Google is continually updating its algorithms to ensure that its users get the best experience when browsing online. If you produce content for your website, you may well have heard about E-E-A-T. This was an update to the search engine’s quality algorithm that was introduced in late 2022.
E-E-A-T stands for:
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
N.B. Google actually first introduced E-A-T in 2014, but they added the ‘Experience’ dimension in 2022.
So, what does E-E-A-T mean for your website? And what sorts of content should you be producing?
Implications of E-E-A-T for your website
The rollout of E-E-A-T means that websites with generic, unreliable, short-form, or repetitive content are less likely to appear in search results pages. To rank well, you’ll need to prioritise content that’s E-E-A-T compliant.
Let’s dig into the acronym in a little more detail.
Experience
Google will prioritise content that demonstrates first-hand or real life experience of a topic. For example, if you’re a solar panel installation company, writing about some of your specific experiences of attaching them to roofs and the issues you’ve faced tells Google that you really know what you’re talking about.
For a bit more of an overview, read this quick intro from Google.
Expertise
Google will surface content that demonstrates real expertise in the field. This is achieved through in-depth research, showing you have knowledge of a topic and its nuances. For example, if you were a sportswear company writing fitness blogs, your articles would need to provide comprehensive information, perhaps backed with insights from scientific studies or getting articles verified by physiotherapists.
Authoritativeness
Authoritative content shows your organisation is a real leader in its field, and that you’re a valuable source of information. For example, if you had a healthcare app, you’d want to produce detailed articles describing every element of a condition, diagnosis, treatment and so on.
Trustworthiness
Finally, Google only wants to surface trustworthy content in its results pages. Make sure your blog, and any content you create, contains credible, truthful information. For example, if you run a beauty website, make sure any claims you make about a product can be fully backed up with facts (and link to trusted sources as evidence).
Where to begin with E-E-A-T compliance
Since the 2022 update, you may have noticed your website is ranking less well for certain blogs or pages. Or, you might be working on a strategy to become more E-E-A-T compliant. In either case, here’s where I’d suggest starting:
- Content audit: Conduct an audit of all your content. For each piece, assess how E-E-A-T compliant it is.
- Remove or update non-compliant content: If any content is inaccurate, generic or lacks evidence, either update it or remove it. Also, remove duplicate content.
- Plan an E-E-A-T compliant content strategy: Now the hardest part. You’ll basically need to update your content strategy so everything you publish does actually demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Inspiration for E-E-A-T compliant content
In my opinion, E-E-A-T is a really good thing. It’s basically encouraging companies to produce high quality blogs, eBooks, case studies and web pages.
In the 10 years I’ve worked as a copywriter, I’ve come across many companies that just reproduce and rejig information that’s already widely available, just for the sake of having content on their websites. That’s fine if it works, but what real value are they adding?
Complying with E-E-A-T means companies that do publish content will be producing new, meaningful insights which will be helpful to their readers.
To that end, I’ve put together a list of content types that can be useful for companies trying to put together an E-E-A-T strategy.
Use your experts
Most companies employ several people who are highly experienced in their field. These people are a source of invaluable information (particularly around ‘Experience’ and ‘Expertise’).
If they don’t have the time or inclination to write blogs themselves, interview them and turn the content into Q&A’s or feature-style articles.
Example: A heat pump installation company could run a series of interviews with installers about some of the challenges of plugging the systems in.
Interview outside experts and customers
On a similar theme, conduct interviews with experts outside your organisation. They could be academics, scientists, people at partner businesses, consultants – even experienced freelancers! Again, this will just reinforce your website’s E-E-A-T performance.
Example: A SaaS company could interview someone at one of its resellers about issues facing their customers.
Conduct fresh research
Carrying out surveys, analysis or any other kind of research, then publishing it, is a fantastic way of improving your E-E-A-T compliance. By conducting surveys about a topic in your industry, you generate new knowledge. Not only does that enhance your ‘Authoritativeness’, but it’s also likely to get backlinks and maybe even a bit of PR.
Example: A pet food company could do a survey of dog walking habits around the UK.
Only use credible data (and put it in context)
If you want, you can find a statistic somewhere online to support almost any argument. However, to comply with Google’s notion of ‘Trustworthiness’, it’s best to be a bit more selective and transparent. First, make sure you any data you use comes from a credible source (i.e. a survey of 10 people probably doesn’t cut the mustard). Then, when you mention a statistic in your blogs/eBooks/whitepapers/web pages, provide information about the source.
Example: If you were a footwear company writing a blog about shoes, don’t just write: “studies show 90% of people prefer cushioned shoes”. Instead, provide more detail: “a 2023 study with 500 people found that 90% of them found cushioned shoes ‘quite’ or ‘very’ comfortable”.
Avoid scattergun content
Sometimes, companies seem to take a rather scattergun approach to publishing content. An IT company might write about cybersecurity today, intranets next week, app development the week after… This isn’t always an issue, but it makes a website feel much less authoritative than if they delved deeply into a select number of topics.
Aim for newness/innovation
For some industries and business models, this is a bit harder. But if possible, publish content about genuinely new or innovative things you or your industry are doing. Particularly in a world where generative AI is now providing summaries of topics in search engine results pages (meaning generic content is less likely to be surfaced), there’s an onus on all content creators to produce information about things that haven’t been covered before.
Think about your company’s content almost like a magazine or newspaper. No editor at a self-respecting publication would publish articles they’d already written about in the past (or worse, which their competitors had just covered). Apply the same standards to your own website.
This isn’t about competing with your PR team. But the idea is to publicise even minor innovations. For example, imagine you ran a cybersecurity company, newness/innovation could involve producing articles with titles like:
- We just tried a new way to pen test a bank. Here’s what happened
- Our first impressions of the new Microsoft Sentinel release
- We tweaked a common patch management process and saved 2 hours
Write about actual experience
To get ranked for ‘Experience’, it’s a great idea to produce content about actual places your company/employees have gone or products you’ve used. This will really vary from one company to the next, so here are a few examples:
- Conference/event write-ups. What you learnt, general impressions, interesting talks.
- Summaries of training days your employees have been on, what they learnt, how they can use the new knowledge.
- If you’re a reseller (be that software, clothes, toys, food, or anything else!) describe your real experiences with a product. Explain why you think it’s good, and why you’re reselling it.
- Produce more in-depth case studies. All too often, case studies are a bit bland and forgettable. By turning case studies into narrative feature-like articles, with characters, the problems that cropped up, the way you fixed them, you can really show off your experience.
- Stories behind product designs. Say you’d designed a new 3D printed widget for one of your machines, write a story about the teams involved, how they came up with the idea, how they did the R&D.
Time to get E-E-A-T compliant
Updating your content strategy so it becomes E-E-A-T compliant is valuable for many reasons. It’ll mean your content is more likely to surface in SERPs, it will be of a far higher quality, and it will also just be a lot more interesting for your readers to consume.
Need help producing E-E-A-T compliant content? I can help.
I bring you 10 years of content writing experience, rigorous journalistic standards (I’ve written for well-known publications) and have an academic background. I know how to find reliable sources, fact check claims, and interview experts.
Contact me today to find out how I can help you.