What is E-A-T?

Unless you're brand new to SEO, you've probably heard of E-A-T belongs. Although this concept has only been around since 2014, it has become one of the most important elements of the Search engine optimization developed.

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. The concept comes from Google's search quality rating guidelines and became very well known after the infamous Medic update in August 2018. E-A-T is a factor Google uses to evaluate the overall quality of a website.

As you can guess, the quality of a page plays an important role in where a page will rank in Google's organic search results. In its guidelines, Google states that the most important factors in determining the overall quality of a web page are as follows:

• The purpose of the page (is there a useful purpose?)
• Competence, authority and trustworthiness
• Quality and volume of the main content
• Information about the website or the creator of the main content
• Reputation of the website or the author of the main content

So the more a page demonstrates competence, authority and trustworthiness, the higher it should rank.

How does Google determine E-A-T?

Now that we have answered the question "What is E-A-T?" have answered, let's talk about how Google is going to E-A-T of a page is determined. Google's search quality assessment guidelines list three main components:

• The competence of the author of the main content.
• The credibility of the author of the main content, the main content itself and the website.
• The trustworthiness of the author of the main content, the main content itself and the website.

Ensuring information is accurate, truthful and useful

With E-A-T Google tries to ensure that it provides searchers with accurate, truthful and useful information. Anyone can create a website and publish whatever they want on it. You don't have to be a doctor to start a website with medical information or have a degree in finance to write about investments.

In some ways, of course, that's a good thing. But it also presents a problem for Google. People make important decisions based on what they learn from search results. So Google wants to make sure those decisions are based on the most trustworthy information possible.

Therefore, Google considers the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness of the individual page content creators, the content itself, and the website as a whole. In Google's eyes, a thorough medical article written by an experienced doctor on a website is much more valuable than a random blog post giving untested medical advice.