By now, SEO is a very familiar acronym to anyone who cares about being found on the web. But have you heard about EAT? And no, we’re not suggesting that having 3 square meals a day will improve your Google rankings.
Defining EAT
Google defines EAT as Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness of the person who created the content and a website as a whole.
Unlike keywords, meta content, Pagespeed and other factors, EAT itself is not a Google ranking factor (at least officially – more on that in a bit). But in the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines , a 168-page document outlining what Google considers to be high quality content, EAT is mentioned almost once per page. So it’s not exactly something to ignore either.
Why You Should Care
For medical sites, Google algorithm updates the past few years have caused some big shakeups. A lot of the focus centers on Google relying on EAT to limit disinformation and provide only factual, well-organized content for topics that can greatly impact the wellbeing of its users.
This leads us to another acronym – YMYL. This stands for “your money or your life” and it’s a broad way of Google categorizing topics that can have an outsized impact on health, wellness and security. For instance if you tell people that ingesting arsenic is a great cure for acne, you’re potentially putting lives at risk. So this type of information needs to be more authoritative and accurate.
Which brings us to your website.
Making the Most of EAT
Do you really have to be the ultimate expert or authority in plastic surgery to get your website to rank? Of course not. But there are many things you can do to show Google your existing authority and credibility. And by doing these things, your site is more likely to continue to rank well.
- Substantiate Claims: If you list any stats or make any controversial medical claims, be sure to list the source.
- Use Structured Data: Also known as schema or rich snippets, this is additional information included on your page to help Google and other platforms recognize what the page is about and who created it.
- Audit External Links: It’s healthy for your site to link out to other reputable sites in the local community, national societies and organizations, and other trustworthy resources. If you don’t have many external links, look for ways to integrate more that you’d like to be associated with.
- Ask for Links: You belong to many organizations and societies. It pays to ask esteemed organizations to link out to your site, as a sign that you are part of their credibility.
- Research Your Reputation: Search for your name or your practice name. What comes up? How are you doing with reviews? Do any scam or fraud sites come up within the first 5-6 pages of results?
- Use the Knowledge Panel: This is a feature Google has integrated right into their search results page for many medical-related searches. You’d recognize it as a box at the top of the page in mobile or over on the right side in desktop. If you search “liposuction” and some information or FAQs pop up in the Knowledge Panel, see where that info originated and look for ways to develop an even better resource that Google might choose to highlight in that area instead.
Steer Clear of These Tactics
Below are some things that can seriously damage your credibility and trustworthiness on the web. We don’t do any of these for our clients, but it’s surprising how many new clients who come our way have one or more of these problems occurring:
- Aggressive on-site ads and dramatic calls to action
- A large number of negative reviews with no response
- Auto-generated or duplicated content
- Content placed on the site only for SEO reasons
- Paid link campaigns that generate a bunch of low-quality links to your site
Will an EAT Increase Lead to More Site Visitors?
Ah, now you’re asking the tough questions. While there is not a 1:1 correlation with improving EAT and getting higher rankings/more traffic, it would be foolish to say there’s no benefit to focusing on EAT factors.
Of course, only Google knows exactly how it’s using EAT to influence search rankings. But we have some clues. Last year, the company published a whitepaper called How Google Fights Disinformation which referenced EAT many times in the context of Google’s algorithms. They have also filed patents for methods of ranking webpages based on authority.
Summing Up
Search engines, social media companies and other online resources have been subject to more government scrutiny in recent years. As a result they are working hard to provide high-quality information to users, or at least flag suspect information. Without a doubt, people will continue to use the web for medical information, and delivering them accurate information can be a matter of life and death.
Improving EAT factors helps you to reinforce your credibility and signal confidence to users of your site. Sure, it’s about delivering Google what it wants, but remember that what Google wants and what actual users want is pretty much the same – a high quality, easy to access user experience they can depend on.