If You’re Hungry for Higher Google Rankings, It’s Time to EEAT!

A higher Google ranking is on the wish list for just about every website owner and developer.  The entire SEO industry exists because getting position #1 ranking for organic results is vital to most businesses.  But getting better search rankings is a constantly moving target.  Google often tweaks with its secret sauce, and competitors are always stepping up their SEO game.  Google has made one thing clear.  They reward great content.  It must serve a noble purpose and be rich with experience, expertise, authority, and trust—E.E.A.T.  After reading this article, you’ll have more insight into how Google ranks page results.  You will also understand how to make Google confident with your pages and improve your rankings.  Plus, you’ll get a work-around even the busiest people can use to improve digital content.  So, if you’re hungry for Better Google Rankings, it’s time to EEAT. 

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Real World Experience

When I talk to people about webpage ranking on search engine results pages, the topic invariably turns to the matter of trust. Ranking is all about search engines, like Google, trusting your website or webpage more than it trust other sites providing similar content. If you want to know how to build trust, Google has given us a roadmap. In our most important content we display our experience in business, our expertise with our services, and our authority in our field. If we effectively prove experience, expertise, and authority, we will gain the trust of Google. And what’s even better, we will gain the trust of our visitors. When our visitors trust us, we can convert them into customers.

Build Pages with Purpose

Google rewards pages built to serve the world with a beneficial purpose.  They make it clear in their Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.  Each page is assigned a page quality rating (PQ).  To rank highly, the purpose of the page must be good and, above all, must be met.

Website content must be easy for Google to understand.  Therefore, many websites explicitly state their purpose on their homepage or About Us page.  The purpose becomes keywords that liberally sprinkle through the website.

Create Content that Conveys Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust

The combination of experience, expertise, authority, and trust is one of the most important factors Google considers when assigning a page quality rating. 

Experience

Google prefers content that is created by someone with first-hand or life experience with the topic.  Experience provides readers with a sense of trustworthiness in the content.  For example, would you rather read an article about website design from someone who studies website design or from someone who has been designing and publishing websites for several years?  Most people prefer the author with experience.  This is a challenge for AI-generated content.  AI content may be accurate (or not), but it cannot contain any real-world experience.  Therefore, using AI content as a basis for an article is fine, but it should be edited by someone with actual experience in the topic. 

Expertise

Expertise refers to the creator of the main content (MC) on the page.  They need to be an expert on the topic.  However, the definition of the term “expert” is vague.  That’s why many sites establish expertise by posting badges and certificates earned.  It helps establish the company and its associates as experts in their field.  Sometimes real-world experience is all that’s needed to establish expertise.  For instance, I write restaurant reviews for Tampa Bay Business and Wealth Magazine for three years. Before that, I wrote restaurant reviews for MyAreaNetwork for two years.  I don’t have a badge or certificate that says I’m an expert restaurant reviewer, but my years of experience writing reviews makes me one, at least in the eyes of Google.

Authority

Authoritativeness means having generally recognized authority.  People know you, know your background, and look to you as a leader in your industry. They accept you as a good source of information.  In this case, authority often comes with job titles.  The more prestigious the person’s title, the more authority the person has.  If Gordon Ramsay and I wrote a review for the same restaurant, Google would most likely rank his article higher because his recognized authority is higher than mine.  After Chef Ramsay’s article ranks higher than mine, he would probably yell at me and throw my article in the trash.

Trust

This is the most important element of EEAT.  The other three elements all contribute to trust.  Being a trustworthy expert or source means people can trust you to provide true and accurate information.  It seems there is so little truth in the media these days that it’s hard to know whom to trust.  Therefore, always create original content, and credit the material you use from other sources.

Can You EEAT Your Way to the Top?

Not exactly.  You will need to do more than just EEAT for higher Google rankings.  Google considers several things to determine what content is high-quality.  EEAT is one of those considerations, but according to Search Engine Journal, it is not a direct ranking factor.  Nevertheless, it can have an impact on your overall search rankings indirectly.

The Hack for Busy People

The author of the article, specifically the author’s role in the company, is critical in establishing expertise and authority.  But often, company leaders are busy and have no time to write articles.  In addition, sometimes they are terrible writers.  The solution to this is ghostwriting.  I ghostwrote articles for a client for several years.  My client was a skincare professional with 30 years of experience working in New York for big companies like Elizabeth Arden.  She created a line of skincare products and sold them on a website.  She was super-busy running the company and had neither the time nor desire to write articles.  We collaborated on the article topics.  Then I researched and wrote the posts, optimizing them for readership and SEO.  She approved the articles and I published them under her name.  Expertise and authority, check!  Good writing and SEO friendly, check!

Prove to Google that You’re Worthy

SEO is all about your website’s relationship with Google.  They dominate the search engine world and focus on delivering the best results for every search request.  Their customer is the person making the search.  Google has a split second to deliver pages of search results.  Therefore, if you have a shot at ranking on page one, you’ve got to prove to Google your page is the best and most relevant for their customer.  And the best way to build a relationship with Google is to create content relevant to your customer AND makes Google confident in serving it to their customer.  That’s when you will see higher Google rankings. It seems simple, but it’s often not easy.  Luckily, SK Website Works provides SEO services and blog writing to help.

SK Website Works offers website services and creates digital content for all sizes of businesses.  Our business writing services create web pages, editorial copy, and blog posts, all tested for readability and optimized for SEO.  We conduct extensive keyword research, provide technical SEO services and maintain websites to produce the best user experience possible.  For a free website audit, send an email to michael@skwebsiteworks.com.  Thanks for your time, but now we’ve gotta run.  We have websites to build, blogs to write, eCommerce to manage, and photos to edit.  Until next time, take care.