Remaining aware of developments and modifications to search engine algorithm, requirements and guidelines is essential for success in the digital marketing and SEO landscape.
E-E-A-T is particularly important and need to be understood as they carry significant weight when Google is crawling content and determining search engine results page (SERP) rankings. This blog post will touch on YMYL, E-E-A-T and explain the importance of E-E-A-T in SEO and its overall importance for online visibility of your website and content.
E-E-A-T is a way for Google to determine the usefulness and overall trustworthiness of web content.
This stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
It is a concept introduced by Google in its search quality guidelines to evaluate the quality of web content and aid the process of Google ranking on SERP. Although It is not a direct Google ranking factor, Google will want to serve results with strong E-E-A-T, so its important for content to reflect these guidelines.
Experience in E-E-A-T refers to content created by someone with first hand experience in the area about the content they are creating. Experience improves trustworthiness of the content and contributed to good E-E-A-T.
For example, when checking reviews for a product/service, someone who has shown experience with the products/service is more likely to have a trustworthy viewpoint compared to someone who hasn’t used it, which is why it is important to have experienced viewpoints and authors when constructing online content.
Expertise relates to the knowledge and skills of a creator. Demonstrating expertise in your content area is crucial to improve credibility and trustworthiness. Google will look for sources' credibility when ranking web content and determine whether the content is written by someone with good expertise or if the author has credible references with expert individuals.
Google wants to see content created by knowledgeable individuals or organisations who have the credentials and qualifications required to give reliable information.
Authoritativeness is the authority of the content and the site publishing it. It refers to establishing your website as a trusted source of information through high quality backlinks and citations from other reputable sources.
Backlinks need to be high quality and from reputable sites, as spam backlinks will either worsen or have no effect on your SERP ranking, whereas quality backlinks with increase the site's and content's authoritativeness, improving the SERP ranking.
Trustworthiness is the most important part of E-E-A-T. It is achieved through transparency and displaying to your audience that you can be relied upon to have factually correct information.
Transparency when citing sources, writers etc. will do lots to build confidence with your audience.
Testimonials, reviews, and secure website practices contribute to trustworthiness. Being clear about who wrote your content and where they got their information is crucial when improving SERP ranking.
YMYL focuses on topics that can impact readers' lives such as information on health, financial stability, safety and well-being. This type of content that has the power to influence a major life decision around sensitive topics.
YMYL is not a separate set guidelines, but a set of sensitive topics that if provide misinformation have the power to harm anyone reading the content and anyone who knows anyone reading the content.
E-E-A-T becomes most important for SERP ranking on these topics as misinformation would be highly destructive. When writing content about YMYL subjects its crucial to follow E-E-A-T guidelines meticulously.
Consider adding author and team bios to your online content. It is good to include a description of the author and consider developing additional team profiles to be added. A small section to include social links to authors on page footer and profiles.
It's a good idea to keep support phone numbers, email addresses, locations on sites to improve trustworthiness
Any awards, certificates or achievements you or your authors/team have in the area of the content would be a good thing to include to show expertise.
Positive feedback from readers and users can boost trust and authority.
An organised website design can contribute to building user trust. A website that is both secure and simple to use improves user experience overall, which increases trustworthiness.
Understanding E-E-A-T and YMYL is essential for working in the SEO and digital marketing space.
Prioritising EEAT and understanding the guidelines that Google search engines use to crawl and evaluate content is crucial to ranking highly on Google's SERP, especially if the content falls into YMYL topics.
Staying up to date with these developments will significantly improve your content and long-term strategy to optimise your site in the digital landscape.
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