90 Digital CEO Nick Garner talks about one of the core ideas in Google Quality Rater Guidelines which is E A T – Expertise / Authoritativeness / Trustworthiness in this edition of CalvinAyre.com’s SEO Tip of the Week.
Short intro to Trust Optimization.
Along with on site optimization and link acquisition, there seems to be a third element to ranking well on Google, it’s called Trust Optimization. Trust Optimization is based on the information we have got from anecdotal evidence on click through rates and rankings along with explicit guidelines from Google stating what they are looking for in a trusted website.
Check out the 1st post in this series so you are orientated on Trust Optimisation.
Foundation ideas for Trust Optimization.
One of the core ideas in Google Quality Rater Guidelines 2014 is E A T – Expertise / Authoritativeness / Trustworthiness
Google say:
“4.3 A High Level of Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness (E-A-T)
High quality pages and websites need enough expertise to be authoritative and trustworthy on their topic. Keep in mind that there are “expert” websites of all types, even gossip websites, fashion websites, humor websites, forum and Q&A pages, etc. In fact, some types of information are found almost exclusively on forums and discussions, where community of experts can provide valuable perspectives on specific topics.”
Unpacking this…
Quality is subjective. What you think is quality, others will think ‘meh’. But for Google, they just want websites their users want when using a specific search query.
What is trustworthy, expert and authoritative in one vertical, is obviously useless in another. As I’ve often said, with iGaming sites, it’s ok being an affiliate – the important part is being the most useful affiliate in the rankings.
The same principle applies to operators. If you’re a brand Google’s users want, you will get the engagement. If you’re a ‘nothing’ brand and your homepage is just like every other ‘nothing’ brand, you will fall over on engagement and trust.
If you have information users want, they will engage with you and this engagement will come out in higher click through rates and lower bounce rates.
It’s very easy to focus on doing stuff just to please Google. Of course you want more traffic, but it’s very easy to spend a lot of effort promoting and then just wasting your traffic with a badly structured website which has no trust or benefit to the user.
I always say to clients, start with doing something well, then check out well and finally going to promote yourselves.
EAT is a simple idea that makes sense for anyone who owns a website and cares about happy users.
And for that reason it is ground zero for Trust Optimization.
Nick Garner is founder of 90 Digital, the well-known and respected iGaming search marketing agency.
Nick is obsessed with SEO and whatever it takes to rank sustainably on Google.
