Mastering Google’s E-A-T and YMYL Guidelines

Did you start your mutual fund and tax saving investments yet?

Imagine that on a very average Tuesday morning, you walked in to office and a few of your colleagues were talking excitedly about how they had earned a hefty return from some of their investments and were planning to buy something valuable. As you get in to the conversation, you begin to have a familiar sinking feeling in your stomach and get hit by major FOMO. Dad had been asking you to plan your financials since a while now, but you still haven’t gotten to it. Now everyone who’s done it seems to be much more secure. “I am going to start my research right as a I get home today!”, you think. But the guilt doesn’t leave, and you decide to have your lunch at a nearby park just to distract yourself. Halfway through the sandwich, a man in a red cap comes over and hands you a leaflet with some investment jargon written all over.

Did you manifest this?

He tells you about how if you pay him a certain amount every month, he can help you make it double in the next three months. He says he picked up some investment tricks by experimentation and can help people now. Do you believe him? No! Because you don’t know anything about his background, credentials or even his expertise. It will be difficult for someone selling their services this way to onboard clients. That’s the equivalent of E-A-T and Y-M-YL on Google search. Expertise — Authoritativeness -Trustworthiness (E-A-T) This is a set of parameters that Google asks its search quality raters to assess website content on. To elaborate, Google, as a leading search engine and technology organization wants to give the best of content and query resolution to its users. And this is done by making constant refinements to its search result quality to be able to make available the most relevant and reliable content. When you type a question or a keyword on the Google search console, its systems sort through millions of pages to be able to display the most relevant and accurate results for you. To be able to scavenge through the massive store of content from across the world and present the useful content to users, Google works with search quality raters who use the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines to assess the content in each page. The feedback shared by the raters is then used by the organization to make improvement to its processes. E-A-T rating helps Google assess the quality of information on a page and its relevance to queries. This, in turn, may affect the appearance of the content in the results. Here’s a link to the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines for your reference.

Now let’s dive deeper into what each of these terms imply.

Expertise

If you have set up a business and want to sell your products and services online, or, if you have an authority content website on any subject, it is naturally expected that you have a degree or hands-on expertise on the topic. As per the search quality guidelines, reviewers rate the author of the content. For example, if you are publishing medical grade content on skin problems and care, your degree in dermatological science or medicine is the qualifying factor for expertise. For subjects like medicine, finance, and critical technology, products, services and content, especially that which is considered the main content appearing on the landing page of your site is critically assessed as this kind of content has the potential to affect important life decisions of searchers and those in their immediate contact. For businesses, an example of expertise would be your knowledge on the ingredients of your product and how they affect the health of users. If you are selling a face cream, you must put up details of all the ingredients in the cream, data on the government based licenses you have that allow you to sell the product in the specific geographical area and the benefits that using your product can be reaped by the consumer. However, lived experiences also form part of “everyday expertise” for search quality rating. For example, if you are a parent blogging about different creative hobbies kids can pursue after school, your expertise is considered as that attained through personal experience and is rated high.

Authoritativeness

Your authority on a subject, especially that which you put out online, is based on your educational and professional background. For example, if you are talking about financial instruments on your website and selling personal finance consultancy, the Google Search Quality Raters assess the authority and authenticity of your content based on your degree in finance or years of first hand experience working with the subject. For example, websites of organizations like Citibank or HSBC are considered locations for authority content for financial information. Reports and news released by such organizations are referred to and linked by other websites as source material, thus driving up the authoritativeness quotient even higher.

Trustworthiness

The trustworthiness of the content you put up on your website depends on the amount of research that went in to building it. Google Search Quality Rating guidelines not only ask for rating of the content itself, but also the writer. If you do not have a degree in medicine but are putting out content related to health and wellness, the trustworthiness of your content goes up if it has been reviewed and verified by a medical professional. For critical subjects like so, getting your web content reviewed by a specialist goes a long way. Make sure to put up the details of the writer and their professional connections, as well as details of the verifying professional along with the content. Another way to build on trust is to cite from highly valued sources. For example, if you are writing a piece on the latest technology trends, citing sources from Deloitte or McKinsey reports help verify your article. When you put out high quality content, other websites cite you as the source and this can push your rating even higher. E-A-T is a parameter for continuous improvement. Your content needs to follow along and get updated according to new developments and discoveries to stay relevant to search users. This is especially true for consumer oriented businesses, and for such organizations it is extremely important to keep up with the latest trends and market demands. Naturally, this becomes a by-product of thorough and on-going market research, product and service quality improvement, understanding changing needs of the target customers. But expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, again are pretty relative to what is being talked about and who is talking about it. For topics that do not hold the potential to cause severe consequences to people at large, E-A-T might not be a very stringent parameter. If you have a blog where you talk about ways to decorate your house for festivals, the content published is for entertainment and hobby purposes. To rank high for such content, you can focus on SEO parameters like most searched keywords, local business tags, and more. However, for subjects in the line of YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), E-A-T plays an important role.

How to know if your content is YMYL

Simply put, YMYL, i.e., your money or your life content is any subject that has the capacity to influence your decisions on things that affect your financial condition or your health. This entails subjects like finance, medicine, safety, food, wellness, current political and public services information, and any kind of news that can impact critical decision making. As already mentioned, the best way to build on high quality YMYL content is to either get your web content written by subject matter experts with a valid degree, people with lived experience for things that qualify for “everyday experience”, or simply get the content reviewed by experts. This not only helps searches gain value from your content to improve their living conditions, but also set your business on the path to success. However, there are degrees to which every YMYL topic is judged on. For example, when we talk about news websites, it becomes an umbrella term for a large variety of information. News on the latest stock market updates, government policies and political updates fall stringently under YMYL content, but news pertaining to entertainment like a new movie or music video release does not fall under strict scrutiny checks. So, to build your content in a way that is favourable for your search appearance as well as user value, it is essential to have a deep understanding of your market and customer needs.

What happens if your YMYL does not comply to E-A-T requirements?

Let us try to understand why E-A-T is so important for consumers of your content. Suppose, you are running a company that offers mental health support to people struggling with such issues. You started this company because of your sheer passion towards the importance of good mental health, and your own experience and of those around you struggling and overcoming illness. However, you do not hold a degree in psychology or psychiatry, and the only reference you have is your own lived experience. The first thing you need to do to start such a company is to get certified medical professionals on board. They need to have a say in the designing of all kinds of products and services you may be offering to your customers. The web content that you put up on your website, in the form of product and service descriptions, blogs and any other kind of communication material needs to either written, or at least, verified by medical professionals in your team, which again needs to be mentioned on the site. Such practices not only help your consumers benefit from high quality, verified and safe information but also help your company hold authority space. This high value offered by you, in turn, helps bring in high revenue. So that’s a win-win for all. For sensitive topics like medicine safety and finance, it is responsible and important to publish content that is reviewed and approved by an experienced authority on the subject matter.

5 ways make your web content E-A-T compliant

As per the Google Search Quality Guidelines, content in your website that comes under review is not simply text content. It can be in the form of images, text, videos, and any other form of communicative media. Here are a few practices you can follow to improve the quality of content your business offers.

• To build on trustworthiness, try to put up customer and user testimonials on your website. This can be in the form of ratings, text reviews, video testimonials, etc. This helps not only build on trust but also attract more buyers for your products and services. From restaurants to healthcare services, checking out reviews before purchase has now become the norm. You can leverage this buy adding all kinds of customer inputs on your site.
• Modern day consumers also share their thoughts about products and services on social media. Make sure to invest in a good social listening tool, especially if you are a B2C brand. Respond to reviews and queries put up by consumers, comment on posts and stories, not only bridge gaps but also to establish your brand as a trustworthy authority in your niche.
• Blog posts are a great resource for people who want to have more information on subjects. If you do not have a large in-house content writing team, invite guest writers to contribute to your blog. Make sure to put the writer credentials so that you build on authority.
• Cite high authority sources for any kind of critical data and information that you are putting up on your website. This helps your visitors trust you as someone that delivers authentic information to them.

Building your content to be in line with the Google Search Quality Guidelines goes hand in hand with your website’s SEO strategy. You can rank high in search results and become a rising business only with a solid understanding of what optimizing your content for search can do for you. At SpikeOn, we help businesses grow in the digital space with tried and tested SEO strategies tailor made for every client. If you looking to improve upon your SEO, or simply want to know how it can help your business, reach out to us at — business@spikeondigital.com