Google E-E-A-T: How Digital PR Helps Build SEO

Google’s E-E-A-T. It’s a key part of how Google reviews and rates online content, and it’s recently had an update. In this blog, we’ll cover what E-E-A-T is, how it helps SEO and why Digital PR is perfectly placed to demonstrate E-E-A-T for your brand.

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. These are qualities your online content should demonstrate if you want to rank well. But what do they actually mean?

Let’s say you’re an accounting firm. And on your website, you advise people on how best to manage and report on their finances. Now if you’re a real, trustworthy accounting business with real accountancy expertise – your advice will be accurate and useful. Happy days. But if you’re not a real accounting firm, and you’re trying to drive website traffic for more nefarious reasons – your advice will likely be less accurate, less useful, and potentially even malicious.

So how can Google sort out which websites should be ranked well?

E-E-A-T. Websites that demonstrate experience, expertise, authority and trust are more likely to be legitimate and accurate. So they’ve got a great chance at ranking well.

You should demonstrate:

• Experience: first-hand experience of the topic
• Expertise: knowledge or skill with the topic
• Authoritativeness: a reputation as an authority on the topic
• Trustworthiness: you’re legitimate, transparent and accurate

These factors apply to three things: your website, your content and the creator of the content. This means that Google looks at the E-E-A-T of your website as a whole, the content you share on the website, and all the authors of the content.

Top Tip: How to showcase authors on your website

• Ensure all blogs & articles have a clear author
• Write short bios for each author
• Include links to authors’ social media profiles
• Provide the ability to group your content by author

While all of the E-E-A-T factors are important for SEO, Trustworthiness has recently been confirmed as the most crucial component. If your website isn’t trustworthy, it doesn’t matter how much experience, expertise or authority you can demonstrate – you won’t rank well! In Google’s own words:

“Trust is the most important member of the E-E-A-T family because untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T no matter how Experienced, Expert, or Authoritative they may seem. For example, a financial scam is untrustworthy, even if the content creator is a highly experienced and expert scammer who is considered the go-to on running scams!”

E-E-A-T is vital for SEO. It’s one of the ways you can demonstrate the value and quality of your content to Google. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not a direct ranking factor, but it is very important for building your ranking. Here’s what Google’s Danny Sullivan had to say on it:

Basically, having good E-E-A-T is great for your SEO! And while there are many ways to improve your E-E-A-T, one of the most powerful and effective tools around is Digital PR…

Digital PR is all about growing your brand’s digital footprint through PR tactics and SEO strategy. Digital PR helps you secure coverage from across websites, social media and other online channels, which makes it perfectly placed to build E-E-A-T.

Experience

The newest addition to Google’s E-E-A-T, this E is about demonstrating experience in the topic matter. Using Digital PR, you can build up a catalogue of onsite and offsite content that showcases your content creators’ first-hand experience in the sector. From sharing case studies and award wins in industry media titles to linking authors’ social media accounts to your content, Digital PR can help you demonstrate your industry experience to Google.

Expertise

Interviews, guest posts, thought leadership articles and more – Digital PR can also highlight your authors’ expertise through key online channels. Whether it’s an interview in a trade magazine or a guest blog for one of your suppliers, you can establish the knowledge and skill of your authors online. Then, when Google’s crawling through your site and finds content written by your authors, it’ll attribute all of this expertise to them – improving the E-E-A-T of your site.

Authoritativeness

Brand mentions and backlinks from high authority websites are gold dust for SEO. By featuring your brand in respected media titles and securing backlinks to your website, Digital PR can be an extremely effective tool for building your authority.

Let’s use The Guardian as an example. As you’d expect, it’s a very high authority website with a Semrush authority score of 100. So, imagine your brand secures some coverage in The Guardian that includes a backlink to your website. Google will see your brand has had a stamp of approval from such a high authority domain and will reward you – boosting your E-E-A-T and very likely improving your SEO.

Trustworthiness

The most important factor in Google’s E-E-A-T, trust is something all websites need to demonstrate – and Digital PR can help. Earning coverage and backlinks from established, trustworthy 3rd party publications is a clear signpost to Google that your website is trustworthy. Earned media is more valuable to SEO in building up trust than paid media, as it’s secured through merit. Journalists typically act as gatekeepers for their publication, and will only mention a brand or business if it adds value to a story or their readers.

What’s more, while earning a piece of coverage can be a challenge – securing a backlink can be even more difficult. So, if you’re able to earn coverage and backlinks in trustworthy publications, Google will view your business and your website as more trustworthy too.

So in summary, Digital PR is an extremely effective tool for developing your E-E-A-T. When properly integrated into your comms and marketing strategy, it can demonstrate the quality and value of your content to Google. And it’s only going to get more important with the introduction of Google SGE. If you’re after some actionable tips for improving your site’s E-E-A-T, we’ve put together a checklist that might be of interest.

To find out how Digital PR can add value to your SEO strategy, get in touch with us today.