E-E-A-T — experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust — is not a score Google applies to your page. It is a description of what quality raters look for when assessing whether content deserves to rank. You cannot optimise it with a tag. You can only demonstrate it.
Experience is the part most sites skip
Expertise can be learned. Experience has to be lived. A page about running a market stall written by someone who has run one reads differently from a page assembled from other articles — and readers notice within two paragraphs.
Practical ways to show it:
- Specific numbers from your own work: "In eleven projects, the median time to first ranking page was fourteen weeks."
- Photographs you took, not stock images.
- Mistakes you made and what changed afterwards.
- Descriptions of a process detailed enough that a reader could follow it.
Expertise needs a named person
Anonymous content is the norm, and that is exactly why named authorship stands out. A real author page with a background, a photo and a reason to trust them does more than any amount of "we are experts" copy.
- Author byline on every article
- Author page with relevant background and links
- Consistent author across a topic cluster
- Clear distinction between editorial content and sponsored content
If a freelancer writes for you, ask whether they are comfortable being credited. Many are, and it strengthens the page.
Authoritativeness is earned off-site
Being cited, quoted, linked and mentioned by other credible sites is the clearest authority signal there is. You cannot fake it, and buying links is a liability rather than a shortcut.
Things that genuinely move it:
- Original research or data that others cite
- Expert commentary in trade publications
- Being listed in relevant directories and associations
- Consistent publishing on one topic rather than fifty
Trust is the foundation
Without trust, the other three do not count. Trust signals are unglamorous and easy to audit:
- A contact page with a real, working way to reach you
- Clear ownership: who publishes this site
- Privacy policy and terms that match reality
- Accurate pricing, or a clear statement that pricing is quoted
- No invented statistics, testimonials or certifications
- Dates on articles, and updates when facts change
The fastest way to lose trust is a specific claim that turns out to be wrong. The fastest way to build it is to correct that claim publicly.
What YMYL content requires
Pages about health, finance, safety and legal outcomes are held to a higher standard because bad information causes real harm. If you publish in those areas:
- Cite primary sources — guidelines, regulators, peer-reviewed work
- Have a qualified person review the content and say so
- State clearly when something is general information rather than advice
- Date the content and review it regularly
An audit you can run this week
- Pick your five most important pages.
- For each, ask: who wrote this, and what evidence shows they have done the thing?
- Check every specific number — can you produce the source?
- Check the author byline, the contact page and the update date.
- Fix the weakest of the three before writing anything new.
E-E-A-T is mostly a byproduct of publishing fewer, better, honest pages under a real name.
We apply these standards to every article we write — including the ones on this site. See how we work if you want the same review applied to yours.
