Google E-E-A-T for Small Business

EEAT sounds great as an acronym, but I like to think about it a bit in retrospect, starting with Reliability.

Step 1: Reliability

The best way to establish trustworthiness at Google is to establish expertise, experience, and authoritativeness (more on this later).

That said, you can fix some “no-brainer” things on your site TODAY that will have a lasting impact.

1. Physical address: Display your physical address in the footer of your website and on the contact page of your website.
2. Phone number: Display your phone number in the footer of your website and on the contact page of your website.
3. Domain email addresses: Place a domain email address (@yourcompanyurl.com) in your footer and several others on your contact page.
4. Introducing the team page: Create a page just for your team with individual team members.
5. Author Page: You (as your content writer) should have an author page that showcases your chops.

These are just a few easy ones. ​Here is my full EEAT checklist.​ Go through the list and check the boxes.

Tree! That’s simple.

Step 2: Expertise

I believe Google focuses on ranking people, not content.

What does that mean? They want to rank content written by experts (humans).

Think about it: would you rather read an article about football from John Elway or from me?!

No, you don’t have to be Bill Gates to get your content to rank.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Create an author page.
2. Post your bio on your author page.
3. Include all your achievements related to your niche on your author page.
4. Link all your articles back to your author page.

​You can view and copy mine here.​

The last step of this process is a little more difficult.

You should write about topics in your niche.

Write everything you can about your niche.

The more content you write, the more you create topical relevance and authority.

Current relevance and authority = expertise.

Step 3: Experience

In the context of Google’s use of the term “experience,” this indicates direct, hands-on involvement with the specific topic a piece of content covers.

This is your chance to distinguish yourself from the rest BS AI-driven content.

AI-powered content will NEVER be able to show legitimate experiences.

I like to do this in a few ways.

When writing:

1. In your content, mention specific experiences you’ve had and the lessons you learned from them.
2. Share real life stories related to your niche.

On video:

1. Video doesn’t lie. You will be miles ahead of the competition if you can show a practical video.

Pro tip: Create a video and then summarize the video in an article (I’ve talked about this before).

At TGA, all our landing pages had video:

Step 4: Authoritativeness

If you look at the highest ranking websites, you will see a pattern.

They all have:

1. Robust backlinks from niche sources.
2. Writers with robust online personas are recognized for their expertise in specific areas.
3. Site-wide content covering all (or most) of the major topics in the niche.

We have already discussed points 2 and 3 above, but what are backlinks?

Backlinks, also called inbound links, are links from one website to a page on another website.

They are seen by Google as votes of approval, which contribute to the website’s authority and improve its ranking in search engine results.

The more votes you get from similar websites, the higher your content will rank.

One of the oldest link building strategies is guest blogging.

Actually:

1. You will find an authoritative website in your niche.
2. You write a great piece of content written by you.
3. You get the content published on their site with a link back to your site.

If you want to learn more about link building, do a quick Google search.

There will be thousands of articles (and too many to write in a 5 minute email).

Do not worry; I’ll dedicate a future LFG to link building. So be on your guard!