Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year – Source
On the 1st of August, Google tweeted about the latest updates they are coming up with the release of broad core algorithm update. Where Google’s Danny Sullivan has said better content means higher rankings where the key to creating better and more relevant content can be monitored by reading Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines. One can use the tool to assign quality scores to the searching results for any specified query to be made. The scores do not relatively impact the search results but they are made in use to develop and honouring the algorithm. If simplified, this all means that the page that receives high-quality ratings from the raters will be the kind of page that Google wants to rank well.
There was a strong emphasis on E-A-T which stands from Expertise Authority and Trustworthiness. If you boost the hypothetical E-A-T score, it will lead to improving the chances of ranking well in the searched results.
Let us see how one can start doing things right:
1. Author name with biographies for every content
The part of understanding the belonging of content and who is responsible for a website is among the few major points of assessing E-A-T. Particularly pages like YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) if can be created by trusted, authoritative experts on the topic at hand will yield results.
(Source)
In the pages like landing pages and on the product page, the user must be able to navigate and find the desired results easily. But in the case of Blog Post, there is a necessity of keeping Author’s Bio in order to check whether the reader can trust the writer on the basis of his experience.
The guidelines also stated EXPLICITLY:
When you have different authors on the same website, the reputation and EAT of the creators of the main content is very crucial. – Source
2. Need to build Personal Branding
There has been a careful guideline for the raters that in many cases the reputation information is not available and thus it does not state that it is not rich in the cases of small organization and business. They also said that, ”
At the same time, they state that “You should expect to find reputation information for large businesses and websites of large organizations, as well as well-known content creators.” Moreover, there is more to the state where one more condition was laced saying, “lacking for the purpose of the page, the Low or Lowest rating is appropriate.”
Raters were asked to review reputation which is created by third parties. It is advised not to rely exclusively on the content created by the author themselves. This leads to having a positive personal brand becomes vital if one wants the quality score for the page to trump other in one’s category.
If the content maker has a reputation for spreading misinformation, it will lead to limit his ability to rank well.
Moreover, lacking in reputation score will not hurt you in the worst manner, whereas it means the authors with a positive reputation will outperform them.
Charging your Personal Brand:
- Fleshing out social media profiles by interacting with influencers and the audience.
- You must connect to your audience by sharing your store.
- Creating thoughtful leadership by placement on trusted platforms.
This will lead to owning a positive reputation in the industry and you might end up with third-party endorsements too. All this falls under the bucket of being reliable, a trustworthy expert on the topics which you are discussing with the world.
3. A check over E-A-T Content
While the guidelines for the raters have stated carefully that the websites with multiple authors must be evaluated on a page to page basis, on the basis of E-A-T of individual authors, and the same for the website or the brand which got mentioned heavily throughout the guidelines.
Interestingly, a low E-A-T content in one of the pages will not directly affect the EAT of the other pages but it can negatively impact one’s site’s overall reputation. You can consider it like scoring marks for your subjects. Getting low marks in science won’t affect your marks in Science, but there will be an effect on the overall percentage of the semester.
Taking this into consideration, all the pages will be re-evaluated and with low EAR reputation, the traffic will be removed. Pages with high E-A-T and significant traffic deserve special consideration.
Now the fastest plan of action under these situations will be to rework on your page is to boost the E-A-T score.
4. Investment on Technical Security
Trustworthiness is not something which depends on reputation and accuracy. It is vast and majorly security is also one of the major concerns. For example, when a shopping checkout page has an insecure connection, it gets listed as an example of a page that must receive a “LOW” rating.
Now since chrome is pulling efforts in marking all the HTTP pages that are without an SSL certificate as “NOT SECURE” and does not directs to an HTTPS URL is on a thin line when we are talking about the future of E-A-T score.
Through the guidelines, “VERIFIABILITY” has been taken very seriously. For extreme cases, the page is also offered with ‘LOWEST’ example:
- When a page is not owned by ABC but uses ABC’s logo.
- If the page does not offer a company name or the physical address.
- And all the Google Checkout logos along the BBBs are fraudulent.
Getting a verifiable badge and certificate will help you to earn a ‘HIGHEST’ quality rating.
5. Moderate User-Generated Content
Now if you are thinking that a User-generated content won’t necessarily mean a low E-A-T rating.
They were smart enough to guideline the rater that, “UGC can even be the best fit in some circumstances“.
In regards to UGC, all the YMLM pages which feature the UGC must be heavily moderated or must be edited with warnings and should provide links to the reputable sources or must contribute with verifiable experts on the topics which they add and highlight in some or other way.
Now, if all the possible guidelines are met, then the page will be considered as a ‘HIGH’ quality rating.
Does not matter id the content is UGC and the author is not certified, for example of the topic is about DIY Building a Dining Table, then let the author say what he wants to and hyperlink the page with some expert’s take on the same topic.
The contributors are always more than happy in this niche hobby and can be taken as much of an expert on the topic as anybody else, and the broad number of contributors will make the page useful and knowledgeable for the searchers.
Community management can also be introduced to play an important role in not only moderating YMLM pages but also in encouraging such discussions in order to boost E-A-T for niche topics that only communities like these can asses adequately.
Conclusion
Well the latest change to Google’s quality rater guidelines, the subsequent core algorithm update, suggests that expertise, authority, and trustworthiness play a very important role in the rankings now. This is a very good step taken by Google to monitor the content and to avoid HOAX.
You can incorporate these five elements and this can boost your SEO capability in order to secure your position in the search results.