What is EAT in SEO? How to Improve EAT Score? 

What is EAT in SEO? How to Improve EAT Score? 
Google EAT
Google EAT

EAT in SEO stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.


It’s a known fact that Google keeps updating its algorithm to provide a better user experience.  Google rolls out many minor updates in a year and few major updates occasionally. With these updates, Google is getting better and better at eliminating poor quality websites and displaying high-quality websites on searchers’ screens.

In Google Search Quality Guideline, Google mentions EAT analyzes the quality of the page which helps SEO in ranking content.

EAT is essential in all types of content, but it’s mostly important in YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content.  The information that can impact people’s health, finance, safety are categories as YMYL content.

Example of YMYL topic:

  • News
  • Legal information
  • Health and safety
  • Finance
  • Shopping
  • Information related to a particular group of people
  • Advice that helps people make decision

In the image below, you’ll see the detail information about the YMYL content.


Google has a very strict EAT standard, as these types of content has information that can influence people’s health, happiness, finance, stability, and safety.

If you’re creating content on any YMYL topic, you need to be extra careful while providing information to your reader.

Now, let’s understand each element of EAT in SEO.


Expertise refers to the person who has skills and knowledge in a specific field. Any kind of website can show expertise if the site has unique, useful, and reliable content.

Google gives importance to the person who is publishing blogs on the website. It looks for the credentials of the website before giving the content a rating. If the site has relevant credentials, it lifts the ranking of the website.

Expertise is even more critical for the website of medical, law, and financial information. While publishing articles on these topics, you need to ensure that each piece of article has author byline that gives a certain sense of expertise.

For example,

If you made a query related to the economic crisis, then Google prefers to rank the content by the expert in the field rather than listing the content of a new blogger.

Similarly, if you search regarding specific diseases or medicine, you get the content from a doctor who is an expert on that disease.

High-quality content denotes that you’re an expert in the field, and Google rank this type of content because searcher finds it informative and valuable.

Besides high-quality content, you also need to know how to communicate the information in a way that engages readers. You can build a connection between your content and your reader if you find out what interests them.


Google algorithm does its best to measure the authoritativeness of the website and author. Google algorithm somehow depends on mentions, referrals, and backlinks to determine how much authority the site has to rank content.

When someone cites you for the information, you’re just not the expert in the industry, but you also earn authority on the subject matter. If the well-authorized website mentions you, Google takes this as a positive signal to rank your content.

Searchers don’t just want information from the expert but want to read the content from the authorized person who is best in the industry.

If you’re an author writing on a particular topic, Google considers the citations, mentions, and high-quality content to determine the authoritativeness in the field.

You can undoubtedly dominant your field if you have quality content that can help readers and the big website who mentions you.  This signals Google that you have authority in the field, and your content is worth ranking above other content.

And if your content is shared across social media naturally, then this also indicates the growing authority of your website.


While expertise and authoritativeness are the two crucial factors of ranking, trustworthiness also has a role in the ranking.  To get a high ranking, you have to make Google trust your website. Your honesty and reliability are what matters to Google.

Your business website should have proper information about the business location, contact number, team member, and so on. If you don’t provide the right information about the author or the website, it can negatively impact your ranking.

Along with this, Google also measures the trustworthiness of your website based on positive reviews, the security of your website, and the performance of your website. Organic positive reviews on Facebook and Google My Business account can help your website and webpage rank.

Why EAT is important for SEO?

So, why should you care about EAT in SEO?

EAT is important
EAT is important

Indicate quality

Google focuses on giving importance to the content that has certain quality standards. It’s very clear that Google wants to provide quality information to the users. Therefore, it’s essential to maintain the quality and relevancy of the content on your website.

With EAT, Google identifies the content quality before displaying it on the searchers’ screen.

Impact ranking

As mentioned previously in this article, EAT doesn’t impact content ranking directly. However, Google may not measure EAT directly with its algorithm, but the algorithm is designed in a way that can look for the indicator of EAT in various areas and rank content, which has higher EAT.

Users acknowledge EAT

Improving your website’s EAT means you’re providing a better experience to your visitors, and you’re also increasing the amount of trust on your website. When visitors are enjoying your site and Google is increasing trust on your site then you’re obviously improving your ranking.

How to improve the EAT score to enhance SEO?

So, you know what EAT is and why it’s important for your business website. Now, you aim to perform well in Google ranking?  You should know how to improve the EAT score.

Include Author name and detail in Content

Mentioning the content creator is crucial because it lets people and Google know who is writing content. It gives a sense of trust to the reader. A content written by the expert in the field makes them believe in every word of the content.

If someone searches for the cake recipe, s/he will prefer to read the content written by the chef. So, it’s better to provide detailed information about the author to let Google and the reader evaluate the trustworthiness of the content.

However, the author’s information is not necessary if you sell a product. For the product page, you should give easy access to contact information to allow secure purchases.

EAT for ranking
EAT for ranking

Build a reputation

You might have noticed, big businesses performing well on the internet. This is because they are well known and hold a reputation in their field. So you should also start building a reputation for yourself and for your business if you want to perform well online.

If you lack a reputation in your industry, you’ll probably be outperformed by the people with a positive reputation in your industry.

How to build a reputation?

Interact with your audiences, customers, and influencers from your social media platform. Basically, it’s about exchanging knowledge with the influencer, and you may interact with your customers to solve their problems.

Honestly, interaction is the best way to build trust with your audience and customers. As when you build trust, your customer will remember you over your competitors.

Edit or remove low-quality content

Each page on your website needs to have a purpose. If your webpage doesn’t deliver value, then that content doesn’t worth staying on your website. You may consider removing the content or revising the content if there are any chances of performing well.

Make sure you have quality content. If you’re creating content just to increase the number of content on your website, then you should stop doing that. Instead, you should start creating, well-crafted and robust content.

If you have thin or duplicate content, it’s better to remove it from your site, or else you can merge them to create comprehensive content.

You can also improve your content quality by adding useful information in headlines and met description rather than raising urgency by using words like limited stock.

Improve Technical security of your website

You need to have a secure website to increase your EAT rating. If your website is built on HTTP, your browser will show ‘Not Secure’ tag and which discourage website visitor to stay in your site.

So, to make your user feel secure, you need to install the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate, which encrypts a secure connection between a browser and a server. With SSL, you’re also protecting the personal data they are sharing on your website.

Google responds negatively against insecure connections. If you own an e-commerce website that has an insecure connection, your site will get a low EAT rating. Ensure that your website is hosted in a secured hosting to improve EAT rating.

If you’re using WordPress to build your website, you need to install plugins on your website and update the version. This can help you protect your site and improve your EAT rating.

Final Thoughts

Although improving your website’s EAT rating seems intimidating, but it’s definitely worth doing it. It’s all about creating content that is trustworthy, reliable, and delivers value to readers.

So try to build your own brand, not just website with random information. Building a brand will increase your level of expertise in your industry, gain the trust of your audiences, and become a thought leader on the topic.

When you improve the EAT rating, you’ll notice that Google displaying your content for every relevant search.