How to Demonstrate Expertise in Google EEAT: 10 Proven Strategies

Although Google EEAT isn’t a direct ranking factor, it’s an essential tool used to determine the quality and trustworthiness of your website. Without great EEAT signals, your website won’t become an industry-leading expert source in your niche. 

In this post, we’ll focus on improving your Expertise (EEAT) and show you the most effective strategies for demonstrating to Google raters you’re an expert in your industry. 

What is Expertise in Google EEAT?

Using its search algorithm and a team of quality raters, Google looks for an author’s expertise on the subject published. This checks for knowledge base, credibility, qualifications, and more to ensure the information is reliable.  

This doesn’t mean you have to have a Ph.D. or industry-leading professional guest posts on your blog – but it does mean you need to demonstrate knowledge and a good level of expertise on your niche subject. 

Here are a few things that can boost your expertise:

• Showcase qualifications, awards, and certifications in your industry. 
• Get published on reputable publications and high-authority websites. 
• Make sure all content is appropriately linked and cited using reputable sources. 
• Provide high-quality, well-researched content that gives real value to readers. 

What is the difference between expertise and experience in Google EEAT?

Google changes the guidelines for scoring expertise in EEAT about once a year and usually adds new documents to help quality raters make better judgments. 

“Experience” was added in 2022, highlighting Google’s focus on the value of content being posted. This is thought to crack down on AI-generated content, estimated to generate around 90% of content by 2026. 

Expertise often overlaps with experience, but they are two different factors you need to focus on. Let’s look at an example from the finance industry:

• Expertise: A user wanting financial advice from a qualified professional.
• Experience: A user wanting real-life examples of financial strategies that worked for others. 

Both are important factors that contribute to a website’s overall quality score, so it’s essential to showcase both as much as possible. 

How to Demonstrate Expertise in Google EEAT

The next question is, how do you demonstrate expertise in EEAT in a way that gets Google’s attention? Here are three of the best strategies.

1. Produce High-Quality, Relevant Content Backed by Facts and Research

In a world of AI-generated content and poorly-backed opinion pieces, it’s your job to produce high-quality, relevant content backed by statistical facts and trusted research. 

• Focus on relevant topics and give plenty of value with long-form blog posts – aim for at least 1500 words. 
• Add 2-3 high-quality links to relevant sources (science publications, .org sites, and high-authority websites are best). 
• Research your post idea for the most up-to-date, relevant information to share with your audience. 
• Add quotes from thought leaders and industry experts. 

Most experts agree you should post weekly to boost traction from your content, but always aim for quality over quantity. 

2. Showcase Your Authors’ Expertise and Credibility and Link to Their Social Media Profile

Reach out to thought leaders, experts, and qualified individuals for quotes and guest content. Your website’s credibility doesn’t just rely on your expertise – the more experts you can showcase, the better your overall score. 

When you do have authors with high credibility on your website, link back to their social media profiles and websites to boost your link signals. 

But you don’t need guest posts to feature experts on your website if you’re still building your domain authority. Find highly trusted articles that are relevant to your content and link back to them in your own content as an expert source (just make sure the original author is happy for you to quote them!).

3. Use Trustworthy Sources for Your Claims

It’s easy to type “stats on marketing” into Google and use the first page as your linked source. However, you need to do a much deeper dive into the sources you use for your claims. 

For starters, always make sure the source you’re using is the original publication or seed site. These are sites that Google knows and trusts for quality content, so links to those sites are golden. 

If you’re unsure whether a site is trustworthy, do some quick research on its domain authority, backlink profile, and content quality using tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush. 

How Does Google Evaluate Website Content for Expertise?

There are no set criteria published showing you how to demonstrate expertise in Google EEAT – it would be too easy to game the process if everyone knew for sure. 

Google uses a team of quality raters worldwide to monitor websites and check for quality signals. Although their exact methodology is kept under wraps, here are some factors that prolikelybably affect their scoring:

Quality of website content overall

The big question is, how can you optimize content for expertise in Google EEAT? Gone are the days of stuffing your website with hundreds of articles spammed with keywords. Now, you need to focus on providing quality content that offers real value to readers.  

Backlinks and PageRank

Backlinks from high-authority websites are a clear signal of expertise. If trusted websites are using you as an expert source, they’ve done a lot of the work for Google. 

Want to generate valuable backlinks from some of the top publications in your industry? Linkifi can help. 

PageRank is an algorithm used by Google that helps determine the importance of web pages based on quality. If your pages rank higher in this algorithm, you’ve got more chance of showing up in SERPs. 

Distance to trusted seed sites

Google uses a Link Graph to see how far away your page is from seed sites through links. This is a more advanced feature of PageRank and shows how often your website is mentioned by its list of trusted seed sites. 

It also shows how many links your site is away from those seed sites. For example, if a seed site links to one website, and that website links to yours, you’re one away from the seed site. 

This is a complicated factor, but the easiest way to create signals for it is to get high-quality backlinks on as many trusted sites as possible. 

Anchor text of backlinks

Google uses anchor text as a trust rating and can help classify an entire domain, not just the specific page. When creating links on your website, ensure the anchor text is relevant to what you’re linking back to to help boost your factors. 

Credibility of the author

Authors can create expertise signals independent of the publication. This means every author on your website can be assessed for expertise individually. Here are a few factors that affect an author’s expertise signals:

• How known is the author?
• Does the author have a proven track record of publishing quality content?
• How many pieces of content has the author published?
• Does the author have any user ratings or feedback?

Another interesting thing is that authors can have multiple expertise rankings for different topics. So, if you have an expert who wants to guest post on an unrelated topic, their previous expertise signals may not affect your website. 

Sentiment analysis via Natural Language Processing

Google’s NLP is highly effective at picking up positive or negative sentiments from users. So, if you have negative reviews or comments about your authors or website in general, this can negatively affect your expertise signals. 

Transparency of the author on the About Us page

A high-quality About Us page on your website is essential for boosting expertise. You need to show that you are transparent about the authors of your website. Stanford University published a paper on boosting website credibility and highlighted the importance of an About Page:

“Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. Next, find a way to convey their trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios that tell about family or hobbies.”

If your website doesn’t have an About Page or it lacks valuable, transparent author bios, now is the time to add one. 

Need to Bulk Up Your EEAT? Let Linkifi Help

Now you know how to demonstrate expertise in Google EEAT, it’s time to put these tips to work. Building up your EEAT signals is a process that takes time and consistent effort. You must publish regular, high-value content, create an authoritative website showcasing your expertise, and get quality backlinks from high-authority publications. 

If you don’t have the time to boost your EEAT signals but want the incredible benefits it provides, let Linkifi help. 

As your dedicated PR company, we’ll get high-value backlinks from leading publications, helping you boost your EEAT signals with zero effort. 

We’ll even take care of your content creation and add a proven About Page to your website to showcase your expertise. Get started today.