EEAT and YMYL: What's the Big Idea?
Like it or not pal, everyone is judging you based on your website, and this goes double for some very specific industries.
We’re going to get down to brass tacks on these subjects and give you a leg up to not get left behind in the rankings.
So, what is EEAT and does it matter to me?
EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. These elements are things that Google, and your website visitors are judging you on.
While most people don’t outwardly realize that they care specifically about these qualities, Google has codified these things and created standards that they adhere to.
We can get an idea of what those standards are by looking at their Human Quality Rater Guidelines.
Despite having an army of robots to crawl and index the content on the web, Google still needs humans to keep an eye on these little buggers. Human Quality Raters are the quality control of Google’s search engine and play an important role in keeping the search results to a high standard.
Well, when things are working as intended. But that’s a whole other topic.
If you want to take a look at the whole 170 page document that details what Google’s Human Quality Rater’s are supposed to be looking for you can see the 2024 version here.
Now you may be asking yourself. Does this really apply to me? I just sell widgets online.
Yes, it does.
If you are selling something, putting out information, publishing content in any way, you should be trying to meet these EEAT standards.
Now there are some industries that do have to put a greater emphasis on making sure that they check off all of the boxes for EEAT.
YMYL: Your Money, Your Life
Businesses who fall into your money, your life categories, need to put extra effort into demonstrating these EEAT standards.
The general categories are doctors, lawyers, anyone handling banking and finances, automotive, and home improvement such as plumbers, contractors, etc.
Basically, if in your job, someone’s money or life could be directly impacted you should be putting effort into these EEAT aspects.
So, what is Google looking for, from you to prove that you have these things that they are looking for?
Experience is defined as first-hand experience in your field or niche. You can demonstrate this through your biography, referencing personal experience or work history to demonstrate this.
Expertise is shown through accurate and in-depth content that cites reputable and respected sources or industry leaders.
Authority is built by regularly creating high quality content and also being referenced by respected sources, such as news agencies or industry leaders.
Trustworthiness comes from being transparent about the author of the content on your website, providing contact information and customer service information, and finally maintaining a positive reputation.
Other Things to Keep in Mind
- Do not post misleading content
- Don’t promise one thing with a link or title and then give the visitor something else
- Do not post false or defamatory content
- Don’t lie or make up stuff about people
- Do not post content about encouraging self-harm or harm to others
- Violent content is not ok
- Do not use misleading titles
- A click bait title is one thing, titling an article as something completely different is another
- Do not engage in malicious behavior
- No hacking or hosting viruses
- Do not spam
- Nobody likes it anyway
- Do not use layouts or content intended to trick users into taking potentially unwanted actions on your website
- No “download here” buttons that actually take you to another website or page
Security Online is Important Too
Now just because you have all of these things, does not mean you will automatically rank. There’s more to it than that.
But there is another thing that you must set up as well that often gets just a passing mention in EEAT discussions.
The security of your website.
Do Not Forget to Secure Your Website
Now I get it.
Security is a massive pain in the rear for any website owner, doubly so because of the complexity of digital security today. However, there are things that you can do to make your website not only more secure, but also more trustworthy in the eyes of Google.
To put it bluntly, if you are doing business online and want to rank for anything you MUST have your website properly secured.
Google will simply not rank you if you don’t, and you could expose your customers to potential theft and fraud by not doing so.
SSL/HTTPS, Content Security Policies, & HTTP Strict Transport Security Headers
The bare minimum that you need to have is something called SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer.
This is a method of encrypting and securing the communications between your website and those visiting it.
Many website hosting providers will sell you an SSL certificate as part of the hosting package, and there are free options like Let’s Encrypt that you can set up easily if you are willing to put in some effort.
The exact implementation will be different from one website hosting provider to the next, but every provider will have information on how to set up SSL for your website in their reference or help articles.
For eCommerce sites, and any site that is taking payments online, you also need to implement a Content Security Policy or CSP. This will tell browsers like Firefox or Chrome to only trust content served on the website from specific sources.
Finally, you should also be setting up HTTP Strict Transport Security Headers. This is another instruction to web browsers to only connect to your site and its content through the secured means of SSL and HTTPS.
Unfortunately, this is yet another thing that I can’t give a step-by-step guide to as it will depend on your website and how it is being hosted. Check your website hosting provider for more information on how to set this up.
The Website Security Checklist for EEAT
- Set up SSL on your website at a minimum
- Set up a Content Security Policy for your website
- Tools like CSP Generator can help with this
- Set up HSTS
- Plugins like HSTS WP can help with this
- You can validate your HSTS set up with hstspreload.org
EEAT is Not Established Overnight
Remember that EEAT includes elements that take time to build and demonstrate. You’re not going to have authority and trustworthiness the second that you put your website up.
Even if you do have many years of experience, it takes time to build up those elements. So much like other aspects of SEO, it is a marathon and not a sprint.
Network, get reviews. and keep working at making all aspects of your EEAT analysis shine.
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