2023 - How to Improve Your Website E.A.T. Rating

When most New Years resolutions are to eat less, diet, and exercise – your website and SEO will improve if you follow Google’s EAT guidelines (also known as eEAT).

E.A.T. or Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust (E-E-A-T)

Your E.A.T. rating is even more important than ever. It was first mentioned by Google in 2020 and in 2022 it expanded to include “experience”. It is now known as E-E-A-T. The theory is that Google wants to present valid businesses in search results. But how can they tell what is a valid business vs a scammer? They look for businesses to transparently show their experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

What is the Google E.A.T. Rating?

The E-E-A-T acronym is not just a catchy term, it represents Google’s eEAT Ratings which were part of some recent changes to Google’s quality rating guidelines and part of a major search engine algorithm update. It is part of their efforts to provide a Page Quality rating, i.e. each web page or post is a potential landing page for a SEARCH.

Google (and other search engines) are constantly adjusting and improving their algorithms to provide better search results when. They are always trying to stay a step ahead of spammers. Searchers might not notice the changes but we in the SEO world are always paying close attention.

Examining Your Brand EAT Efforts

During our Simple Organic Search (SOS) Strategy we spend a lot of time analyzing and evaluating your digital presence. We pay attention to your brand’s personality and voice, your About pages, your Contact page, your testimonials, reviews, and social media presence. Each business is different and the what works for a doctor with a medical marijuana certification is much different than for a business using hemp in their textile products.

4 Steps to improve your EAT Rating

Establishing and maintaining your digital brand reputation is an ongoing effort that we incorporate into our SEO services but 3 easy to implement takeaways are recommended for any business in almost any industry:

Be Transparent
Update your website with high quality content.
Make sure your ABOUT page is about the business and not a reiteration of your products and services. This is one of the pages where it is good to brag and use the words “I”, “we”, “us”, and “our”. This page is less about what you do and more about who you are … an expert in your industry.
If your management team, sales team, or staff are known … think about creating a TEAM page and creating a web page for each person and talk about their role in your company (not their resume at past companies).
The CONTACT page shows legitimacy – every company should have a name, address, phone number and email address. If you want to limit spam don’t show your email address but provide a form or chat to allow people to communicate with you. You should have an easy way to contact a human.
If you have a local business with a “shop” address – make sure you create/claim your Google My Business. This gmail account will be connected to your Google Maps and Google Reviews, and Google posts so make sure you use an email address and phone that can be shared appropriately with your marketing team.
Build your backlinks from credible websites. Choose websites that make sense to your businesses.