What does EAT mean in SEO?

eat in seo
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Last updated on September 17th, 2024 at 12:05 pm

You may be hearing and seeing the word ‘eat’ travelling around the net lately, but this is not the article for that Gen-Z slang. This is about SEO. Yes, that’s right, this is an SEO term! There are a few terms and jargon in SEO that not many people understand. E-A-T is one of those terms. Common questions such as “How does EAT impact SEO?”, “What does E-A-T stand for?” and “What does E-A-T mean in SEO?” are all questions people want answers to.

No, E-A-T has nothing to do with munching food. I know right, is it lunch break yet? All this talk about EAT can make the mind wander and the tummy rumble.

Back to the topic, what is EAT in SEO? Let’s dive in…

What does E-A-T stand for?

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are all qualities that Google considers when showing a page in the search results. The Google algorithm changes frequently, but E-A-T remains a very important guideline.

Now that you’ve learned what E-A-T stands for, you may be wondering how you SEO this. If you’ve been doing your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) research, you’d have learned by now that content is king. This is a phrase you’ll come across a lot! It’s crucial to have good quality content on your website. To emphasize this, Google rolled out an update in August 2024 focused on content. The August 2024 Core Update was designed to improve the quality of content found in search results.

E-A-T in SEOIs E-A-T an SEO ranking factor?

Technically, no, it’s not an official ranking factor. However, it does impact your content and your content impacts your ranking. So in a backwards, reverse and loopy kind of way, it is a ranking factor. If that sounds confusing, then just know that it means it’s important! 😉

How do you incorporate this into your SEO strategy? 

Well, the first thing you should ask yourself is, how do I show expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness in my content?

E-A-T is all about your content and how Google evaluates it. When your website is crawled by a search engine such as Google, it determines if your page content is high quality. Let’s break this down a bit further…

Expertise is the knowledge of the creator of the content. It‘s how well the writer knows their stuff. Have you ever read something and noticed that it sounds like the writer is even more confused than you are? That’s NOT what you want for your content. The writer of your content should sound like an expert in the matter and help the reader to understand it. And better yet, help to fix a problem or provide a solution. 

Authoritativeness is to ensure your content is original, unique and factual. Never copy and paste facts or references from another website into your content. Part of showing your authoritativeness to search engines is having plagiarism-free original content. Using accurate facts and backlinks helps the visitor to see your reliability and trustworthiness. This brings us to the T in E-A-T…

Trustworthiness means the content you share can be trusted. State facts and back them up with legit links and references. You want visitors to know that you are trustworthy and knowledgeable. These 3 guidelines help Google to recognize your content is high-quality and helpful which puts you above the rest.

Conclusion

E-A-T are guidelines offered by Google to help you create high-quality, helpful content. Remember, there’s a reason you keep seeing the phrase “Content is King!” and if you’re not quite sure what that means or how it impacts SEO, now you know.

Your content should be factual and valuable. Use Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness as guidelines for creating content that ranks well. Having good content on your website helps Google to see your site as authoritative. 

You can also update older content to keep it fresh and accurate. In fact, we really encourage this! You might be very surprised to check your older blogs and see how many backlinks are going to 404 error pages. Updating old content is a good opportunity to fix broken links, and update statistics.

📧 Get in Touch With Us for an SEO Audit and let’s get you in Google!

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