Did you get the pun? If not, you may have found your way to this content by accident, but we hope you have your “learn’n cap” on cause school is in session for content creators!
It seems that Google and other search engines have been on an expedited algorithmic update schedule as of late. What used to occur once a year or every couple of years is now on what seems like an almost monthly rhythm. Every time we see SERPs calm down, there seems to be a new reason to panic.
One of the updates that are still haunting some site owners’ dreams was the Google E-A-T update. It drastically increased the search quality and helped pinpoint the search intent of results in the first few pages of a SERP, which was great for users and Google, but also made things much more difficult to create content that ranks. (Especially for small affiliate sites.)
Below, we’ll cover what E-A-T is and how to adapt your content strategy to ensure you’ve got this ranking factor covered!
In the end, we’ll share a bonus secret that a lot of site owners totally ignore.
Table of Contents
What is SEO friendly content?
SEO-friendly content is content that is designed to be easily found and ranked by search engines. This type of content typically includes keywords and phrases that are relevant to what people are searching for. It is the corners stone of any organic focus content marketing efforts.
Essentially, it’s content created to help USERS answer their queries. Make sure your piece of content is created for the user and not the search engines.
What is E-A-T as per the Google Search Engine?
The acronym E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness”. Google uses this acronym to describe the type of content that it considers to be high quality. In order for a piece of content to be considered E-A-T, it must be created by an expert on the topic, it must be authoritative (meaning that it is accurate and reliable), and it must be trustworthy (meaning that the author has good intentions).
To achieve SEO success you want to ensure you’re creating content that meets these important Google guidelines.
Why Should Your Content have High E-A-T Scores?
Content that has high E-A-T scores is typically more trustworthy and reliable than content with lower scores. High E-A-T content is often created by experts in their field, and as such, is more likely to be accurate and up-to-date. Additionally, high E-A-T content is often more well-researched and thoroughly vetted than lower-quality content. As a result, readers can feel confident that they are getting accurate information from reliable sources when they read high E-A-T content.
How to improve E-A-T scores:
There are a few key things you can do to make sure your quality content is seen as high quality by Google:
• Make sure your content is well researched and accurate
• Cite (and link) your sources
• Write in a clear, concise style
• Avoid using jargon (or define industry-specific jargon for newbs)
• Be transparent about any conflicts of interest
What are the benefits of writing SEO friendly content for search intent?
SEO is the holy grail of website traffic. Millions of sites are on the treadmill of content creation, but very few are aware of or working on the E-A-T best practices. High-quality content paired with Google E-A-T metrics has become the only way to make sure your content ranks and drives traffic.
SEO-friendly content can help improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages
SEO-friendly content is simply content that is optimized to rank well on search engine results pages. This can be achieved through various means, such as using the right keywords, providing relevant and useful information, and making sure your website is easy to navigate.
How can it improve your website’s ranking:
SEO-friendly content can help improve your website’s ranking by making it more visible to search engines. When your website ranks higher in search results pages, it becomes more likely that people will find and visit it.
What are some tips for writing SEO-friendly content:
Some tips for writing SEO-friendly content include using the right keywords, providing relevant and useful information, and making sure your website is easy to navigate. You can also try to promote your content through social media and other online channels.
SEO-friendly content can help improve the usability of your website
SEO-friendly content is content that is designed to be both informative and search engine optimizable. This means that it not only provides useful information to readers but also uses keywords and other strategies to help improve your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
How can it improve website usability:
One of the benefits of SEO-friendly content is that it can help improve the usability of your website. By using keywords and other optimization techniques, you can make your site more easily found by potential customers or clients. This can lead to increased traffic and, ultimately, improved sales or conversions.
What are the benefits of improved website usability:
There are many benefits of improved website usability, including increased traffic, higher conversion rates, and better search engine rankings. Improved usability can also lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
What are the elements to focus on when you write SEO friendly content?
If you were to search for “on-page SEO checklist” you’d be greeted with thousands of results that all state just about the same information. From content structure to tools you can use to boost SEO and help get an edge against the Google algorithm, but that might make you feel overwhelmed.
So we simplified it all for you. There are many in-depth articles on this site regarding writing for SEO, but the basics are as follows:
- Title: The title of your blog post should be catchy and relevant to the topic and include the keyword you are targeting.
- Headings: The headings and subheadings help to break up the text and make it easier to read. They also help Google to understand the structure of your article and should include supporting terms, topics, and keywords to your main keyword.
- Body text: The body text should be well-written and informative. It should provide value to the reader and be relevant to the topic. This is where you should shine by adding your own info or spin on the topic. Differentiate yourself from all the regurgitation on the same info that’s out there.
- Images: Images can help to break up the text and make your article more visually appealing. They should also be relevant to the topic. This is also a great place to include relevant terms in the titles and alt tags. The more relevancy you feed to Google and other search engines, the more they will be willing to serve your page as the query’s best option.
- Links: There are 2 types that you can focus on:
- External Links: Too many SEOs focus all their time and attention on this spot. When talking about external links, we’re talking about other sites on the internet that are pointed at the content you’ve written to give you a boost. This doesn’t always lead to better SEO, in fact, many of our clients come to us looking to fix issues created by bad link building. If your SEO strategy is external link heavy then your content isn’t where it needs to be and you should be determined to create high-quality content that search engines will like!
- Internal Links: These are where you should focus the most of your effort if you’re just starting out. Content-based SEO with a strong internal silo will get you further in a shorter amount of time than just about anything else. Internal Links can also help to improve your article and site’s SEO by making it easier for Google to find related articles on your website, which leads to more pages and keywords being indexed.
How to write SEO-friendly content?
When you finally focus on the writing part, you need to understand what search engines are looking for and how to give them what they want.
Start by doing keyword research and adding those SEO keywords to the content, including in the title, in the body, and in the images of your content.
You should also make sure to use other marketing strategies, such as social media marketing, to help promote your content and get it seen by as many people as possible. By getting clicks to your articles, you can send Google and other search engines a sign that your content doesn’t suck and increase your value in their ranking algorithms.
How to write it:
Here’s a short list of a few things to keep in mind while you optimize your content for SEO:
- Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions.
- Use relevant keywords throughout your content.
- Structure your content using headlines and subheadings.
- Include images and videos.
How to Make Your Website E-A-T-friendly?
The term E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” and it’s a Google quality rating system that is used to help Google understand the content quality of a website.
How to improve your website’s E-A-T:
There are a few things you can do to improve your website’s E-A-T rating.
1. Make sure your content is written by experts in the field.
2. Make sure your content is well-researched and accurate.
3. Be transparent about who you are and what your qualifications are.
4. Build trust with your audience by being honest and providing value.
How to measure the success of your SEO-friendly content?
There are plenty of tools out there that you can use to track the performance of your content, but nothing beats getting your data “straight from the SEO horse’s mouth” if you will.
Google Analytics:
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand.
Google Search Console:
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. We live our lives in GSC. It’s one of the most powerful tools anyone looking to increase their site traffic has at their disposal. It can give you the search volume of every term your site is ranked for, by page and keyword, and so much more. Best of all, it’s free!
Things to keep an eye on when creating E-A-T friendly content:
Click-through rate:
The number of clicks on a specific link is divided by the number of times that link was exposed to users ( CTR = # of clicks # of impressions). This one is something to keep an eye on. Once a page starts to drive traffic, if the CTR is low, you can adjust the page title and meta descriptions to help entice users to the page. Higher CTR = higher rankings!
Bounce rate:
The percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). The higher the bounce, the less Google and other search engines will favor your page. As your CTR rises, this is the next thing you want to keep an eye on. The higher the bounce, the lower the rankings…
What are the common mistakes to avoid when writing SEO-friendly content?
There’s no use in trying to improve your SEO rankings if you can’t understand the basics. Here are some rules to follow and mistakes to avoid the next time you create content for your website.
1. Not understanding what SEO is: SEO is the process of optimizing a website for Google search with the goal of earning higher web traffic levels and improving the visibility of the site.
2. Not knowing your audience: It’s important to know who you’re writing for and what they want to read, this means you may have to do some research to understand a user’s search intent. Write content that’s appealing to your target reader. Don’t create content for the sake of getting a keyword on your site.
3. Not using keywords effectively: Use relevant keywords throughout your SEO content so that Google can match your page with relevant searches. But don’t stuff keywords – this will only hurt your chances of ranking high in search results. There are plenty of tools that focus on the “On-page” portion of your content in the hopes of getting you to rank well on Google.
4. Not making headlines and meta descriptions count: Your headline and meta description are two of the most important elements of SEO-friendly content. Make sure they’re interesting and action-oriented to make your content more enticing to readers.
5. Ignoring alt text: Alt text is used by Google to “read” an image and understand what it represents. You need to make sure that your content is well written, but also be sure to include alt text for all images on your website so that you can add that extra dimension and become a master of the content-based SEO process.
What are the future trends in high-quality content?
After several updates over the past few years, taking into consideration all the content published on the internet, Google has put more and more emphasis on its effective E-A-T algorithm. It created a set of Google search quality evaluator guidelines for new and existing content that it uses to evaluate the quality of a website’s content.
Content-based on E-A-T is important for SEO because it helps Google determine which websites should rank higher in search results. If your website has high-quality, expert content that is trustworthy and authoritative, it is more likely to rank well in Google search results.
There are a few future trends in SEO-friendly content that you should be aware of:
1. User experience will become more important than ever before. Google wants to make sure that users have a positive experience when they visit your website, so it will increasingly reward websites that offer a great user experience.
2. Mobile optimization will be crucial. More and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet, so it’s important to make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices.
3. Voice search will become more popular. As voice-activated assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home become more popular, people will use them to perform searches on the internet. This means that your content needs to be optimized for voice search.
4. Visual content will be increasingly important. People are more likely to engage with visual content than text-based content, so it’s important to make sure your website includes plenty of visuals.
5. Personalization will be key. As the internet becomes more and more crowded, it’s important to make sure your website stands out from the rest. One way to do this is by personalizing your website’s content for each individual user.
How can I learn more about SEO-friendly content?
There are many ways that you can learn more about SEO-friendly content. You can read articles and blog posts, as well as watching Youtube videos on the subject. Or if you like learning from a specific person, you can attend webinars and conferences, or take an online course.
We caution you to do a little digging on who you’re getting your info from as there are many snake oil salesmen out there that can have a negative impact on your sites. The right SEO to learn from will have case studies and write about this topic on a frequent basis.
You can also hire an SEO consultant like PBD to help you understand how to create content that will rank well in search engines, or better yet, do it for you!
If you’re interested in learning more about how your content is ranking or current content trends, we’re happy to hop on a call to ensure that your content is doing its job! If not, we can build a plan for you and help you optimize for SEO to make sure your content pieces trend up and to the right!
For 15+ years now Adam has helped business brand, plan, and grow.
With a background in media buying and specializing in data-driven marketing he founded the Painted Brick Digital Agency to act as your in-house marketing and advertising department.
“Cookie cutter doesn’t work in a world that is constantly evolving.”