Enhancing Small Business with Google E-E-A-T Principles

Did you know that 9 out of 10 business owners aren’t optimizing their sites for Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines? That’s right, they’re missing out!

After selling my SEO agency, I want to clear things up for you. Why does this even matter? Simply put: E-E-A-T = Higher Rankings = More Leads = More $$$.

Here’s why E-E-A-T is so important and how you can benefit from it.

The concept of E-E-A-T—Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—was introduced in Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines in 2014. These guidelines are used by “Quality Raters” who assess the quality of Google’s search results. Moreover, they help Google’s algorithm understand the nature of quality and relevant content.

E-E-A-T plays a significant role in these guidelines. If your website doesn’t reflect these qualities, it’s less likely to rank high in Google search results, and as we know, good rankings lead to more money. Prioritizing E-E-A-T can also position you and your brand as leaders in your field.

Think of Trustworthiness first. You build trust with Google by demonstrating Expertise, Experience, and Authoritativeness. There are easy, impactful changes you can make on your site right now. Here’s a full E-E-A-T checklist to get you started.

Google is shifting to rank people over just content. This means they prefer content written by experts. For example, would you rather read an article on football by John Elway or by someone with no background in the sport?

You don’t need to be a big-name expert to get your content to rank. Here’s how you can do it: write extensively on topics in your niche. The more content you create, the more you build topical relevance and authority, which translates to expertise.

In Google’s terms, ‘experience’ means direct, hands-on involvement with your topic. This sets you apart from AI-generated content, which can’t replicate genuine experience. Showcase your expertise in your writing and videos. For example, you can film a video and then summarize it into an article.

Top-ranking websites often share common traits. They have high-quality content, user experience, and backlinks. A backlink, or inbound link, is a link from one website to another and is seen as a vote of confidence from Google. More backlinks from relevant sites mean higher rankings.

One proven strategy for getting backlinks is guest blogging. If you want to dig deeper into link building, there’s plenty of information online. I’ll cover this topic more in a future post.

In short, Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines guide you to create high-quality content that resonates with your audience. And the best part? Consistently great content will earn you more leads from Google over time.

That’s all for now, stay tuned!