What Is Google E-A-T?

The benefit of hiring a digital marketing agency is that you’ll always be on top of trends in the ever-changing marketing industry.

Especially in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), trends and ranking factors change quickly, often on a monthly basis. While it’s true that some best practices have remained constant over time (such as creating a coherent SEO strategy), the tactics involved often change quickly and without warning.

For example, in early 2018 Google made a change to the meta description length from ~165 characters, to just over ~230 characters. Many savvy marketers made the move to change their meta descriptions for optimal results, only to have Google change the meta description length back to 150-170 characters.

While some of these changes can be frustrating for many businesses that focus on content marketing and SEO, we’ve continuously seen Google shift their focus towards content that is not only insightful but authoritative by citing from experts in the field.

At the end of the day, that makes sense. With hundreds of thousands of results on an astronomical number of keywords, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find original, authoritative content on most content matters.

SEO As Explained By Google

Google doesn’t exactly have a loving relationship with SEO. 

Google’s self-proclaimed mission is to provide the best, most helpful search results to their users – they don’t want just anyone ranking at the top of the page. For this reason, they’ve always acknowledged the work of SEO without directly condoning the term “optimization” – preferring to use phrases like “website best practices” to refer to tactical behaviour.

Thousands of Search Engine Optimizers (SEO’s) around the globe follow Google employees while running their own experiments, collaborating to find the latest trends and ranking factors after each Google algorithm change.

So, when Google speaks, the world listens.

Google last updated their “Search Quality Evaluator” guidelines on September 5th, 2019, which is a massive 167-page document detailing their criteria for “Search Quality” on any given web page.

In this document, they describe the concept of E-A-T in detail – lots of detail, in fact. The phrase “E-A-T” appeared in the document over 130 times! To an SEO that works at a digital marketing agency, this is a gold mine of information and today we’re here to share this with you.

What Is Google E-A-T?

E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.” In Google’s words, these three factors describe the following:

● The expertise of the creator of the Main Content.

● The authoritativeness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website.

● The trustworthiness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website.

What’s more – Google has confirmed that E-A-T is a ranking factor.

What this means is that if you are not posting content that is along your line of expertise, or if your site or writer is not deemed as authoritative or trustworthy, your potential keyword ranking will be scored lower than content from your competitors.

Herein lies a problem for many businesses.

What if you’re a doctor, lawyer or C-level business professional? How do you find time to write a blog post – performing a line of work that is outside of your specific expertise?

We recommend hiring a marketing agency to help you formulate content with your thoughts – perhaps via an interview format, where you’re free to speak without needing to be tied down to writing – and help you craft your words into well-written, consumer-friendly chunks.

At our digital agency, we use an editorial calendar system to compile content for your website weeks in advance, to allow you the time to really stew on the direction of your website’s growth and ensure that this strategic piece of content will help your business grow.

It All Boils Down To Marketing Strategy

As professionals in your field, you already have the knowledge and expertise to excel in creating optimal content. The only thing hold you back is the actual implementation and tactical execution of content creation.

This is where we come in.

Our marketing agency shines by introducing game-changing, unintrusive processes that will help you consolidate all your marketing needs in one place, we can work together to strategically grow your business.

We execute a monthly action plan to ensure that your optimal strategy is backed by action and that everything is recorded and reported properly.

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Did this article strike a chord with what’s going on in your organization? Do give us a shout at 604.559.7509 and set up a discovery meeting. We would love to see if we can help.

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