Google EAT and YMYL

Have you heard the term E.A.T?

Do you know how this affects your SEO?

These are important new changes that Google has unleashed that will affect how your business ranks online. If you’re sharing information on a subject, particularly medical, health and financial related matters, you need to have proven expertise, authority, and trustworthiness for Google to recommend your content.

I often get asked when creating content for a client

“How can my site improve its rankings?”

Previously the simplified answer was

” Your website needs to be good of good quality, you need relevant links from other quality websites and you need to post quality relevant content”

Now the simplified answer is

 “Create good content than your audience loves”.

Google EAT and YMYL Algorithms
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You should understand what stage these searchers are at in their journey as a consumer or as somebody getting involved in your industry. Your website pages need to find the balance between being comprehensive while keeping it simple.

This comes down to formatting your text so it’s digestible, using visual aids or rich media like animation, video or audio. Think about the next queries a searcher might have and have content ready to answer that, supplementary content should be internally linked. It’s all about becoming the go-to source in your field.

When judging your authoritativeness, links from relevant and authoritative websites are still of a huge factor. While links are ideal, being mentioned positively in the news or on authoritative websites in your space will boost your authoritativeness. If your content is widely shared, genuinely and consistently across social media, this is also a sign of growing authority.

Proven trustworthiness is really important too Google EAT and YMYL. While expertise and authority are factors that boost your rankings, trustworthiness or rather a lack thereof is what can easily tank your rankings on Google. Google is very clear about this in their guidelines, too many bad reviews is a sign of low quality. Positive reviews on places like Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, Facebook, Google My Business, and so on are going to really help.

Camera filming plants nursery
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You can help promote your sites trustworthiness by:

  • Having a clear way to contact the website owners. 
  • Associating the website with a physical location, have a contact us page with more than just an email.
  • Having a term of business or T&Cs page, which is easily accessible.
  • Correctly implementing HTTPS is very important to Google.
  • Having a privacy policy.
  • If you blog or share knowledge, start adding an author biography to each page to show their expertise and authority on the subject

Why has this happened?

Fake-news, click-bate, abusing pay-per-click and more.

When Google recommends a page to a searcher, it should be relevant and trustworthy, especially when it could impact their health, finances or happiness. They are taking a stance against dangerous, unproven, misinformation. If you want to create a cheap website that attracts millions of unique visitors through click bate and fake news to generate quick revenue, you are now out of luck.

We all need to work to gain the trust of our audience and as a result of this, trust from Google. The E-A-T criteria, by definition, means incrementally growing a brand and a positive online presence in a natural way. We will all benefit from this as once you get your rankings, it is much harder to be knocked off.