If you ask most people if they want to be the best at any given thing, they’re probably going to say yes.
Who wouldn’t want to be the best at what they do?
But who or what is the best depends on what criteria are used to evaluate quality.
If you want an “A” grade in search engine optimization (SEO), then you need to know how you’re being graded.
If you want to win the gold medal, you need to know how the judges will score you.
If you want to have the highest rank in Google search results, you need to understand E-E-A-T.
Google E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) are the search quality rater guidelines that Google uses to determine the quality of a website’s E A T. Then, they rank it accordingly.
When you make and publish a website, it will eventually be seen and manually reviewed against these quality guidelines by one of the thousands of quality reviewers Google hires to submit feedback about web page quality. That information is used as a major contributing Google ranking factor.
Table of Contents
Experience: The First “E” in E-E-A-T
In late 2022, Google expanded its original E-A-T framework (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) to include an additional “E” for Experience—emphasizing the importance of first-hand, real-world involvement with the subject matter.
Enter E-E-A-T.
Why Experience Matters
Experience refers to the content creator’s actual use or direct interaction with the product, service, or topic they’re writing about. This is especially crucial in “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) categories, such as health, finance, and legal content, where users need to trust not just the accuracy but the practical validity of the information provided.
For example:
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A product review written by someone who has actually used the product will carry more weight than a regurgitated spec sheet or AI-written blog post.
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A guide to real estate investing from someone who’s closed multiple deals holds more value than advice from someone who’s only researched the topic.
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A health-related blog authored by a patient sharing their own treatment journey will often be seen as more trustworthy than a generic summary written by an outsider.
Demonstrating Experience in Content
When it comes to E-E-A-T, Google’s quality rater guidelines evaluate evidence of experience. This can include:
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Personal anecdotes
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Photos or videos from real-life usage
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Case studies and results
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Time-stamped social proof (e.g., forum posts, product reviews, testimonials)
Content creators should aim to show—not just tell—how they’ve engaged with the topic.
This helps both users and algorithms determine the reliability and real-world relevance of the information.
And while AI content can help you hallucinate and “fake” some experience, there are several critical factors that
How to Optimize for Experience in E-E-A-T
To fully embrace the E-E-A-T model:
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Encourage authors to write from lived experience, not just research.
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Include author bios that highlight first-hand involvement with the topic.
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Use original imagery, data, or multimedia that reinforces the creator’s familiarity with the subject.
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For review-style content, disclose personal usage or hands-on testing to support credibility.
Ultimately, Experience complements Expertise—while you can be an expert through education, credentials, or training, Google now wants to know: Have you actually done it?
Expertise
One of the wonderful and horrible things about the internet is that anyone can publish anything.
When you come to search engines like Google e and put in a search term, you want results from people who actually understand the subject they’re writing on.
That’s where expertise comes in.
To do well in this category of E-E-A-T, you need to show that you have a particular kind of expert knowledge related to the content of your site. Otherwise, how can readers rely on you?
Think about this: if your site offers unreliable or only basic knowledge that doesn’t help the audience solve their problem, they’re just going to go somewhere else and fast. That’s not good for you but it’s not good for Google either so your site direct ranking factor will suffer.
Provide clear, detailed information which shows your everyday expertise and experience and you will succeed in this category.
Authority
If you hadn’t noticed there are a lot of websites and businesses out there to choose from. Truly a lot of them. So, people will choose the ones that have authority.
Authority can come in the form of reviews, references, any kind of recommendations.
These are things that prove your credibility as a business.
When other credible sources are recommending you as a credible source, that boosts your position as an authority even higher and gives customers something they can really put their faith (and maybe even their money) into.
Trust
Ah, trust. Is there anything as hard to win and easy to lose?
Click baiting will lose your audience’s trust in an instant. If someone clicks on your site for one thing that you claimed to be offering or writing about and very clearly doesn’t find that thing, forget about ever seeing that person on your site again. The payoff simply isn’t there and Google knows that.
Being accurate and consistent in the way you portray yourself and your high-quality content will help to build trust.
Don’t try to hide sponsorships or affiliate links.
Don’t push the sale at the cost of honesty and transparency.
Users are more interested in truth about your business and less about it’s financial stability, so be real.
Your audience and potential customers won’t respond well and neither will Google, creating quite a nasty cycle where the main loser is your business.
Trust is worth the effort. Write that down so you don’t forget. That’s how true this is.
Why Does E-E-A-T Matter for SEO?
Hopefully, the importance of these three descriptors is somewhat obvious just from reading their descriptions and running a business.
You always want to be an expert in your field, authoritative sites, and trustworthy.
Meeting the E-E-A-T guidelines is one of the most important things you can do to stay high in Google rankings, according to SEO professionals.
It will keep the people who visit your website from going elsewhere and developing a negative view of your business.
It will make Google drive traffic toward your site over others because the reviews show users will have a better experience on your website.
It will help you gain or maintain a favourable position in search engines results, positively impacting your traffic and revenue.
Sound good? It should.
Here’s how you can actually make it happen and improve your website E-E-A-T score (even though a true E-E-A-T score doesn’t exist).
How to Improve E-E-A-T
Improving E-A-T is no small feat and it will require a significant amount of work. But here are some of the highlights of what you should do:
- Be consistent: Is your brand memorable and capable of instilling trust in customers?
- Stay up to date: Are the facts and other information in your create content Google still accurate?
- Make quality, useful content: Does your creating content meet a need and the standards customers with Google set?
- Write an About Us, Contact Us, and FAQ page: Are you telling the story of the brand, giving customers enough information to trust you?
Just by answering these questions and making some adjustments, you can go a long way toward improving your site in terms of E-A-T.
Quality content creation is the most important of all so even if it takes some time, it’s worth focusing your energy there. Try using this guide to write effective content.
Clearing Up Some Misconceptions
Working on E-A-T will only be beneficial if you know what you’re doing so here are some common misconceptions you shouldn’t believe.
No E-E-A-T Scores
You aren’t assigned a score for your adherence to the E-E-A-T guidelines by Google’s search algorithm or the quality raters.
It’s not like the SAT where a few more points can get you into Harvard or in this case, the top of the search results page.
The way your website exhibits Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness Or E E A T indirectly affect the search rankings of your website (fairly significantly) but this can’t be tied back to a single score or internal grade from Google.
E-E-A-T is Not New
Though these three letters have become the subject of much discussion lately, E-E-A-T is not actually new. It has been around since 2014 but many erroneously link building it to a summer 2018 algorithm update.
This can be important information to consider if you’ve seen significant increases or decreases in search rankings over that period. If you can tie those changes to one update, you may be better able to address any problems or identify the root cause of any successes.
No Replacement for Other SEO
After reading this and other articles about the importance of E-E-A-T you may start to think it’s where you should focus all of your energy when it comes to SEO. Not true!
Traditional SEO practices are complements to and not replacements for Seo’s strategy to improve E-E-A-T.
Think of them as toothbrushes and toothpaste, cars and gas, coffee machines and coffee beans, or whatever other two things that you can think of that go together. Anything that will help you remember that traditional SEO and E-E-A-T should be used together, not separately.
E-E-A-T is Not an Algorithm
E-E-A-T itself is not an algorithm. Of the many, many algorithms that Google uses to determine search ranking scores, lots of them use signals that relate to good or bad E-E-A-T.
It’s not simple and it can be hard to conceptualize but the important takeaway here is that there is no one-to-one correlation between improve E-E-A-T and immediately ranking higher but it will positively contribute.
No Overnight Success
Related to that idea is the thought that improve E-E-A-T can instantaneously boost search engine results rankings.
This process of improving E-E-A-T for SEO will take time and effort.
If you have no patience for that, E-E-A-T probably isn’t for you.
But then, running a business probably isn’t either.
If you want to make it happen and stick with it, using the guidelines provided above, the results you’re looking for will come in time.
How to Tell if E-E-A-T is Real (and Not AI-Generated Nonsense)
1. Specificity You Can’t Fake
Real experiences include messy, non-obvious details that AI struggles to fabricate believably. For example:
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“The Airbnb in Sedona had a weird humming noise at night that turned out to be the neighbor’s beehive.”
VS.
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“The Airbnb was cozy and comfortable.” ← This is boilerplate filler.
Genuine content created by real humans includes things like brand names, sensory input, local quirks, and emotional reactions that don’t read like a Wikipedia summary.
This could also include natural backlinks, which are also getting harder to fake.
2. Multimedia Proof (Pics or It Didn’t Happen)
Real experience is often paired with:
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Photos or videos (especially original, unpolished ones)
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Screenshots of tools in use, dashboards, messages, or analytics
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Audio clips or voice memos
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Social proof (like reviews, forum posts, check-ins)
If someone claims to have used a niche SEO tool but can’t show a screenshot of the dashboard? 🚩
3. Time-Stamped History Across Platforms
Did the author actually post about this experience before it was trendy or before it landed in an article?
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LinkedIn posts
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Twitter/X threads
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Reddit threads
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Quora answers
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GitHub commits
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Product Hunt comments
A digital footprint builds authenticity. AI doesn’t (yet) have the ability to fabricate consistent backstories across time and platforms—at least not without getting caught.
4. Reputation & Real Identity
If your own content is attached to a verifiable person with:
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A bio
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A LinkedIn profile
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A history of relevant work
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A professional site or past publications
…it becomes harder to fake “experience” without reputational risk. Anonymous content is more suspect.
5. Google’s Algorithmic and Human Review Systems
Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines specifically advise evaluators to look for:
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Evidence of first-hand involvement
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Consistency with other published content
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Trust signals like citations, credentials, and independent recognition
In short: Google knows people are trying to cheat the system. It’s training its AI to sniff out inauthenticity.
Content quality is also about real humans having real experiences.
Quality search results should reflect high quality content (created by humans) as humans can typically see through AI malarky.
Show Off Your E-E-A-T with Our SEO Help
Now that you have all this information, it’s time to put it into action. But, you don’t have to do it alone.
Sometimes you have to look yourself in the mirror and be honest about your strengths and weaknesses. Or look at your calendar and realize you have no extra time left.
If that’s the case, don’t worry.
Our team of expert SEO professionals will boost your E-E-A-T and SEO to bring your online presence to the next level.
Soar in the search engine results page, driving visitors to your page and growing your revenue.
It’s possible with SEO.co.
See what we can do for you with a custom marketing plan.
Get in touch today!
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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