How to improve E-A-T in SEO – My proven tips and tricks

In my opinion E-A-T is a very important part of search engine optimization. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness and it is Google’s way to measure the quality and trustworthiness of a website content.

In my own experience improving E-A-T has probably had the biggest effect in improving Google search rankings.

In this article I will reveal all my knowledge and experiences in improving E-A-T. My experiences are mostly from affiliate websites, but these ideas can be used practically in any type of a website. Keep on reading to learn more!

1. What is E-A-T in search engine optimization?

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness and it is Google’s way to measure the quality and trustworthiness of a website content.

E-A-T was originally mentioned the first time by Google in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines -document. This document is a guideline for thousands of Google’s manual website reviewers (real people that is). These workers evaluate the quality of websites in many different ways and this data is used to guide the search algorithms of Google.

In general a website should have useful content that visitors can trust. Trusted and good quality content will acquire also links after time and that will affect the authoritativeness of a person or a website.

Of course it’s a no-brainer that good content ranks well. But in my opinion E-A-T gives a lot of tools how Google sees good content and how to improve the trustworthiness of a website.

Expertise, authoritativeness and trust in a website can be quite abstract subjects. In this article I try to make as simple as possible, real life examples on how I have improved E-A-T. So these tips and tricks are proven to work in my previous websites and I hope that you will find most of them useful in your own SEO game.

If this guide helps you to create better content that has a stronger E-A-T and ranks better in Google – great and that makes me happy! Please let me know in the comments below if this guide has been helpful.

Why to improve E-A-T in a bigger picture?

In a bigger picture the trustworthiness of websites is a really important thing. And I predict the significance of this will be even bigger in the upcoming years. I strongly believe that transparent, open and trustworthy websites will win the big game in 2022 and years after that.

If Google (and other web searches) somehow became untrusted, that would be catastrophic for Google and it’s search advertisement income. This would leave room for a new search engine with better and more trusted algorithms to take over the business.

Also in recent years the amount of fake news, misleading information or just slightly biased information has skyrocketed in my opinion. I don’t want to even touch the trust issues of crazy conspiracy websites, but for example even in regular review sites gaining the trust of the visitor plays a big role.

For example I have recently googled reviews of headphones, restaurants or construction companies. What kinds of things make you trust or distrust a product review, online store or a company? E-A-T plays quite significant part here in my opinion. Knowing the background of the company or people behind it makes the purchasing decision much easier.

In my opinion trust is the basis of practically all high quality websites. Therefore I think Google will do everything to understand better what kinds of websites are trusted, transparent and have a high level of expertise. In my opinion every hour and Euro invested in E-A-T will turn out very profitable in the long run.

Transparency will be also great for business I think. For example I personally trust web shops that tell their background story very openly and make real product reviews made by real employees or real confirmed customers. I will continue on this subject more closely in the Trustworthiness in E-A-T section.

Let’s go forward in this article. First I will focus on the individual parts of E-A-T: first Expertise, then Authoritativeness and lastly Trustworthiness.

After that I will tell my experiences about YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), which is closely related to E-A-T. But now, let’s start with Expertise.

2. Expertise in E-A-T

According to Ahrefs, expertise in E-A-T is defined on the content level. So useful, informative and up-to-date content is very likely to have high level of expertise in the eyes of Google.

Expert content in everyday subjects doesn’t necessarily need titles, degrees or years of experience from the author to rank well.

An exception is however YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) subjects that especially need a lot of attention to expertise and E-A-T in general. More on this later on in the YMYL chapter.

I understand expertise in websites this way: When you are reading an article, do you feel that the creator is an expert in that field or not?

So if the content is well explained, easy to read, answers questions you didn’t even think to ask, I think you will most likely get that feeling that you are reading content written by an expert.

In addition I think the content doesn’t necessarily to be overly complicated or overly extensive to be on a high level of expertise.

Instead I think an expert content is just on the right level of complicatedness that the reader can learn something new. Also if the search intent was only to find information A, maybe the visitor will also learn things B, C and D that he or she never knew even existed.

In my opinion this is the core of Expertise in E-A-T.

And of course like in SEO, there are always exceptions. For example science websites will probably need all the complicatedness for high expertise, but a beginners guide to photography will probably not.

What means Everyday Expertise in E-A-T?

Regular every day subjects are topics that don’t require titles or degrees to write about. These would include topics like food recipes, travel tips, restaurant recommendations, humour or for example how to take great pictures.

For instance if you are very competent in taking stunning pictures, you may have everyday expertise in photography. Even though you don’t have any degrees or have never done photograpy as a profession.

In this case you should tell the readers why you have everyday expertise in your field. Tell about your years of experience in photography and how you started your hobby. Maybe you could present your great images here and there in camera reviews or other articles.

Google has mentioned everyday expertise in Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines PDF starting in page 20 if you would like to read more.

The opposite of everyday subjects are YMYL subjects (Your Money or Your Life).

They would include topics that have a big effect on your health, financial matters or legal issues. These subjects need a degree or other proof that you are legitimate to give advice, unlike in everyday topics.

There are also some exceptions where you can combine everyday expertise in YMYL subjects. More on that subject also later in the YMYL chapter.

3. Authoritativeness in E-A-T

Authoritativeness (or authority) is the A in the E-A-T. Unlike expertise, authoritativeness is not formed just on the content level.

In my opinion authority comes always from the outside your website. For example I cannot personally decide that I would have authority in SEO no matter how great content I write.

If someday a lot of visitors find my SEO blog and like the content – Then my authoritativeness can start to improve if they start mentioning me and linking to my site on their SEO posts and sites.

Right now my authoritativeness in SEO might not be much as nobody knows me online, other than my former colleagues. We all have to start somewhere and maybe this website will be a good start stepping up the SEO authoritativeness ladders.

If we think about SEO authorities we could ask a thousand regular SEOs to name 20 the most influencal and skilled SEOs in the world. Or we could search for 20 SEOs on Twitter with the most followers. Those lists would have a lot of authoritativeness in the field of search engine optimization.

In my opinion the most part of authoritativeness comes from the other professionals and authorities on that particular field. If John Mueller would retweet my tweet, that would be the life goal for all SEOs right? (Then I can probably stop SEO as I have achieved everything in life.)

So is there any change how to improve Authoritativeness on the website level?

Even though authoritativeness is mostly outside ones direct reach, I think there are some things that can boost authority on the website level.

If you have references or testimonials from your clients or colleagues, they are a good thing to mention. For example I was looking a house painting company and real testimonials played a big role in the search. I ended up finding a superb painting company (luckily) so at least this time the testimonials boosted the authoritativeness in my ranks.

Also Google or Trustpilot reviews are good to be shown well on the website if that fits the website well. And of course in this case it’s hard to define if reviews boost authority or trust more, but in this case it doesn’t matter. Every detail that boosts E-A-T as a whole is a good thing.

Indirectly you can boost your authoritativeness of course by creating super awesome content that will induce mentions and links in authoritative sources. This takes time but is very solid approach to get authoritativeness in your niche.

And as many of you know, gaining authority by creating super awesome content is really hard. Like in many things and life in general, hard work just has to give a great reward at some point I believe. Sooner or later!

How Google measures authoritativeness?

The most part of authoritativeness in E-A-T comes through links and mentions in authoritative websites.

For example I have been following a lot of foreign policy from newspapers and twitter recently. If I would be mentioned in The New York Times, BBC News or Deutsche Welle regularly when talking about if Finland and Sweden will join Nato or not, I would be considered an authority in that field. For example former Finnish minister Alexander Stubb has got a lot of authoritativeness in this particular field as he is all the time interviewed in media all around the world.

Are mentions enough in authoritative sites or is a backlink needed to boost authority? Gary Illyes from Google has stated to Marie Haynes (one of my favourite SEO) that also mentions are enough to boost authority.

In my opinion if you can have also a backlink from an authoritative website, that is always better than just a mention. But there is no need to panic if the editor won’t grant you the link. Mentions are still mentions and they are always nice.

Do links and mentions in Wikipedia articles improve authoritativeness?

I think the SEO benefits of mentions and links from a Wikipedia page depends a lot on the type of the article.

If you just manage to slip in a link or a mention inside some insignificant Wikipedia page without any Wikipedia auditor noticing, I think that will probably not help much on your authoritativeness.

But on the other hand if you are able get your own personal Wikipedia page for you or your company, that can be good for authoritativeness.

The basis of my thoughts is that a personal Wikipedia page is quite hard to get through the auditor check, at least in Finnish Wikipedia. Therefore if you have a personal Wikipedia page, at least the Wikipedia auditors think you are a some kind of an authority. This could mean just a little boost in authoritativeness for Google.

Here’s one example of a personal Wikipedia page that shows some authority in the medical field. Sakari Orava is quite famous sport surgeon in Finland and he has operated football players from Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Chelsea FC and Juventus FC. So if I would have to find one of the best sport surgeons, this Wikipedia article could raise the perceived authority of Dr. Orava in the sports medicine field.

In conclusion I think that the harder the Wikipedia link or mention is to get, the better the benefits are to authoritativeness in E-A-T.

Please note that I don’t have any data to back this up, it’s just my gut feeling after years of SEO. I have tried to get the maximum amount of mentions and backlinks to my own websites, but from Wikipedia I haven’t got much boost in my feeling.

Authoritativeness is category or niche specific

All backlinks and mentions are also category or niche specific. So also authoritativeness is category or niche specific.

So if you are the manager of a black metal band Blörgoroth, getting a link to a list of black metal bands in Wikipedia could be a good idea. An even better idea would be to get an interview with links to a real authoritary media like an extreme metal magazine Decibel.

But an interview of your black metal band to Fine Gardening magazine would be no use. Of course you could get a new fan from that, but authoritativeness of your black metallity shouldn’t increase from gardening in the ranks of Google.

So don’t waste your time on going all over the internet on mentions and links. For instance I personally would concentrate on SEO magazines and blogs if I would like to improve my E-A-T authoritativeness in the field of search engine optimization.

On the other hand getting some extra links from websites outside your niche will not probably do any harm to Google rankings. But that is most likely just waste of time that could be spent elsewhere.

In general SEO is a lot about prioritizing time and effort. You just don’t have the time to do everything, so prioritizing plays a big role in my opinion. Maybe that is also a skill to learn in SEO!

Do forum posts, blog commenting and guest posting boost authoritativeness?

Posting to different discussion forums or Reddit can be a useful strategy to spread the awareness of your website or products. Posting a quality post for instance to /r/SEO/ in Reddit could bring a lot of visitors to my SEO blog (maybe I will try that personally some day).

In my experience all discussion forum or Reddit backlinks give hardly any boost to Google rankings. My reasoning is that anybody can post in discussion forums, therefore the links shouldn’t matter so much when Google thinks of authoritativeness. At least I think that way.

Posting to comment section of numerous blogs just to get a backlink was quite common SEO strategy some years ago. I use Ahrefs regularly to spy on other websites’ backlinks and in 2022 I still see blog posting as a some kind of an SEO strategy.

I think this used to work years ago as comment posting was quite popular. But I think Google knows it now and probably doesn’t value comment backlinks at all. At least that is my gut feeling.

I wouldn’t waste my time anymore on blog commenting just for getting probably worthless backlink (and yes I have done it also in my optimization history).

About guest posting on blogs I have no personal experience. In my hunch really selective guest posting to high quality blogs could bring some authoritativeness. For example if I would be granted to write an article to Ahrefs Blog, that would probably boost my authoritativeness in the field of SEO.

In general spam guest posting to tens or over hundred of different low quality blogs or websites is just a waste of time I think. I would only guest post if a really valuable blogging chance comes in front of you.

How Google defines an authoritative website?

As Semrush writes that Google has specially selected very high-quality seed pages that have the most authority in their niche. Then the seed pages link to other pages and the authority flows on.

So if you get a mention or a link to The New York Times or The Washington Post for example, that would be probably very high on the seed page list in Google’s own secret rankings.

And as this authority flows on, getting a link to a web page that is linked from these newspapers would also be very useful.

In general I think Google has tons and tons of other ways and algorithms to understand that for example Ahrefs blog and Semrush blog are have loads of authority in the niche of SEO. Maybe I will inspect this PageRank (or whatever the name of the algorithm is these days) more later on.

But this has been enough wisdom for me to dealing with E-A-T and gaining authoritativeness. Usually spotting an authoritative website is quite easy and I believe that Google will have no problems identifying them.

So just carry on and try to get as many mentions and backlinks possible from authoritative websites in your niche and you are good to go!

How to get mentions and links – maybe that could be the subject of my new article some day.

Now, let’s continue to trustworthiness in E-A-T!

4. Trustworthiness in E-A-T

The first thought of trustworthiness is simple: can you trust the website or not? This feeling is also subjective. Some people might trust one website where other people see it somewhat untrusted.

Things get more complicated if we start thinking where the feeling of trustworthiness really comes from?

What if the website seems to have tons of expertise and seems to have a lot of authority – but can you trust it? In my opinion trustworthiness may be the most neglected part of E-A-T and it is as much important as the other parts of E-A-T.

Let’s dig in deeper how I have improved trustworthiness in my websites.

Transparency and the purpose of the website

I think transparency is the most important thing in creating trustworthiness in websites. Transparent websites are very open why they exist in the first place and what is the story behind the website.

If you make money from the website, where the money comes from? Of course in online stores this is quite apparent, but in affiliate websites or websites like this it is probably not so clear.

If we think about the transparency and trust of affiliate websites, mention how you get income and on what basis? Does your reviews affect your personal rewards? Can the companies buy better positions in the comparison lists? This is quite complicated topic and maybe I will get back to the SEO of affiliate marketing in a separate post.

In general the money flow is a very important thing to explain clearly. How the free content is funded? How you make money out of your website? This will create a lot of trustworthiness in my opinion as transparency creates trust.

Don’t fool anyone by creating too positive review of a product for example. As Abraham Lincoln apparently said (or apparently never said that) that “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”.

I really believe that honesty and transparency is the king in SEO. And that will be even more valued in the future of SEO I think. As my belief is that this is the direction search engine algorithms will go in the future.

I am not alone with my views as also this Ahrefs article on E-A-T states that “Trust is about the legitimacy, transparency, and accuracy of the website and its content.”

Mention the author’s name

If I go to a website and see the author’s name, that’s always a good sign that increases trustworthiness. Also if the name will have a link that goes to a further introduction or an about page of the author – even better.

In my experience it is very common for websites and online stores to have anonymous articles just written by somebody. Of course it may be intentional if the company does not want to identify to a certain employee, but rather try to identify just as the company’s brand.

In general I think it is still always best to have the author’s names shown clearly. As the feeling of trustworthiness is highly subjective and at least for me a real author boosts trust a lot.

Mentioning the author names could also bring other benefits outside search engine optimization.

I think it is possible that the employees could feel more connected and have more ownership to let’s say an online store of yours if they can write articles and product reviews with their own names.

How Google can measure the trustworthiness of an author?

I don’t have 100% data to back this up, but my strong belief is that Google will give better rankings to content written by a real person (not anonymous or a fake name).

I think Google has ways to measure if an author is a real person. For example my name (Jaakko Santaniemi) has a lot of internet history and I have been in many social media services with my own name for years.

Also if somebody clicks my name in this article, the link takes the visitor to my about page. If the visitor stays long time in the about page, it is a good thing and can be an indicator for a real person instead of a fake one.

If the visitor then comes back to the article and even finishes reading it, that is a very good sign for trustworthiness of the author and the website.

So if I were an algorithm designer, I would do it this way. But these are just my thoughts and guesses how Google probably works in this matter.

Also Google can’t probably measure subjective thoughts directly from our brains (at least not yet). But Google can measure statistics like time on site, bounce rate, number of pages visited and if the visitor goes to about page and comes back and so on.

In my opinion good level of trustworthiness should show on the basic website statistics – so there is no need for Google to invent a remote thought reading machine at least for now.

Tell about your history and background

People love stories about how you got into that point of your life. How your online store was founded? What lead you to become a consultant? Who you really are and what do you do outside your work life?

I personally try to open my background in my about page (which I have linked like 10 times already in this article). This about page is the version 1 of my short life story. I try to edit the story to a longer and more interesting form slow and steady after time.

At least for me knowing the author or the history of the online store will help a lot creating trustworthiness. It is hard to create trust to some anonymous person or anonymous store based in some unknown location run by unknown people.

So in conclusion: Tell more about your story and history. This creates points where the trustworthiness can start to grow.

Mention your address, phone number, email and other contact details

It is good to mention all contact details clearly on one page. This may be one (really tiny) search engine factor and also visitors will probably appreciate clear information that is found easily.

For a brick and mortar store the visiting address and opening hours are naturally a must.

In my opinion for online stores it is good to mention where the products are sent. I personally have ordered a lot of baby products online recently (as our baby girl was born in January 2022). When I go to a baby product online store, I want to see where the products are sent and if the store has also a brick and mortar store somewhere. I want to support smaller shops that also have a real store somewhere. I usually have skipped all online stores that just work somewhere in Europe with no address or any details on the background.

Also I have googled a lot of bicycles and e-bikes lately. There are a lot of manufacturers who advertise on social media, but on their website doesn’t have any information about the people behind the brand, where the company is located or where the bicycles are made. This doens’t create any trustworthiness in my books and those bicycle shops go to trash quite quickly.

So in conclusion all contact details seems to be forgotten in many websites at least in my experience. This is a thing that would be so easy to fix.

In my website I mention the city I come from and my contact information: my email address and the links to social media. I decided not to mention my full address and phone number as I want to keep them to myself.

The need of contact details depends a lot on the website type as Google Search Evaluator Guidelines states on page 17. Based on this I think it’s no problem that I am not mentioning my phone number and exact address.

Be available

One small thing to boost trustworthiness is to always answer to website comments and answer to possible questions related to web shop products for instance. Also customer chat could help in this.

I will also answer to all comments and questions on my website. Try it!

What if I am afraid of giving too much information about my business model?

I think this is a valid question or doubt when thinking about transparency of a business or a website.

If you are 100% transparent about everything you have to reveal your business model, where the products come from, how it all started, how the money flows and so on.

In my case I will reveal everything I know about SEO and affiliate marketing on this site. A good question would be that how I could sell more SEO services to anybody if I reveal everything I know?

I think this is no problem. Especially search engine optimization is tacit knowledge in my opinion. Tacit knowledge means the knowledge you have gained through living experience and it is subjective, informal and difficult to share as Jubina Prabhakaran writes here.

It would be impossible for me to write all different options and situations in SEO and what I would probably do in those scenarios as there are so many variables. And in some cases I don’t know what is the best way to do some thing, but it would need to be tested and the results analyzed.

So I think my knowledge is anyhow so wide that somebody could pay me to do a very difficult SEO task for example. Or this website is just a proof of my knowledge and someone could pay me to do a job instead of learning SEO him/herself.

5. What means YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)?

Topics that are considered YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) can have a huge impact on the wellbeing of a single individual or the society in general. These topics would include financial, medical or safety related topics. For the society YMYL topics would include things that could affect negatively on groups of people, issues of public interest or trust in the society or institutions.

As YMYL subjects can make a lot or harm to a single individual or society, they have a very high page quality rating standards on Google rankings. So in a nutshell YMYL content needs to be accurate and understandable. Also E-A-T plays a bigger role in YMYL topics compared to non-YMYL topics.

It’s good to notice that YMYL is not strictly YMYL or non-YMYL, but rather it is a spectrum that can have also values in between.

For example article about running technique could have some YMYL elements. Wrong running tips could affect your health negatively, but it cannot ruin one’s life completely. The possible YMYL elements would anyhow need some attention to the authors E-A-T (mostly expertise) and possible scientific background of the article.

Google has mentioned the term YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) starting from page 10 in Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. So this concept is confirmed by Google to really exist in the search algorithms.

Some examples how to step-up the E-A-T game in YMYL topics

The YMYL topics have high demands on content quality. So what can be done improve the quality and E-A-T of YMYL topics? Here are some examples:

• In financial topics or guides mention if you have any financial education or background in the business. If you don’t have any, but like to write a lot about financial subjects, consider asking a fact check from a person with credibility or education in financial subjects. Mention the fact check clearly in the start of the article with links to the persons background helping you.
• In medical topics the demand for legitimate education is very high. You should preferrably be a doctor, nurse or have some kind of a medical education to write articles related to personal health and medication. In this subject also, using fact checks by a medical professional is one option if you personally don’t have any medical education.
• In YMYL topics explain clearly what are the risks and possible side effects if things go wrong. For instance in stock markets you could lose all the invested money or in medical issues explain the risks and possible bad scenario cases as good as you can.
• Be honest and write facts. Make it clear which part of the article is facts and which part your own speculation.
• If you use statistics, explain what they mean if the concepts are hard to grasp and misunderstanding the stats could be a big harm for the individual.
• If things go wrong, write about the ways how to get help. When to call emergency number, where to ask help for mental health issues or where to ask help for a gambling problem for instance. Of course morally this is the right thing to do, but could also help boost the E-A-T in YMYL subjects.
• If you don’t have any education or background in the field, but you still have a lot of knowledge on the subject, explain your everyday expertise the best way you can. Why you know a lot of the subject? What is your history and how you have learned the things you know? This is the best alternative to somewhat replace the lack of proper education.

Is it possible to have everyday expertise in YMYL topics?

There are some exceptions where you can have everyday expertise in YMYL topics like medical, financial or legal topics. In this case the everyday expertise is more leaned towards personal experiences in different subjects.

6. Final thoughts

Phew! There was a lot of work writing this article! Thank you so much if you made it this far.

Issues related to E-A-T are quite complicated and have tons of variables and things to consider. So writing about this kind of a subject that is somewhat exact, but somewhat not exact at all is really difficult.

This is the first version of my E-A-T article, so let us call this version 1.0! When I gain more knowledge I will definitely edit and expand this article the best I can.

How did I succeed? Did you learn anything new? Or if you have any comments – don’t hesitate to write below and I will 100% answer to all comments. Or feel free to tweet me if you like.