As a Search Engine Optimisation specialist, I’m often asked about the best way to improve Google rankings.
While there is a lot more to it, the simple answer is to optimise for E-E-A-T.
It sounds highly technical, but it’s actually a simple concept that is crucial for SEO success.
That’s why we created our E-E-A-T SEO checklist so that you can easily implement these strategies and see results.
By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly how to implement E-E-A-T in your website and improve your search engine rankings. Let’s jump into it.
What Does E-E-A-T Stand For?
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.
It’s a guideline created by Google for evaluating the quality of a website.
In other words, it’s how Google determines if a website can be trusted and considered an authority on a topic. The higher your score, the more likely you are to get your website seen.
Google’s ultimate goal is to provide the best and most relevant results for its users, and E-E-A-T helps them achieve that.
Although E-E-A-T was introduced in December 2022, it’s not exactly a new concept.
Google has always emphasised the importance of user experience and quality long-form content, using E-A-T as a guideline since 2018.
However, with the rise of fake news and low-quality websites, Google has now included “Experience” in the mix, making it E-E-A-T.
But what does each of these elements mean, and how can you improve them on your website? Let’s break each one down:
Experience
The latest addition to the E-E-A-T guidelines, “Experience” refers to the overall user experience on a website.
This includes factors such as site speed, mobile responsiveness, and ease of navigation.
Google wants to ensure that users have a positive experience when visiting a website and can easily find the information they are looking for.
To improve your website’s experience, focus on optimising its loading speed, making it mobile-friendly, and creating a clear and easy-to-navigate structure.
Expertise
“Expertise” is all about content quality. Google wants websites to provide well-researched, accurate, and relevant information to their visitors.
If you’re a specialist in your field, this is where you can really showcase your knowledge and expertise.
By creating well-written content that is backed by reputable sources and covers topics in-depth, you can demonstrate your expertise and improve your website’s E-E-A-T.
Having expert authors or contributors on your website (or guest posting on other reputable sites) can also boost your online expertise.
However, you should avoid using low-quality or duplicate content, as they can harm your website’s credibility and ranking.
Authoritativeness
“Authoritativeness” refers to the reputation and domain authority of both the website and its creators.
This includes factors such as backlinks from other reputable sites, mentions in news articles or industry publications, and social media presence.
To improve your website’s authoritativeness, focus on building high-quality backlinks from relevant and authoritative sources, creating a strong social media presence, and getting mentioned by reputable websites or publications.
Trustworthiness
Last but not least, “Trustworthiness” is all about building trust with your audience.
Google wants to ensure that websites are transparent and honest in their content, services, and business practices – making this the single most important page quality indicator.
To improve your website’s trustworthiness, make sure to have a clear privacy policy, disclose any sponsored content or partnerships, and provide accurate contact information.
Why is E-E-A-T Important?
I briefly touched on it while explaining each element, but why exactly is E-E-A-T important for SEO?
Well, first and foremost, websites with high E-E-A-T scores are more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
This means that by optimising for E-E-A-T, you can improve your website’s visibility and attract more organic traffic.
Additionally, Google has stated that websites with low or no E-A-T ratings could potentially be negatively impacted by algorithm updates.
By ensuring your website meets the E-E-A-T guidelines, you can protect it from any potential penalties and maintain a strong online presence.
SEO Checklist: How to Optimise for E-E-A-T
Now you have a better understanding of what E-E-A-T is and why it’s important, it’s time to run through our SEO checklist and explore 12 practical tips on how to optimise for E-E-A-T.
Let’s kick it off with the most well-known one – content.
1) Content Quality
If you want your content to perform well online, it’s got to be high-quality.
That means your content should have a clear target audience, consistent tone and laser focus on a particular topic backed by detailed keyword research.
From here, you need to add value. What can users get from your website that they can’t get anywhere else?
And then there’s the obvious – no plagiarism or duplicating content from other sites, no grammatical errors and no black hat SEO strategies.
But in 2025, quality content extends far beyond just the written word.
Videos, images, and infographics are all great ways to enhance your content and provide value to readers. But more than that, user experience is a crucial factor in determining content quality.
By making sure the content on your website is easy to read, visually appealing, includes relevant links, and provides value to the reader, you can improve your overall E-E-A-T score.
2) Build Authority
Domain authority isn’t something you can build overnight, but you can start by creating high-quality content, building backlinks from reputable sources, and getting mentioned in industry publications.
As your content starts to gain traction and your website starts to get more traffic, your domain authority will naturally increase.
But don’t stop there – keep working on building authority through networking, guest posting, and collaborating with other reputable websites in your niche.
3) About Us Page
You may be wondering how you can improve your domain authority and signal to search engines that you know what you’re talking about.
A good place to start is an “About Us” page.
This is where you can showcase your team, share your company’s values and mission, and build trust with your audience.
Your “About Us” page is a great opportunity to tell potential customers what makes your business different from others in the industry and why they should trust you, all while improving your E-E-A-T score.
This page won’t drive much organic traffic but it will play a key part in improving your domain’s credibility.
4) Meet the Team
As much as “Expertise” refers to the website’s content, it also extends to the people behind it.
Ultimately, search engines care about who is creating the content, not just where and what it is.
Google wants to reward high-quality content published by industry experts.
“But I’m an industry expert and my content isn’t ranking”, I hear you think quietly to yourself through your mobile phone screen.
Well, have you considered creating a “Meet the Team” page?
A page dedicated to introducing the faces behind your brand can help establish trust and credibility with visitors.
Each team member (or author) can have their own personalised bio that highlights their expertise and experience in the industry.
Or you can take it one step further and create dedicated pages for each team member, showcasing their accomplishments, publications, and contributions to the industry.
Again, creating these pages won’t transform your website overnight, flooding it with thousands of organic website visits and leads (if only it were that easy), but it will help improve your website’s overall E-E-A-T score.
5) Schema Markup
Schema markup, or structured data, is a way of providing search engines with additional context and information about your website’s content.
By using Schema Mark-Up, you can communicate the purpose and meaning of your content to search engines, which can help improve your website’s rankings and visibility.
This is especially important for websites in the construction, healthcare or finance industries, where accuracy is crucial.
Implementing Schema Mark-Up on your website signals to search engines that your content is accurate and trustworthy – improving your E-E-A-T score in the process.
6) Contact Page
If you want to build trust, you need to be easy to reach.
That means creating an informative and accurate contact page with all of your business’s relevant information, including:
- Your business’s office location – ideally with a map
- Email address – if there are different emails for different departments, list them all
- Phone number – if there are different numbers for different departments, list them all
- Social media profiles – add links to each relevant social media platform
- Business hours – let visitors know when you’re open and available to contact
7) Case Studies
Case study pages serve as powerful tools to demonstrate your professionalism and expertise in your industry.
By showcasing real-world applications of your products or services, you provide tangible evidence of your capabilities, which enhances the perception of your brand and signals to search engines that you’re a reputable source of information.
Detailed case studies illustrate your problem-solving skills and the successful outcomes achieved for clients, validating your authority in the field.
This added layer of credibility can significantly boost your E-E-A-T score, as search engines assess the relevance and professionalism reflected in such content, ultimately driving both user trust and improved visibility in search results.
8) Testimonials
Reviews, especially from platforms such as Google Reviews and Yelp, can greatly impact a website’s E-E-A-T score.
These (ideally five-star) reviews act as a form of social proof, showing that real people have had positive experiences with your business.
Integrating these reviews onto your website, either via a plugin or a dedicated “Testimonials” page, can help improve your website’s overall E-E-A-T score by showing that you have a satisfied customer base.
9) Social Media Profiles
Although technically not an SEO ranking factor, social signals play a big part in how well your content performs online.
This is because social media can drive traffic and engagement to your website, which in turn can improve your E-E-A-T score.
Having an active and engaged presence on relevant social media platforms can help increase your brand’s visibility and authority, showcasing that you are a reputable source of information within your industry.
But it’s not just about having accounts on every social platform possible – it’s about being strategic with where you choose to focus your efforts. Identify the platforms where your target audience spends their time and engage with them consistently through valuable content and interactions.
10) Terms and Conditions Pages (And Others Similar)
One key aspect of building trust with search engines and users alike is being transparent about your business’s policies and procedures.
This includes having detailed legal pages that clearly outline how your business operates and protects sensitive information.
These types of pages are important for establishing trust with both search engines and potential customers by showing that you take privacy and legal matters seriously.
What’s more, by setting clear guidelines for user interactions on your website, you can also help prevent any potential negative interactions that could impact your E-E-A-T score.
These important pages, documents and disclosures include, but are not limited to:
- Terms and Conditions
- Cookies Policy
- Privacy Policy
- Modern Slavery Statement
- Complaints Policy
- Copyright
- Company Number
11) Link Building & Structure
Internal Links
Internal links are links that connect pages within your own website, and a website’s internal link structure is important for two key reasons:
- Helps search engines understand the hierarchy and organisation of your website’s content
- Allows for easier navigation for users, which can increase on-site engagement, improve user experience and reduce bounce rates
When creating internal links, use descriptive anchor text that accurately reflects the linked page’s content.
Doing this gives users a better experience, setting clear expectations of what they will find when clicking on a link.
External Links
External links are links from your website that direct users to other websites.
When linking to external sites, it’s important to only do so when the content is relevant and reputable, as linking to low-quality or spammy sites can negatively impact your E-E-A-T score.
When including external links there is one simple rule: less is more.
By prioritising high-quality external links from reputable sources, you can establish your website as a valuable resource for users and potentially improve your E-E-A-T score.
This same rule applies to any website linking back to you.
Known as a backlink, these links from other websites to your own can significantly impact your website’s authority and visibility in search results.
However, just like with external links on your own website, quality is key.
It’s better to have a few backlinks from high-authority sources than a large number of backlinks from low-quality or spammy sites.
Ensure that any websites linking back to your own are relevant, reputable and have a strong E-E-A-T score themselves.
Broken Links
If your link structure includes broken or outdated links, it can negatively impact your website’s E-E-A-T score.
Search engines view broken links as a sign of poor quality and lack of maintenance, which can harm your overall credibility.
Regularly checking for and fixing any broken links on your website is important for maintaining a strong E-E-A-T score and ensuring a positive user experience.
12) Use an SSL Certificate
An SLL certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates the identity of your website and encrypts sensitive information sent between your website and its visitors.
Not only does an SSL certificate provide security for users, but it also helps improve your E-E-A-T score by showing search engines that you take measures to protect user data and maintain a secure online environment.
Can Local SEO Improve E-E-A-T?
Since E-E-A-T is all about building trust with search engines and users, local SEO plays a significant role in improving your website’s E-E-A-T score.
By optimising your website for specific geographic areas and targeting local customers, you can establish yourself as an authority within your local community and increase trust with both search engines and potential customers.
Some key strategies for improving your local SEO and E-E-A-T score include:
- Creating and optimising your Google My Business listing
- Including local keywords in your website’s content, titles and meta descriptions
- Getting listed on relevant online directories and review sites for your area
- Ensuring consistency in your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information across online platforms.
Elevate Your E-E-A-T Score for Long-Term Success
Optimising for E-E-A-T is not a one-time task but an ongoing effort to maintain trust and credibility with search engines and users.
By consistently implementing the strategies mentioned above, you can gradually improve your website’s E-E-A-T score and establish yourself as a reputable source of information within your industry.
Remember, it’s not just about following guidelines – it’s about building a strong online presence that showcases your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
So keep working on creating high-quality content, engaging with your audience on social media, maintaining a secure and user-friendly website, and continuously improving your SEO efforts for long-term success.
Partnering with trusted SEO experts, such as Inc Studio, can also help you stay on top of the latest E-E-A-T guidelines and ensure that your website is optimised for success.
To learn more, contact a member of our team today.