Udemezue John
Introduction.
Optimising your website for search engines is the best way to scale your online business if you want to attract a targetted audience and enjoy your website to continue ranking on the SERPs.
Search engine optimisation comes with various complexities; these complexities determine how a search engine ranks your website on the SERPs( Search Engine Result Page).
These search engine complexities are designed to make the search engine as bright and humanly as possible; they are called Google algorithms.
Various Google algorithms are made monthly, daily, and yearly. Most of the times are announced, and some are not.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on this blog to help you understand how Google algorithm update works; you can click the link to the article below.
Most SEO experts have come out to say that Google E.A.T is not an algorithm update but a principle; I’m afraid I have to disagree with that because anything that alters the behaviour of the search engine in any way is an algorithm.
If you need more information about the Google E.A.T algorithm, click the link.
What is Googe E.A.T?
EAT means Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness. This is how Google describes three core pillars of a website evaluation conducted by its quality raters.
Based on their analysis of this purpose, they should evaluate the content’s expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, the content creator, and the page itself.
The E.A.T algorithm update began its initial rollout in 2019 when Google decided to pay attention to Y.M.Y.L (Your Money, your Life websites).
Google uses an acronym, YMYL, “Your Money or Your Life”. It sure sounds a bit threatening but trusts me; it’s not.
Well, “Your Money or Your Life” means any website that implies people’s financial situation, life, or health. So, for example, websites related to the health and medical industry would come under the section “Your Life”.
Websites selling products or taking credit card information from you can be considered “Your Money” sites. Any website with an e-commerce element or health-related topics comes under the scrutiny of E-A-T.
This website includes websites in specific niches, such as
1. Health.
A health-based niche website is one of the websites categorised under the “YMYL”.
To achieve a high E-A-T score, people or organisations with expert medical knowledge should create content in the health space. It should also be frequently reviewed and updated.
2. News.
Another niche categorised under the “YMYL” is the news websites. High-ranking news articles should meet professional standards of quality journalism.
They should be objective and help users to understand events better.
News sources that score well on E-A-T have usually published editorial guidelines and verification processes for the information they post.
3. Science.
Science niche based website also falls in the website category under the “YMYL”.
Websites that provide information on scientific topics should be created by people or organisations with relevant backgrounds and should present the accepted scientific consensus on issues where such a consensus exists.
4. Finance.
And lastly, finance blogs are also considered part of the “YMYL”.
Financial, legal and tax advice, or information on similar subjects, should achieve a high E-A-T score provided by reliable sources and regularly maintained and updated in line with any relevant developments in legal frameworks, etc.
5. Consumer guides.
E-A-T can be relevant for high-quality consumer guides dealing with home renovation or parenting questions. But, again, these should be written by experts or backed up by reliable sources that users can trust.
The Google Quality Rater Guidelines contain some interesting comments on who can be considered an expert and how to evaluate the content on online forums and Q&A pages; you should click the link to learn about E-A-T.
Why Should You Care About Google’s E.A.T Algorithm?
Google once used to be just a search engine, where you entered the search term and a corresponding result in given back to you in the form of links to various websites from bloggers all over the world.
The search engine is evolving into a more smart machine to provide the specific answers at the right time.
This phenomenon has taken flight into the clouds, mainly due to the introduction of Voice Search and Google Home devices.
It would help if you cared about Google’s E-A-T algorithm because of the following.
1. E-A-T is now a search engine ranking factor.
Before the E-A-T algorithm was rolled out, any website with the right amount of content would rank on the search engine. Still, with the recent rollout of Google’s E-A-T algorithm, more checks have been put in place for specific websites based on particular topics such as (Health, Finance, News, Science and consumer guide).
If your website falls into the following, then you should consider taking E-A-T seriously so as not to have all your hard work thrown go down the drain.
2. Google Search Needs To Provide The Right Answers.
Just imagine, A person seeking out financial advice on what stock to buy and goes on to look up on Google for answers only to find answers from someone with no experience; this might attract grave consequences.
The same goes for someone seeking medical advice on a specific health condition; the person looks up Google and sees well written. Formatted content from someone who has no experience on such a particular topic, and the same might also attract grave consequences.
Therefore Google ensures to rank websites with high expertise, high authority, and high trust to provide accurate information.
The search engine has to take responsibility for providing appropriate answers about what the person is seeking.
3. Rank Website Based on Merits.
The blogosphere is now more saturated than ever; anyone can now wake up anytime just to put up information and see it rank over the first few months, not caring what harm such information can do to someone in another world.
This is more reason why Google has introduced this algorithm to cleanse the website of fake and unverified information.
4. Curb The Spread Of Fake News.
One of the trendy blog niches all over the world now is the news niche, which is the primary source of information for newsreaders.
Most times, when people seek out the latest news, one of the first places to look up information is Google, which is everywhere on every browser in the world.
Google’s E-A-T algorithm has been implemented only to allow websites with the appropriate merit to rank the search engines to avoid spreading fake news.
Therefore, E-A-T is crucial because Google has to look into the sort of information they are providing in the search results and how they can make sure that the data is as likely to be correct as possible.
How To Optimize Your Website For Google E-A-T Algorithm.
When the Google E-A-T algorithm initially came out, it caused an uproar in the blogging world, but fast forward to where we are today, it has now become more apparent and easy to understand, even till now so many websites are still finding it difficult to scale their website to rank the search engine for some terms, this might be because of the need to optimise their website for the E-A-T algorithm.
This section will show how to get started with properly optimising your website for the Google E-A-T algorithm update.
1. Don’t Blog Too Broad.
When starting this blog, one of the first blogging myths I had in mind was “write as much content as you can “this is a trap that most bloggers have fallen into, and it has killed so many potential bloggers; imagine a blog that talks about making money online with subtopics such as blogging SEO and affiliate marketing, and later becoming a news website reporting politics and entertainment and even music, that is our of the equation.
Anybody looking to position themselves as an expert on a YMYL topic should carefully and precisely define their topic cluster and avoid trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades. There are blog niches that go hand-in-hand, and I call them transparent niches; these can be Travels, Motivation.
2. Ensure Your Content Quality and Freshness.
Another trap that most bloggers usually find themselves in is the need to frequently write content daily while abandoning the old ones written by them, Don’t just write content and leave it there hanging for a long time; moreover, you don’t need too many contents to rank the SERP’s.
The top priority for a website looking to achieve a high Page Quality Rank should be creating comprehensive, trustworthy content and ensuring that they are updated at regular intervals.
The content should also be reviewed and updated regularly. The date when content was last modified must be displayed when refreshing content.
If you use WordPress as your blog engine, you should have the appropriate plugin installed.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on properly setting up your blog so that it displays the last updated information.
3. Optimize The Author Bio On your websites.
The Author Bio is important when ranking your website for Google’s E-A-T algorithm.
An author’s Bio should be seen as an open CV of what that author has achieved. In addition, the individual authors of each content piece should be named. Additional author information, like a short description, CVs and links to other online profiles, also help to raise an author’s (and the website’s) expert status.
Also, include relevant certifications and education that you might have had in time past; this also sends a signal to the search engine.
Contact options, a detailed website imprint and an “About Us” page, are other ways of increasing trust.
If an author is also visible on other authoritative pages or their own social media channels, where they post (high-quality) content, then mentions, or direct links can be beneficial for improving your website’s E-A-T score.
4. Get Comments, Reviews and Customer Testimonials.
Unless you’re in a niche that targets early adopters, you’d be wise to include a few user reviews and testimonials on your site.
Using reviews is not just good from an E-A-T perspective. Still, reviews from satisfied users influence behaviour and reduce customers’ level of anxiety surrounding any purchase they are likely to make on your site.
5. Manage Your Reputation (Brand Mentions).
The online world thrives based on reputation; you need to have that in mind when optimising your blog for the Google E.A.T algorithm.
However, just like SEO isn’t only about on-page optimisation but also off-page measures, E-A-T also concerns your site’s environment. In addition to the above, that means making sure that your reputation around the web is as good as possible.
One way to achieve this is to make sure that your brand is mentioned in reputable places across the internet, such as by writing guest posts, featuring on Podcasts, creating your own YouTube channel and being active on social media as much as you can.
These can optimise your online presence and validate your brand to search engines such as Google.
Conclusion.
Bringing this all to a close, it can be said that the Google E-A-T Algorithm Update is All About Increasing Site Quality.
Google has gone beyond just ranking random content, as it is taking extra steps to make sure that they come from trusted sources.
Anyone who wants to continue to rank well in search engines needs to keep up with the constantly changing landscape of SEO. Especially Google’s significant algorithm changes are always a cause to re-evaluate your strategy.
I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to get started with search engine optimisation as a beginner; click the link below to get started.
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