You may already be familiar with the concept of E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). This concept was introduced back in 2014 by Google in Search Quality Guidelines.
These guidelines are used in Google’s search quality evaluations in which several quality reviewers are hired for the task of manually reviewing a set of webpages and letting professionals at Google know about their feedback.
Google makes improvements in its algorithms based on the raters’ feedback.E-A-T is a major criterion based on which the quality of a website is assessed by these raters.
In the past year, E-A-T has become a major topic of discussion in the SEO circles because it is hugely related to how the organic traffic performance can be improved for good. The matter of fact is that working on the factors mentioned in E-A-T has turned out to be quite beneficial, especially after Google started making changes in its core algorithm from August 1, 2018.
Since E-A-T is too much talked about, there are some myths and misconceptions circulating about it. in this article, we are going to debunk some of the misconceptions.
1. E-A-T Is Not an Algorithm
Contrary to what many people perceive, E-A-T is not an algorithm. According to Gary Illyes, Google is basically a set of millions of tiny algorithms that work in collaboration to assign ranking scores to the websites and web pages. E-A-T is a concept in which the ranking signals controlled by those tiny algorithms are taken care of.
One thing that needs to be taken into consideration here is that E-A-T is not an algorithm. Google algorithms look for the signals which can be correlated with E-A-T.
2. There is no E-A-T score
Gary Illyes said further that there is no E-A-T score. Moreover, the quality raters who analyze E-A-T in their evaluations also don’t affect the ranking of any individual website.
3. E-A-T Is Not a Direct Ranking Factor
While E-A-T is widely treated as something which can impact the rankings of a website, it is not a ranking factor to be precise. Rather, it is a concept that tells what a website needs to focus on in order to improve the quality of a website among users. The ranking factor’s definition is a bit different here because ranking factors are basically the technical parameters which need to be worked upon to get search engines on our side.
4. E-A-T doesn’t need to be focused on heavily by every site
The level of E-A-T expected for a given site depends upon the topics the site talks about. The extent of the website to be YMYL is another thing to be taken into consideration.
For instance, E-A-T matters the most when the given site is made with an intention to provide medical information. On the other hand, a site that talks about hobbies doesn’t have to focus much on E-A-T.
5. Focusing on E-A-T is not an replacement for technical SEO auditing
While it may be a good idea to improve your site’s quality by working on E-A-T, it is not going to be a replacement of the factors that make SEO successful such as on-page SEO, high quality backlinks and other factors.
