Features of Working With E-A-T Factors

E-A-T factors are a set of six criteria that can be used to assess the quality of a text. These six criteria are: Expertise, Authority (or expertise), Trustworthiness (or authority), Clarity (ease of understanding), Accuracy and Style.

The first three characteristics - expertise, authority and trustworthiness - have to do with the author's background and qualifications in the field being discussed in the text. The last three - clarity, accuracy and style - have to do with how well written it is. Let’s understand the features of E-A-T factors:

Working with E-A-T does not bring quick results

By optimizing meta tags or fixing technical issues on the site, you can immediately see improvements. To do this, you need to wait until Google crawls and indexes updates.

When working with E-A-T factors, there will be no quick improvements. Improving the reliability of your site is a long and costly process. It takes time to gain the trust of users and the search engine.

As a rule, Google does not seriously reassess the overall quality of a site until the search algorithm is updated. Therefore, the results of work on E-A-T factors can be seen only after months.

At the same time, when working with these factors, you get benefits that already go beyond SEO. By working on E-A-T, you will improve the user experience: visitors will trust your site, authors, and brand more.

E-A-T does not replace technical SEO audit and other optimization tasks

Do not forget about other SEO work and focus only on improving E-A-T factors. All the traditional points of the SEO strategy also need to be worked out: technical optimization, link building, metadata. Otherwise, all efforts to work with E-A-T will be in vain.

If a site has serious technical flaws, such as slow page loading or content crawling issues, Google won't even be able to properly index that site.

How much effort you can put into improving your E-A-T level depends on how severe the other issues that are affecting your site are.

High E-A-T is not required for all sites

The Google Search Quality Assessors Guide clearly states that the level of E-A-T required depends on the topic of the site and whether the site's content fits the YMYL category. For example, here is an excerpt from the manual:

High E-A-T medical content can only be created or hosted by people or organizations with the appropriate medical expertise or accreditation.

Important: Online stores are by definition YMYL because they ask for bank card information.

But this does not mean that on sites of other topics it is completely possible not to increase the level of E-A-T. Working on E-A-T in general affects the quality of the site and increases user confidence in you.

E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor

The role of authority, expertise and credibility in page ranking is more indirect.

Google has at least 200 ranking factors such as page load speed, HTTPS, or use of keywords in title tags that can directly affect page rank.

Summarizing

E‑AT is important for a top SEO agency. Google carefully checks sites for reliable and verified information. They are definitely worth doing, especially if you work with YMYL-themed sites.

Getting to the top of Google is not easy these days. We recommend developing the brand, including by increasing the level of E-A-T. With a systematic approach, you will definitely succeed and your site will be at the top.

Currently serving as the Managing Director of Seo Discovery, Mandeep Singh is an ardent reader, learner, and writer. He embarked on a career in Digital Marketing decades ago.