still holds value for SEO.
Although Google is unable
o create a computer programme that reads E-A-T, it is part of the guidelines for Google’s Quality Rater’s reviews, which do inform the changes Google’s engineers bzb directory make to the algorithm. Therefore, E-A-T should definitely be kept in mind. However, it shouldn’t over right all other SEO best practices. Rather, it should be used as a framework within which to strategies other SEO tactics.
