Improving Expertise, Authority & Trust

In this conclusion to our SEO Series, we’ll go over what Google claims is one of its top three considerations when it comes to page quality: expertise, authority, and trust (E-A-T). E-A-T is among one of the growing metrics Google has been using in its algorithms to judge landing page quality score and fight misinformation, so let’s take a closer look at what it is and how your nonprofit can improve it.

Defining E-A-T

Expertise – The content on your page should show that your nonprofit is an expert in the field you are writing about. This is primarily for organizations that deal in medical, financial, or legal situations to ensure the information given to users is valuable and honest.

Authoritativeness – Your organization’s content should go beyond providing information on the subject matter, it needs to convey that you are the authority on the information you’re providing. The best ways to portray your expertise are to provide clear, focused information, include compelling statistics, quote industry experts, use specific examples and infuse your writing with assertive, confident language.

Trustworthiness – Users should have confidence in your website, trusting both the content to be reliable as well as the privacy to be secure. This is particularly true for eCommerce sites or anywhere money is exchanged, such as with online donations. One way to make users feel safe is to implement an SSL certificate.

The sites primarily affected by E-A-T are what Google refers to as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) sites. These are described in the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines as “pages or topics [that] could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.” This could be legal, political, health, eCommerce, finance, and more.

E-A-T is just one aspect of SEO to consider when managing content on your website, and it takes time to improve your site’s overall quality score and rankings. There is no direct score or algorithm tied into E-A-T, it is simply something Google takes into consideration when ranking your website’s content. In order to maintain positive SEO over time and improve your site’s content, make sure you stay up to date with structuring your content in ways that search engine crawlers will find beneficial, as well as using variations of keywords when writing your content to draw in more traffic with a broader searchers’ intent.

If your organization needs assistance with its content, check out our other SEO tips, or contact us to speak with a team member about how Cause Inspired can help.