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Every few weeks google keeps updating its algorithm and major changes will happen in search engine rankings. But this time they updated a Google E-A-T algorithm; which is a core algorithm update to improve relevancy and rank website higher on the search results.

On August 1st, 2018 the google has finally confirmed the update. The main purpose of the core update is to improve relevancy and higher content targeting the specific keyword. So creating more content with relevancy has the highest potential to gain more organic traffic.

The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines that introduced a word called E-A-T ( means Expertise, Authoritativeness, trustworthiness), it targets low-quality content site by focusing on the keyword which is not relevant to the webpage. Focus more on high-quality content with the relevant keyword to improve the Google E-A-T score.

Many seo webmasters noticed major fluctuations in rankings, later google announced major core update in the algorithm in the tweet. Know about all the latest updates and incorporate it to your website by understanding E-A-T and YMYL (Your Money or Your Life).

What is Google EAT?

Google E-A-T means Expertise, Authoritative, and trustworthiness. It has 3 factors in which an algorithm used to measure the website score for brand and authority site. The overall idea is to make a better user experience for the visitor and show relevant sites on the search engine results page.

By applying these quality rater guidelines called E-A-T into our website will have a significant positive impact on rankings. So the website with low E-A-T quality will be left with low visitors and show a major drop in the rankings, the quality rater guidelines state that any website or a webpage that impacts future happiness, health of the site, financial and safety of the users will be hard hit by the future updates.

Within the few days after the update; many website owners lost more than 30% - 50% of the visitors due to the new core algorithm update. The mainly affected niche sites were health, wellness, fitness, medical sphere and nutrition which is completely on ‘medic’ related sites.

Not believing still, then here is the fact, It has even pulled some big niche websites like LiveStrong that were stayed for a long time in search engine ranking. Some people saw major changes in e-commerce and business site's organic traffic as well.

Even though you are publishing high-quality content, If you still see and hit by a google core algorithm update “Google Quality rater Guidelines and E-A-T”, so here is the list of E-A-T guidelines you need to know. Let’s pay closer attention to what google has told about the update and how you can improve in terms of website quality.

How to Improve Google EAT Score?

Add Author Names and Biographies for Content Editors

First, the algorithm may look into the user perspective and check for a biography of the content provider. So producing content means all are not quality, it has to look at the website history, number of contents, authors, and much other sensitive information to be proved as well as authority sites. If the sites are lacking with these critical points and do not provide any value to user will be severely affected in website rankings.

Those YMYL sites like healthcare, medical, fitness, and wellness which may contain some very sensitive information that would affect user's behavior and result in severe health problems. So Google quality rater guidelines give a complete documentation draft on how the sites have to build trustworthy and useful information.

Guidelines to improve it

• Suppose if you are running a product or service related websites, you should provide contact information, customer care number, company email address, disclaimer information, and address on the bottom of the footer.
• Add author name at the end of the content with little more details about the history and professional background of the author.
• Make sure all the blog posts have author names to prove the trustworthiness of the page and the whole website. This will help Google understand the quality of the content and increases trust signals on each and every page.

Improve Low EAT Content

Did you know Google Low E-A-T score does not mean for individual blog posts, but it is calculated on an average of all pages in the site. Based on the niche topic, create high-quality content with necessary images before clicking the publish button.

If your blog post has a low E-A-T score consider removing the blogpost or update the content to make it high quality. Because in the long run; it will help you maintain an average Google E-A-T score on all the pages to maintain sustainable traffic.

Guidelines to Improve it

• Either remove or update the content to improve the Average Google E-A-T score on the complete website.
• This will not only benefit google E-A-T score and also helps in recovering the Google panda update. Make sure the content is well-drafted by the writers according to the niche topic, keywords, proper subheadings based on the guidelines.
• Add some personal thoughts and concepts to the content, so make sure it does not affect the user experience. So personal related concepts and unique problem solving will have a positive impact on readers as well as growth in organic traffic.

Work on Branding

For any organization or a small business reputation of the company is very important. The guidelines clearly state that reputation is one of the key factors for the sustainability of the online business.

If the reputation is lacking on the page, it should be well monitored, and reviewed by the content creators that match the user’s perspective. You can allow raters to look at the information created by third parties rather than only content creators.

If the information is incorrect or misrepresented, it would severely impact site reputation and cause a low E-A-T score. Practically it takes time to know whether the content provided to the users is genuine or fake. Always make sure the content provides value to the users as well to the community, it will have a negative effect your business has a low reputation and gaining more reputation will likely outperform the business.

Guidelines to improve it,

Work on promoting the site on the social media page, join groups, share the post, connect with influencers, do commenting and other activities to improve your website or personal branding.

• Tell your personal or business success story to your audience.and stay connected.
• Give them guidance on how to achieve it and bring visitors back to your site. Answer the questions if necessary on the particular topic, this creates personal or business branding in your niche industry. Be a master, trustworthy and consistent on the niche topic always to maintain branding.
• Loot at the press coverage of how the website gets featured and how they play in the market. Focus on building that kind of website that is recognizable by everyone.
• Monitor the testimonials you have got, know how they feel about the site and get feedback to improve your site. So all this helps you create great branding and show a major impact on organic search traffic.

Fix Technical Security by Upgrading to ‘Https’

If your site is not upgraded to ‘https’ then you may be losing organic traffic. Because Google considers website security is an important factor to improve the E-A-T score.

Many SEO experts tell about content quality, backlinks, the reputation of site, trustworthiness, and finally on security. So upgrade your website from ‘http’ to ‘https’ due to one of its key factors in core algorithm update to improve Low E-A-T score.

In browsers like firefox and chrome either you will security symbol or ‘Not Secure’ message of any particular website who are not switched to ‘https’. This shows the signal of how google is changing the website owner perspective and make them switch to the https version.

If your site hit by an algorithm update, then security may be the key reason. Just visit any hosting service and purchase an SSL certificate. Not only the online industry relies on security, but even the industry also does so.

Work on Quality backlinks

There are many ways to build backlinks, but getting high-quality backlinks is the priority. If you want lots of high-quality E-A-T backlinks then you need to follow these simple steps.

• We know in SEO that “content is King” which we always talk about. Do more research on the niche topic, add more opinions, gather statistics from different sources to make content more authentic. These kinds of information can be easily found on the top authority sites, so include all relevant posts in your “roundup post”. By doing these people will find genuine information and may link back to your site.
• Write high-quality content with relevant sub-topics, add images, internal links and videos to make readers more attractive by serving the right information. To produce more and more high-quality content that is truly valuable to the users.
• While working on niche topics; focus on highly discussed topics in the industry, controversial topics, upcoming events. Where you can easily share your thoughts and get backlinks automatically when people find useful to share.
• Work on the forums sites, social bookmarking, and guest post where you can find useful links to your site. These quality backlinks have huge link juice to your website and improve Google E-A-T score to maintain sustainable higher page rankings.

Work on Expertise

For the author of the website, he/she should be good at the subject. So if an author writing articles for health, wellness, medical-related or any other sensitive information must be well known how to write articles for these niche site. By adding author biography and professional background at the end of the article will show trust to the audience. Google recognizes the trust factor and improves the E-A-T score.

For an organization site sustainability and branding are very important. If an organization has a good R&D facility, products or services, better infrastructure and provide value to society can be easily recognizable by the people. This can reach greater heights and have chances to win industry awards from the government and the non-profit organization. So the organization becomes more expertise in developing those products or services.

By developing great products or services with valuable information to the online audience is more important. So when people search online for an organization website or its products/service it should show properly and deliver the right information.

Key points to know

• Create great content for the audience on what they are looking for and what they need. If it is related to the eCommerce industry, then find suitable keywords using keyword research tools.
• Add author information on each and every blog post.
• Show all recognizable awards, certification, events conducted, donations made to a non-profit organization and any other things that the company has won.

This will help to improve your company website E-A-T score and any new update in the core algorithm will not be much affected if the company website has a higher E-A-T score.

Work on Improving Authority

For a website to become popular or to be a competitive strong authority is very important. You need to be consistent writing a good quality article that provides value to the users, this drives more trust to google which website to rank and which website not to rank. In the case of forum sites, continuous discussion on new topics every day will drive traffic and increase site credibility as well as authority.

Tips to Improve Authority,

• Add author name on each article page to build the authority of the content.
• Keep writing long-form articles consistently to build more trust to the user as well as google.
• Make sure the Main Content(MC) of the page should be relevant to site topics rather than just adding irrelevant content.
• Do more research on getting good quality backlinks. Know your competitors and find backlinks where they are getting from. So more backlinks to your website, the higher the website rankings.
• Monitor reviews on different channels which would hamper site credibility and decrease people's engagement to the site; which would have a severe impact on-site authority.

Work on Improving Trustworthiness

You may be very strong in producing content or building a professional blogging site. The final thing that Google E-A-T guidelines want from you is trustworthiness including quality information on-site, trusted backlinks, security, and author of the site.

So Google E-A-T guidelines look at all the factors where we can trust the website or not. It looks consistent with the website and how well it is performing over the competitors.

The search engine algorithm is so strong and difficult to understand, the best way to stand in the online market is to know what algorithm needs and match possible search query that users are looking for.

Tips to improve it,

• Upgrade your website security from http to https to avoid online hackers damaging your site. Just go to any hosting provider website and purchase an SSL certificate, it’s that simple.
• To improve the trustworthiness of the website, focus on high-quality content with relevant keywords. Keep adding more articles related to a niche industry, this will thrive both user engagement and google trustworthiness.
• Share articles on social media to build more trust audiences and make them land on your site. To keep user engagement consistently by posting niche-related content. By implementing the right content marketing strategy on various social media platforms you can unlock the true potential of the website visitors.

Conclusion

In short and simple the purpose of Google E-A-T algorithm is to increase website quality in terms of SEO. For consistent and stable ranking you need to keep updating content because the algorithm keeps changing which can major drop in rankings and traffic. But the core strategy of SEO is content and backlinks.

If the website is lacking any of these factors than definitely you need to look after on how to improve it and make the site SEO healthy.