E-E-A-T is probably a term you’ve come across before. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
E-E-A-T an incredibly important principle in the world of content and SEO, especially nowadays. As a website owner, having a thorough understanding of what it is, what it means, and how to ensure you meet these standards is incredibly important. So, if you’re not clued up, here’s our comprehensive guide on E-E-A-T.
Initially introduced as E-A-T, this principle was first mentioned in 2014, when it was added to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Originally, this was primarily aimed at YMYL websites (‘Your Money or Your Life’ - aka any site or webpage that could have an impact on a user’s health, finances, or general wellbeing), and although this is still the case, it’s become increasingly important for all sites to follow.
Back in 2018, there was a major core algorithm update known as the Google Medic Update. This update specifically targeted and heavily impacted YMYL sites, and aimed to favour and promote websites that strongly demonstrated E-A-T signals. The sites that didn’t saw significant drops in traffic.
This update was a huge turning point in the SEO world, and caused website owners to completely rethink their approach to optimisations. Before this, more traditional ranking factors like keywords, backlinks, and site architecture took centre stage, but once it became clear just how important E-A-T became, organic search strategies began to evolve.
Four years later, another update landed that had strong consequences for sites not focusing on creating content under E-A-T guidelines: the Google Helpful Content Update. This update was a big one, and it massively shifted the algorithm to reward people-first content and penalise SEO spam.
In December 2022, Google updated the term E-A-T, adding another ‘E’ for ‘experience’. This was the result of Google recognising that firsthand encounters or personal involvement with a topic was particularly valuable for audiences.
Although AI and conversational search tools have rocked the SEO world, E-E-A-T is still relevant. Here’s how E-E-A-T factors into the AI era.
When AI search tools answer a user’s question, they do so using a fan-out query process. This means instead of looking at a question as a whole, it breaks it down into several subtopics, deep-diving into each to build a more comprehensive single answer.
Research from Seer Interactive found that Gemini 3 uses an average of 10.7 fan-out queries per prompt, but some did reach as high as 28. The amount of fan-out queries can vary depending on the complexity and amount of context surrounding the prompt.
E-E-A-T plays a pivotal role in whether or not it uses you as a source for its overall answer. If you’re clearly addressing and covering relevant subqueries, you may earn more visibility through AI mentions and citations.
You can actually extract fan-out queries, using browser developer tools, APIs, or dedicated fan-out extraction tools, to understand more about how AI retrieves information in your niche, allowing you to optimise for these fan-out queries.
Advances in AI technology mean it’s now easier than ever to mass-produce content. The problem is that a lot of AI-generated content is very generic and the quality is fairly poor, even flat-out false or misleading at times.
To combat this, AI retrieval systems use E-E-A-T signals as a sort of filter to ensure the search results aren’t full of unoriginal, incorrect, and dull content.
Technically no. However, it is heavily relied on as a means to evaluate the quality of your content, and content quality is a ranking factor, so in a roundabout way, it is.
Personal experience is what separates AI-generated and human content, so it’s probably no coincidence that this element was added the same year that ChatGPT launched.
Experience refers to real-life participation in relation to the subject. For example, someone writing a restaurant review needs to have visited that restaurant and tried the food. This is something AI can’t replicate, so experience has become incredibly important.
Expertise pertains to the author of the content. Google wants to know that whoever is writing about the subject has an appropriate level of knowledge to be doing so. Whether that be through experience, qualifications, or achievements.
For example, if a blog is offering medical advice, Google would like that blog to be written by a trained doctor or medical professional. For this reason, it’s important that the author of the blog is tagged and their qualifications are shown to give Google confidence that the content is genuinely helpful to its audience.
A site will hold different levels of authority within its niche, and the higher the authority of a site, the more likely it is to rank. Not only does having authority in your field prove to Google that your content is relevant and that you understand the needs of your audience, but also that others recognise you as an expert.
Trust is the most important aspect of E-E-A-T since Google puts the most weight on this. Trust comes in several forms, from positive user feedback to necessities such as cookie policies and terms and conditions pages.
Trust varies from page to page. For example, pages that exist purely for entertainment, a baking blog for example, don’t require as much trust as YMYL pages that include information on topics relating to financial, health, or safety subjects.
Google puts a lot of emphasis on trustworthy content, and each element of the E-E-A-T guidelines contributes to that. You don’t necessarily need to demonstrate every single element of E-E-A-T in all of your content, but having content that aligns with the principles of E-E-A-T should help your performance in the search results.
Quality over quantity is always the rule when it comes to content. Your content should not only add value to your audience, but also be well-written, interesting, and easy to read.
Make sure your content covers a broad range of topics within your niche, particularly where there are gaps of information online. ‘How-to’ guides and step-by-step articles are a great way to illustrate that you have a comprehensive understanding of the subjects within your field.
Outdated content often includes irrelevant or incorrect information, so it’s a good idea to run a content audit at least once a year (potentially more often depending on how much content you put out and what industry you’re in) to see what might be worth updating.
By refreshing older content, you can ensure you’re consistently presenting your audience with information that is relevant and accurate, allowing you to generate more trust between you and your audience.
Having bios for each author in your team helps to demonstrate your expertise. Note any credentials, experience, or achievements that qualify them to write about the subject and reinforces their proficiency.
Backlinks improve the authority of your site by showing Google your site is relevant, and you are an authority in your niche. If another site uses you as a resource, it implies your content is helpful to your industry’s audience.
If you make a claim, whether it be a fact or statistic, ensure you back that claim up with supporting evidence. Use information from credible sites and include links to the original source. If it’s your own research, make that clear.
Allow users to provide feedback wherever possible. Positive feedback assists in building trust for your brand. It's also important to interact with your users to improve customer satisfaction and better your overall brand reputation. If you have a positive review, take the time to thank them. Likewise, if you have a negative review, respond politely and offer a solution to their problem, complaint, or concern.
There is no ‘score’ for E-E-A-T, so actually measuring it for your site isn’t the quickest or easiest thing in the world. But it is important to do.
With this, you essentially need to look at your site as if you were a Google Search Quality Rater, looking for evidence (or lack of) that you’re demonstrating at least some of the four pillars of E-E-A-T.
There are a few methods you can use here. For larger sites, you’re better off using a sample approach, selecting a batch of key content pieces to evaluate rather than attempting to audit every single webpage you have. For smaller sites or YMYL sites, you might want to take a more exhaustive approach.
Google has a checklist of content and quality questions and expertise questions to ask yourself when evaluating a page that can help you understand whether you’re meeting its E-E-A-T signals.
It’s not just about on-page content, either. You also need to look at things that show other people trust your brand, i.e. good reviews, backlinks, mentions, or citations from trusted publications, whether or not the author has a distinct entity on Google, and the legitimacy of your business.
As we’ve mentioned, you don’t always need to demonstrate all of them, but you need to be hitting some. Trust is the most important out of all of them, so emphasise technical security, business transparency, and accurate information above all else.
Demonstrating as many E-E-A-T signals as possible is essential, but we can’t guarantee that doing so will cause your rankings and search visibility to skyrocket. But consistently illustrating that you have experience, are an expert and have authority in your field, and that the information you provide can be trusted will give you the best chance at success.
Following E-E-A-T guidelines is a critical part of modern-day marketing. If you would like expert help refining your website content to improve your offering and boost your performance in the search results, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the experts today.
