Expertise. Authority. Trustworthiness —> E.A.T.
For those intrepid digital swashbucklers unafraid to plumb the depths of data, analytics, advertising, and search engine optimization, Google is a majestic dreamland. It’s richly versatile, expansive, and full of hidden wonders — kind of like an Amazon Rainforest of technology.
Anyone can float down the Amazon River (or use a search engine). But in both scenarios, you have to get off the beaten path to find the really amazing stuff.
If your goal is to get more from Google, it’s good to have a guide. A partner who can help you cut through the foliage to uncover secrets of the interior. The secrets in this case being bolstering your web presence, increasing your search rankings, driving more traffic, and gleaning powerful insights about how people interact with your business online.
We’re not going to attempt a full circumnavigation of Google in this single blog post, lest we crash upon the rocks of TLDR word counts. Consider this a general flyover of how Google ranks websites, and a flavor of what’s possible with their remarkable suite of technologies.
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E.A.T. it Up
Whatever your business, you need Google. That’s how people find you and learn about you. To get a sense of how dominant and ubiquitous Google has become, they process about 3.5 billion searches per day.
So yes, in addition to being customer-centric with your web presence, it pays to be Google-friendly to ensure you rank high for relevant keywords.
How do you make that happen? For starters, you need to E.A.T.
Google evaluates websites and ranks them based on E.A.T., or expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. This is what they want to deliver for their users who are searching for trucks, construction equipment, drivers, or tube socks. If you can establish your E.A.T., you’ll rank highly in search results and generate traffic to your website.
From Google’s own guidelines, here are the seven factors they look at when evaluating E.A.T.:
- Enough main content: content should be ample enough to satisfy the needs of a user for a page’s unique topic and purpose (broad topics require more information than narrow topics, for example)
- The page and its associated content is expert, authoritative, and trustworthy for the topic they discuss
- The website has a positive reputation for its page topics
- The website features enough auxiliary information, for example, “About us,” “Contact,” or “Customer Service” information
- The website features supplementary content that enhances the user’s enjoyment and experience of a web page
- The page is designed in a functional fashion that allows users to easily locate the information they want
- The website is maintained and edited regularly and frequently
Google is purposefully coy about how exactly pages are ranked, but these seven points offer an instructive baseline to consider. The question for you, is, does your website meet these criteria? Where are you lacking? Is your content cutting the mustard?
It could be costing you money if you’re dropping the ball in any of these areas.
If you want to further chew on what exactly constitutes E.A.T., you can do so here, here, and here.
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Got Good Google Guidance?
You can’t buy your way into the organic search results portion of Google. Period. The paid results, yes, but not the organic. That’s the difference between SEO (optimizing your site) and SEM (paid search techniques).
That said, there are a number of ethical strategies you can implement that will help your organization show up organically. Here at Randall-Reilly, we use proven SEO and content marketing tactics to establish E.A.T. for our own brands, and of course for our clients as well. We have the expertise to raise your company’s visibility through beefing up E.A.T. and other effective marketing measures. We are a Premier Google Partner agency after all!
At our office in Tuscaloosa, we have Google gurus who are certified in search, mobile, and display advertising, as well as bona fide whiz kids who specialize in Google Analytics IQ, Google Shopping, and video ads.
All of these niches within Google are mini-kingdoms unto themselves, rife with tools and automated metrics that can amp up your online presence, help you refine your marketing, and grow your business. As mentioned above, it’s good to have a guide to help you maximize Google’s potential for your business.
So whether you want to build your E.A.T., or find new prospects through search, remarketing, or IP targeting, don’t navigate the Google jungle alone! We can help you find what you’re looking for.
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