How To Apply E-E-A-T To Your Site & Boost On-Page SEO?

To curb the spread of false information and maintain high content standards, Google introduced the concept of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust — known as E-E-A-T (originally E-A-T).

This framework stems from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which stress the need to deliver trustworthy, insightful, and accurate content while offering a positive on-site experience.

When you consistently meet user needs and earn their trust, Google is more likely to boost your visibility with better rankings and more traffic.

These principles are especially critical for “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) topics — content that affects people’s health, finances, or safety. In such cases, credibility and accuracy are non-negotiable.

Valuable Content, User Trust, and Seamless Experience

In the world of E-E-A-T, your primary focus should be on delivering content that genuinely meets the interests and needs of your audience — content that brings real value to the table.

It also needs to be reliable, easy to understand, and simple to navigate. Accuracy and trust are non-negotiable.

Building such pages on your site can lead to improved performance in Google’s search rankings.

Of course, achieving this isn’t always straightforward. It starts with knowing exactly what Google considers “quality content.”

Defining High-Quality Content

Every piece of content you publish should have a clear goal, and that goal should be to help your audience, whether they’re customers, clients, or readers.

What Makes a Page High-Quality?

Based on Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, top-performing pages typically feature:

• Strong signals of experience, expertise, authority, and trust (E-E-A-T).
• Ample, high-quality main content with helpful and descriptive titles.
• Clear site details and transparency about who’s behind the content (and for e-commerce or financial pages, reliable customer service info).
• Hosting on a site recognized as a leading source in its niche.
• A solid reputation for the content creator, particularly when different from the site owner.

When it comes to YMYL content, the best-performing pages are those that go above and beyond, showcasing exceptional levels of E-E-A-T across the board.

What Counts as Low-Quality Content?

Simply put, low-quality content is everything high-quality content isn’t.

According to Google’s guidelines:

“Websites or pages lacking a beneficial purpose — including those made without the intent to assist users, or those that may promote hate, cause harm, mislead, or deceive — should be rated as the Lowest.”

In other words, while great content can lift your site in search results, poor-quality pages can just as easily drag it down.

If your content is misleading, lacks direction, or disrupts the user experience, don’t expect Google to prioritize your site in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Common Traits Of A Low-Quality Page

According to Google’s standards, here are some red flags that signal a page is of low quality:

• The page lacks sufficient experience, expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
• The main content is weak, thin, or poorly written.
• There isn’t enough core content to fulfill the page’s intended purpose.
• The headline is clickbait, misleading, or overly dramatic.
• Distracting ads or irrelevant elements interfere with the user’s ability to focus on the main content.
• There’s limited or no clear information about who created the content or who runs the site—without a valid reason for being anonymous.
• The site or its content creators have a slightly negative reputation based on trustworthy sources.

Bottom line: Low E-E-A-T = low content quality. Poor content leads to poor SEO performance, which means fewer clicks, fewer conversions, and a struggling online presence.

E-E-A-T In The Age Of Generative AI

The rise of generative AI has changed the landscape of content creation dramatically.

While AI makes it incredibly easy to churn out large amounts of text, it’s also led to a flood of low-value content that lacks depth, accuracy, and originality.

To maintain strong E-E-A-T, content should be grounded in trustworthy sources, real experience, and subject matter expertise.

AI can assist with ideation or structure, but your voice, perspective, and insights should always lead the way.

In a world full of AI-generated noise, brands that lean into human-driven content and authentic expertise are far more likely to earn visibility and trust in search.

How To Strengthen Your Site’s E-E-A-T?

Wondering how to ensure your content not only provides value but also supports your SEO goals?

Here are a few key strategies to help elevate both content quality and credibility.

1. Use Clear Bylines and Author Bios

Ever clicked on a blog post credited to “Admin” or some vague username with no real identity? Didn’t inspire much confidence, right?

Google encourages content that shows “journalistic professionalism.”

That starts with clearly stating who wrote the piece. Every article should include a byline — the author’s name — and ideally, a short bio that establishes their qualifications.

This small step can go a long way in signaling expertise and trust to both readers and search engines.

Identify All Your Content Contributors:

Whenever possible, give credit where it’s due by highlighting the background of everyone who writes for your site—whether it’s blog content, in-depth articles, or even Q&A responses.

Got a contributor who’s a known authority in your niche? Make that clear to your readers.

You can create a dedicated author page featuring their bio and a collection of their published work, or simply include a brief author box at the end of each article.

Many top-tier sites, like Search Engine Journal, do both—giving their authors visibility and building trust with their audience.

2. Make Your Contact Info Easy To Find

When someone lands on your site, can they easily figure out how to reach you?

Is your customer support just a click away?

Keep in mind, E-E-A-T doesn’t just look at your content—it considers your entire website. One of the simplest ways to build trust is by clearly linking to your About and Contact pages, either in your main menu or footer.

If those pages don’t exist yet, it’s time to add them—today.

3. Remove or Revamp Your Low-Quality Content

If you’ve got content that’s outdated, irrelevant, or just downright poor in quality, pruning it can quickly boost your E-E-A-T.

You’ll need to decide whether to update or eliminate older content.

Removing content should always be a last resort, but if it’s truly necessary, don’t hesitate.

Ideally, you’ll identify any content that’s lacking in authority and credibility, then find ways to improve it.

Here are some strategies to enhance E-E-A-T on older pieces:

• Have an expert or authority in the field rewrite the content.
• Incorporate quotes, expert opinions, statistics, and credible citations.
• Make small edits to fix readability issues, grammar, and structure.
• Add more depth or detail to make the content more comprehensive.
• Revamp the title to make it more engaging and accurate.
• Introduce visuals like images, infographics, or charts (and optimize them for SEO).
• Consider adding a video to appeal to different learning styles, which can also increase time spent on the page.

Although the process of improving content can be time-consuming, it’s worth the effort. This is especially important for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages, where high-quality, authoritative content is essential.

4. Build A Strong Brand Reputation

A solid brand reputation is essential for both boosting your business and enhancing your E-E-A-T.

One effective way to achieve this is through thought leadership—sharing valuable insights that resonate with your target audience.

Publishing high-quality thought leadership content is key to attracting, retaining, and expanding your customer base. It also strengthens your authority in your industry and earns trust from Google.

Thought leadership can be incredibly impactful when done correctly, but to get it right, it requires expertise, experience, and authority—everything that E-E-A-T is all about.

Focus On What’s Best For The User

Is E-E-A-T a direct ranking factor?

That’s not the right question to ask, in my view. Let’s put ranking factors aside for a moment and shift our focus to your audience.

If you’re following Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, you’re creating valuable, high-quality content that meets the needs of your audience and helps them achieve their goals—whether that’s learning something new or making a purchase.

In other words, you’re delivering a positive user experience.

Anything that benefits the user is also good for improving your visibility on Google, which ultimately drives the traffic and conversions you’re aiming for.

Want to boost your website’s rankings and visibility on Google? Engage Coders offers SEO services that focus on enhancing your site’s authority, expertise, and trustworthiness to drive better search engine results.

Contact us today!