In 2020, The EAT strategy should be at the heart of your SEO.
EAT is an acronym for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It was introduced by Google in 2014. It was updated again in 2019 in the search quality ranking guidelines dossier.
EAT is standing out as powerful ranking signals to Google that should not be ignored by any SEO expert.
So how do you build an EAT strategy and what are the best practices?
EAT strategy, getting started
With lots of content produced every day, Google came up with the EAT algorithms or quality guidelines in order to improve the quality of the content it recommends to its readers.
This strategy is based on the confidence users express in the page's content. User actions that value or devalue the content or service offered e.g reviews help Google rank the best performers.
This process also applies to image research.
This qualitative assessment is based on all of the site's functionalities, however, the content offered remains fairly central to this approach. Therefore, to align with Google’s EAT strategy, you’ll need to give it your utmost attention.
EAT is the sustainable SEO strategy for Ugandans who want to rank well on Google as its likely to keep reigning supreme for a long time.
EAT, 3 key letters to guide content creation
The EAT method is therefore based on 3 key concepts of digital strategy, which you must keep in mind when creating your web pages, especially when writing new content:
- E for Expertise: Google believes that a certain level of expertise is necessary to provide relevant advice to Internet users. So, to gauge this, the search algorithms will be interested in information, obviously, but also in the expertise of the author and his legitimacy to deal with a subject. This is a particularly important criterion for pages with sensitive information e.g pages providing health, finance or security-related content. All these subjects directly impact the life of the reader.
- A for Authority: Corollary of expertise, authority results. Thus, in order to check this second box, your site will have to offer its readers up-to-date content, based on reliable and communicated sources. The objective is to establish yourself as an authoritative site on your theme.
- T for Reliability: This is the ability to reassure Google that you are a reliable business. For an E-commerce site, for example, the engine will look at the reviews left by customers or will make sure that the pages dedicated to payment are well secured. On the content side, backlinks can increase your credibility on a subject.
Due to the field's sensitivity, Ugandan hospital websites must meet the EAT criteria to rank
Here are some tips to help you with your EAT strategy.
Use trusted Authors
YMYL articles ( Articles that directly affect an individual's lively hood e.g health, finances or future happiness should be written by experts in the field.
Google's new guidelines indicate that the author's credibility is an important factor in assigning a good EAT score.
Websites should, therefore, have an author bio and the author's credibility should be verifiable by 3rd party websites.
Websites in the YAML will, therefore, need to hire authoritative writters for their content to have a good EAT score.
Properly Linking Content
Content should have resources in the form of external links to relevant authoritative websites to back up claims.
A great example of a website that practices citations and strong resource linking is Wikipedia. There is good reason Wikipedia invokes a sense of trust in its readers even though it can be edited by anyone who wants to. It provides citations and links as proof to all its content. To have a good EAT score, be like Wikipedia.
Update NAP Information
NAP is an acronym that stands for Name Address and Phone number.
ECommerce websites should ensure that their name, address and phone number information are correctly displayed on the website and are visible.
A great place to include this information is the header but the footer can do as well. This information should be consistent not only on all web pages but for the entire online presence.
