EAT is simply an acronym that stands for three words: experience, authority, and trustworthiness. This whole concept was derived from the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
This document contains 168 pages that serve as a reference for human quality raters evaluating the quality of search results.
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The search giant published these rating guidelines online in 2013 to provide webmasters with valuable information on Google's suggestions for evaluating web pages.
Before continuing, it is worth exploring each of the words that make up the EAT further.
Expertise
Expertise takes into account the creator of a content and assesses its credibility. For example, a blogger with no qualifications in physical training, sports, or fitness is unlikely to outperform an established sports expert with degrees in sports and exercise science. Therefore, experience determines whether the content creator is an expert in the domain or niche of it.
Authority
Authority is about your site's ability to demonstrate authority in your field. Indicative elements are usually relevant backlinks from other high authority sites.
For example, if your website specializes in CBD product retail and CBD forums or wellness blogs, start referencing your brand in your online content and linking to your website; This significantly increases your authority because search engines start to regard your site as trustworthy and recommended.
Integrity
Reliability is what it sounds like - is your site trustworthy? Most will say yes, but how do you show it? First of all, this means having a secure domain that protects your users' personal data.
Second, you also need to get a lot of positive reviews from customers. Too many negative reviews and the search engines will notice a red flag and see your site of poor quality. This will be reflected in your ranking on the SERP.
Why is EAT essential for my business?
Proving that your company has EAT can significantly affect your position in the SERP. This is because the site is recognized by major search engines as a trusted, recommended, and legitimate place to redirect traffic. The idea is to prevent search engines from finding suspicious websites through search results.
For example, if a fraudulent website, whether financial or health-related, ranks first in search results, the consequences could be dire for web users. As the example below shows, the first result of this health-related search is a high level of authority and expertise on the NHS.
In this case, EAT plays a vital role in the health and safety of online users and YMYL sites. However, EAT is equally essential in other sectors because the 'expert' websites can be from different subjects and industries.
Let us consider another example.
From the looks of it, the user is probably interested in buying a book on these sites. Therefore, booking websites in this scenario can use your position to make a sale or at least gain an advantage. Also, the best results in this example are well established sites around the world.
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