
Google is always trying to make its search results more efficient and user-oriented. For this reason, it makes updates regularly. One of the latest changes made by Google was the E-E-A-T update announced on the Search Central Twitter account on December 15. Google also updated its search rating criteria, including E-E-A-T in the guidelines.
So what does this algorithm update include? What kind of things should you pay attention to on your website? Understanding Google’s E-E-A-T update to evaluate the search results and learn what has changed with the added experience concept will be beneficial to answer these questions.
What is E-E-A-T?
E-E-A-T is the abbreviation of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, with the addition of “experience” to E-A-T. The Turkish equivalent of these concepts is experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. E-E-A-T is part of search ranking guidelines that try to provide the most relevant content for the user. These guidelines intend to evaluate search ranking performance and do not directly affect users or rankings. With quality rater guidelines, Google reviews websites and aims to rank them resulting in a better user experience.
What Has Changed With The Concept of “Experience”?
The addition of “experience” suggests that the content and its quality shall also be evaluated in terms of the extent to which the creator has first-hand experience with the topic. Accordingly, it is easy to say that the focus of the evaluation is largely on the concept of trust.
According to Google, trust is the most significant member of the E-E-A-T family, because no matter how experienced, expert, or authoritative a website or page may seem, if it is untrustworthy, it is detected as poor quality, therefore this leads to a low E-E-A-T value of the website or page. With this renewed concept, the reputation of websites and content contributors seems to have become very important in terms of the trust. Equally important is the understanding of what it means for content to be harmful.
What Will Google Focus on with E-E-A-T?
At the point where you want to understand how Google evaluates the quality of a page with the E-E-A-T update, you can look at the headings supported by the Google search quality evaluator guidelines.
- Evaluation of the Site Owner: Google clearly states that along with the update, it will now also scrutinize site owners. Thinking that this review will be helpful for users, Google shall be monitoring the competence and reliability of site owners.
- The expertise of Content Writers: Nowadays, content has become as important as the people who write it. By following the authors, Google will also evaluate their competence on the subject.
- Page Quality Assessment: As part of the update, some changes have been made to the existing evaluation criteria. Google will run a site through the following 3-step review.
- Determine the real purpose of the page
- Understand if the page is spammy
- If the page is not harmful, to determine how successful the page is in achieving its purpose
- Relevant Personal Experience: Content produced by people with relevant life experience will gain importance. Having significant experience will contribute to trust.
- Quality of the Main Content: Google used to evaluate the quality of content based on time, effort, expertise, and talent. With the update, Google introduced the concept of originality instead of time, showing that it cares about original content.
- Easy Detection of Harmful Content: With the new update, it will be possible to determine whether the content on the page is detrimental or not through a more detailed analysis. With this title, Google has made it clear that it wants to prioritize quality content.
- Reliability: The concept of credibility will be clarified according to whether the content matches the purpose of the web page. At the same time, Google will pay attention to the following points when evaluating the trust criterion.
- What does the website’s about page say?
- What other pages say about the website?
- What do the testimonials say about the website?
- Are elements that prove the expertise of the website and its authors prominently displayed on the page?
Authoritativeness: This concept refers to the demonstration to users and Google of competence in the relevant field. One of the most important components of authority is the backlink profile of the website. In this context, it has become important to carry out a quality backlink strategy and to regularly analyze harmful links.
To summarize, Google; With E-E-A-T, it emphasizes the significance of quality and original content, being a transparent and reliable website, as it generally does in every update. Google will attach importance if you always think like the user and care about them, optimize your website by demonstrating your reliability and expertise, and reflect all of this in the content production process.
How Can You Increase Your E-E-A-T Value?
If you are within the scope of the areas served in E-E-A-T. Nevertheless, you can not provide a good experience, if you are not an expert, authoritative or reliable, Google may perceive your site as low quality. Therefore, you need to increase the E-E-A-T value of your site. To enhance this value, you should produce original content that serves a specific purpose, includes content from authors with real experience in the relevant subject on your site, and does not avoid citing sources. At the same time, you should always keep your site up to date and be transparent with your users.
As the experienced and award-winning Markethinkers team, we always follow Google’s updates. We aim to move in the right direction in both SEO consultancy and content production. If you consider you need support at this point, you can make contact with us.