Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – these three concepts can take you very far when it comes to Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines. Let’s find out why this is important for your business.
Here at ByLaw Media, we remember a time when Google’s Matt Cutts used to announce algorithm updates about keyword stuffing or duplicate content. Since then however, things haven gotten a little more complex from both ends of the spectrum.
As SEO strategists and marketeers got more tactful, so too did Google develop and upgrade it’s ranking factors – all to be able to assign priority and relevance to the 35 trillion pages currently indexed by google for the 63,000 google searches that happen every single second of every single day. Needless to say, in 2021, it’s important for your website to rank well if you want to stack up against your competitors.
We often hear about backlinks, SSL certificates and anchor text, amongst other things – all of which are vital for your company to be successful on google as they are what’s considered to be Direct Ranking Factors. However the ball doesn’t stop there. Whilst it’s vital for your website to be technically compliant with Google’s latest standards, demonstrating E-A-T both on and off your website can indirectly help your site to rank well on search engines. Not only that, Implementing E-A-T in your business’s day to day operation just makes sense from a business and branding perspective and will have a positive impact on you and your customers.
So Let’s break E-A-T down and take a particular look at how it could be of benefit to law firms in the US.
Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness is discussed in a lot of detail in Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines and other official documentation. As such, E-A-T is one of the main factors that Google uses in order to determine the overall quality of a webpage.
The creator, the website and the page content have all become essential to maintaining the best E-A-T rating possible. Google evaluates three main areas in this regard:
- The expertise of the creator of the Main Content.
- The authoritativeness of the creator of the Main Content, the Main Content itself, and the website.
- The trustworthiness of the creator of the Main Content, the Main Content itself, and the website.
Google uses this system in order to be able to deliver accurate, truthful, and useful information to searchers. A simple example would revolve around medical searches related to covid-19, and this is why google ranks results from medical journals, government pages and credible new sites above conspiracy websites and personal opinions, for example. This is how – in extreme contrast to social media platforms – Google maintains trust, credibility and authority when it comes to the results it delivers.
Not all industries are as clearly cut, and not all “experts” have received formal education in the content that they are producing. Google quality rater guidelines go on to explain:
“Some topics require less formal expertise. Many people write extremely detailed, helpful reviews of products or restaurants. Many people share tips and personal experiences on forums, blogs, etc. These ordinary people may be considered experts in topics where they have life experience. If it seems as if the person creating the content has the type and amount of life experience to make him or her an “expert” on the topic, we will value this “everyday expertise” and not penalize the person/webpage/website for not having “formal” education or training in the field.“
So how does this apply to US law firms who are trying to rank well in Google search results?
Well it’s simple. You, your website, and the content you produce needs to ooze Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Your content should be covering a wide array of subjects related to your field and whatever you produce needs to be factual, well written and “fluff-free”.
That’s where we at ByLaw Media come in. Not only will we produce a content analysis and plan SEO-optimized content for your site, but we’ll also look into ideation, creation and outreach of digital PR opportunities and lead generation whilst analyzing your competitors. All this in tandem with a fully fledged SEO & Lead-acquisition strategy that will boost your online visibility significantly.
Need we say more? Get in touch for a free consultation today.