Inside: How to beat the e-e-a-t: gaining Google’s trust so your blog can be as successful as possible

Over the years, Google has put systems in place that help to decipher if the content is trustworthy. If you write content and google trusts you, that content has the opportunity to rank higher on the search engine.

If it deems you as untrustworthy, you will have a hard time growing your blog.

As time progressed, so has google’s system. So today, I am going to explain everything you need to know in order to beat the E-E-A-T.

I’m guessing you may be a little confused at this point, so let me explain.

Beat the E-E-A-T: A Guide to gaining google's trust

The E-E-A-T is googles system that decides whether you are a trustworthy site or not. There are certain ways that you can work around the E-E-A-T in order to be as successful as you can.

I will be honest; it can be a pain.

But by the end of this article, you will know how to beat the E-E-A-T or at least make it work for you.

It makes more sense now… doesn’t it?

How To Master E-E-A-T

First and foremost, if you want to read Googles guides and regulations yourself, you download the full PDF from google here. It may take you a bit, but it’s the best way to get up close and personal with the systems behind the world’s favorite search engine.

It is actually not as hard of a read as you’d imagine, and they give real life examples which can be so helpful too!

If you aren’t up to reading that whole thing, don’t worry. I am going to give you the spark notes version in a way that’s easy to read. I’ll go through each letter of the acronym and explain what you can do to pass Google’s test.

For us bloggers, this is like the laser trip wires that we have to maneuver around in order to get our desired outcome.

Okay, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but it’s true!

1. Experience

When you are writing about a topic, do you have first-hand experience in what you are writing about? In terms of difficulty, this is an easy test to pass when you are working on beating the E-E-A-T.

Still, it is important nonetheless.

Having A Good About Page

Higher quality sites will have ‘about us’ pages that can go into detail about the person that is writing. This can explain your experience level and why you may be writing about certain topics.

Basically, are you a REAL PERSON? And do you know something REAL ABOUT THE TOPIC of the site?

Apart from a bio you are sharing that directly relates to what you are writing about, here are some important elements to include:

  • Links where people have mentioned you both relating to the topic and otherwise
  • Links out to experience, education etc that you have had
  • An email address and local phone number where you can be contacted at
  • A real photo of your actual face 🙂
  • A description of your experience and expertise in the topic
  • Any reviews, or testimonials from readers is also an awesome thing to add here.

On top of this, when you are writing articles on the site that are perhaps slightly off your beaten path, you can do a good job explaining your experience in the topic. This seems to be good enough for Google.

Did You Actually Do The Thing?

For those of us blogging in the YLYM (Your Life Your Money) world this is fairly straightforward.

What is YLYM? It is probably most of you! Anyone who is blogging about things in life or money – think travel, lifestyle, food, business, style etc.

For this genre of bloggers Google isn’t looking for some advanced degree situation, but instead that you are the one who had actually had experience with the thing you are writing about.

For instance, are you blogging about a recent trip to Chicago because it sounds cool, or did you actually go to Chicago and now are telling me about it?

You can show this in many ways, here are a few of my favorites:

  • Through unique photos
  • First person text
  • Ensuring your articles always have a unique take on the experience and are not just a replica of what is already online
  • Making sure your content is correct and that there is not anything misleading or incorrect reported
  • Ensuring links in the content are good and active – this requires relooking at old content occasionally to make sure it’s up to par.

I think the goal with this is to limit the amount of misinformation online. I know that can be hard, but hey! At least Google is trying.

2. Beat The E-E-A-T- Expertise

The next letter stands for expertise.

An important note, is that this element of the trust factor with Google refers to the site and not the person. Is this a site that can be trusted as an expert place for this topic?

Let’s talk about how you can prove that from an algorithm perspective.

If you are an expert, Google will want you to prove it by having some sort of degree or level of experience. I know what you may be thinking, ‘but how do I prove this to Google?’. The best way to gain expertise on a site level is to answer all the questions google thinks someone will ask about your topic, fully building out the topic on the site.

A great way to do this is to use the a search tool like SEMrush or Topically.io and put in your topic and drill down to find what are the most asked questions in your area and how you can answer these with informational content that your readers will connect with.

Pay close attention to the reviews and comments that are left on your site. What are your viewers saying about your content? Google is going to keep an eye on this as well.

3. Authority. Photo of hands typing on computer.

3. Authority

Next up, we have authority. The authority of the person or site is based on a few things. First and foremost, Google will need to make sure that you are, in fact, a real person.

I know this sounds funny, but AI these days are insane. I mean, you run this paragraph through an AI detector, and it will probably come back that AI partially wrote it before you ask, yes. This has already caused an existential crisis or two for me.

I was questioning if I was a robot or human… it was a whole thing.

Anyways, here are some things that you can do to prove you are human:

  1. Unique address and local phone to put on the contact page & footer of your site
  2. Have a contact us page that includes the above and Email address for you and 1-2 other departments.
  3. Have the about page be mostly about the company unless you are a personal brand. Link to the author pages here on the about page.
  4. Then have an author page about you. Include author schema on every post on the site.
  5. Ensure your current copyright is showing, as well as links to the privacy policy, terms, and conditions, ADA compliance, etc.
  6. Ensure cookie consent is up and running
  7. Ad compliance with google
  8. Site maps both in XML and HTML (bonus to do this, it helps!)
  9. Show the site is maintained consistently: Work through 404s, orphaned pages, etc.

4. Trustworthiness. Hands typing on keyboard with pink sticky note.

4. Trustworthiness

Last but certainly not least trustworthiness. According to Google, this is the most important factor in the EEAT protocol. No pressure there.

Technically there isn’t much more to be done. That’s because Google will use the three other letters above to rank how trustworthy you are.

However, I do have a few things that you can do to ensure that you are liked and accepted by the Google Gods. That is the goal, isn’t it?

1. Uphold the first three letters

Make sure that you are keeping up on the first three letters. Just because you crossed them off one time doesn’t mean you will never have to see them again. They are like the gift that keeps on giving in that way.

By maintaining those three letters, you are remaining consistent, and as you will learn in the next portion of this list, consistency is key to earning Google’s heart.

2. Post Consistently

This is something that will not only make you more trustworthy to Google, but it will grow your blog as well. When you post consistently for a long period of time, Google will register that you are serious about what you do and that they can depend on you to put out content.

This will make your articles and site more searchable.

It will also give your readers more content to read, so you can have more opportunities for growth. Isn’t that great?

3. Make Sure Your Site Is Up To Date

Do a check every couple months to ensure your site is up to date. Check things like – do all the links work, are your plugins updated? Things like this to show Google you are honestly running this and present.

Beat the E.E.A.T

So there you have it; you now know how to beat the E-E-A-T! It’s not as hard or as nerve-wracking as it sounds.

It just takes a little bit of hard work and dedication. But hey, if you have a blog, then I think you already have those two things covered.

If you want to learn more about how to use Google to help your blog grow, then I have a few articles that I think you would benefit from, like how to get your new post to rank on the first page of Google.

I know that Google can seem like this overbearing big brother to those of us who are just trying to make a living, but it’s serving a purpose.

These systems help to keep us safe in a number of ways that we don’t even think about. So thank you, Google!

Read their actual details on this topic here!

(Yes, I am sucking up for brownie points. Do you think it’s working?)