How Ecommerce Websites Can Achieve E-A-T Quality – Google SEO Guidelines

Google E A T
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Expertise, Authority, Trust, i.e., the E-A-T concept of Google always remains one of the hottest and most-discussed topics among the SEO experts. This is a wide and in-depth content that has so many elements and guidelines for the website owners. There is a lot of information available over the web when it comes to normal websites and blogs. The E-A-T quality guidelines are pretty much straightforward when it comes to general business websites.

On the other side, eCommerce owners and SEO practitioners are mostly confused about how to cater to the E-A-T guidelines. As the digital retail website’s structure is totally different from the normal sites, there are certain changes in the rule while optimizing E-A-T.

Ecommerce websites fall in the YLYM (Your Money or Your Life) category, which can directly influence the customers. So, as a business owner or an SEO executive, you need to understand how to achieve higher E-A-T quality without worrying about it much. In this article, we will comprehensively check out how it can affect your webshops and certain things you need to keep in mind while doing the SEO.

What is E-A-T? And Why Do You Need It?

First, talk about the E-A-T for eCommerce: What experts actually say?

 

E-A-T is Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

 

Google’s quality rater recommended rules say that expertise, authority, and trust are fundamental components of how the search engine looks at content quality. And, when it comes to E-A-T for product categories and product collection pages, the concept is different from the in-depth content and blog articles.

For an eCommerce site, authoritative content on the product pages is not sufficient. Apart from the content, all other features and interactive elements of the page add to the sites’ perceived user quality.

You need to optimize certain elements and have a good E-A-T score for your digital retail sites. Digging deep into the commerce website’s ratings, experts say that the purpose of the page should be of very high E-A-T, the reputation of the store should be high, and the page content of the product and categories should be relative genuine and accurate quality.

Let’s start with the ‘Expertise’ criteria for an eCommerce site:

Google EAT: How to Create Content That Google Wants - Moz
Source: MOZ

E-Expertise

No matter if you are running a full-fledged dropshipping store or a niche-specific retail store, the expertise can be defined in numerous ways. The factors are broadly categorized into two major things:

  • Reputation and expertise of the manufacturers
  • Expertise and reputation of your brand as you are selling products by your store name.

Other than this, the expertise is also calculated by the third-party indications and social signals towards your brands. These signals include articles talking about your brand, customer reviews on independent websites, social media mentions of your brand.

If a famous personality is talking about your brand and recommending it to others, then it’s a good E-A-T signal for your company. This will help you gain an edge over others. The expertise part also emphasizes traditional marketing done for your company. These things include traditional PR, news articles, or independent reviews by other industry experts.

In simple terms, understand it like a classic pre-Internet era marketing— you sell good products, people love it, they will talk about it, and they will share references with their people. Expertise in this context is something that you will earn from your peers, and it’s not like something that you can generate on your own.

Straightforwardly, if you want to earn more reputation for improving E-A-T, you need to gain more recommendations. Be it from customers, business partners, independent review sites, experts, and so on. Focus on your brand management across all touch-points to hone the expertise section of E-A-T. Below are some tips that will help your eCommerce brand to thrive online and set you apart from the others:

  • You need to actively and network with popular people of the industry and create value-driven content that will benefit all.
  • For achieving more recognition, involve your brand in charities, sponsorships for good work, and more.
  • You can also send products for reviews to individuals with a good social following and ask them to publish your product review. This will do a word of mouth marketing for you, and it’s a good tactic to practice.

Less online reputation leads to mistrust among people and search engines also. If your brand is not recognizable across multiple sources, search engines will not reward a higher ranking. It would be best to keep in mind that paid or sponsored content is not considered by the raters during the evaluation process.

Read also 8 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Use Social Video To Build Authority.

Improving the authority of your eCommerce site

A – Authority

Authority revolves around the content of the website and the brand with whom you are working. The information available on the product and category pages should reflect authority rather than one fit all content.

The content describing the products or a package of multiple products should come from the authority that knows it inside out. In simple terms, the product description and other product-related content should come from the manufacturers. This is because when you use manufacturer-provided content, there are very few chances of information error. There will be no lack of accuracy when customers read the content to understand the product before buying.

Many signals are there that Google’s raters use while evaluating the authority of a web-shop. The raters also know very well how to flag the misinterpreted information that is intentionally uploaded for the sake of creating authority.

A smaller startup or a company that is having a limited but loyal reach will be counted under good authority for a better perspective. This is because they offer good SEO services and accurate content and have limited by engaging social media accounts.

If a website is working on a micro niche and selling only 2-3 products, the authority will automatically increase as there is no cut-throat competition. But on the other side, if someone is running a full-fledged and big site with less authority, there are very changes in getting higher rankings on the search results.

A large website will have multiple manufacturers, vendors, and suppliers. And it’s not possible to have a good reputation in the market. This becomes the reason for getting a lower authority ranking for an eCommerce website that is generally involved in drop shipping and multi-vendor selling.

If a website is selling some very costly luxury items and no reputation in the market, in such a case, the site will receive a lower authority ranking. If you plan to launch your online luxury item store, you first need to establish your reputation online and work on branding. This will help you gain an edge and help you with better ratings from Google’s raters.

You can take the example of luxury watchmakers and understand how it works. Numerous people wear their watches, promote them by posting pictures, and improve their authority. You will find many blogs written on those luxury watches, and all these things work in the brand’s favor without spending any money.

Understanding the trust factor of eCommerce sites

T – Trustworthiness

Trust is the last but definitely, the least element of the E-A-T Quality, and brands should build more trust. A business owner needs to understand that trust is a critical emotion that can only be earned and not bought. No big brand can go out and buy trust, no matter how much marketing cash flow they have.

The raters evaluate your website for the trust factor; they basically seek as much as available information from the customers’ side. The information may include reviews, social media mentions, images shared on the Internet, blogs written about your brand or a particular product, and so on.

You can gain good trust among your customers and potential buyers by generating helpful content and providing quality service. If users find answers to all the questions on your site, the trust metric will automatically go up.

The simplest way is to write genuine and in-depth content that describes everything about the product or your services to gain higher trust. If you have some additional charges apart from shipping, don’t let the customers quote them with the tag of hidden charges. Instead, whatever charges or additional fees you have, clearly mention it and let customers know about it.

Be it return policies, shipping details, shipping duration, contact information, manufacturer’s detail, make sure you have mentioned everything that your customers deserve to know.

Another way of securing good trust is to have many positive reviews on independent popular sites. This will help Google raters understand that you are a legit site and have good followership.

How Ecommerce Websites Can Achieve E-A-T Quality: Conclusion

These were some important tips that you need to know about improving E-A-T for your eCommerce website. If you don’t have an in-house SEO team, it’s better to opt for suitable SEO packages to improve the E-A-T profile for your brand.

 

Bonus video: Is This Niche YMYL? (5 Questions You Should Ask!)

Frequently Asked Questions about Google E-A-T

For those who are too lazy to read. Mainly to summarize the article:

What is EAT in SEO?

E-A-T is Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are 3 simple to understand but not easy to achieve factors, which google consider judging your website. Black Hat SEO is in the post, now to achieve high organic traffic, you have to work on maintaining your E-A-T.

What is EAT content?

To make your content E-A-T, you need:

  • to be an Expert in this niche
  • to have an Authority from other Expert in this niche
  • enough Trust from customers (reviews, feedbacks, ratings, quotes)

Is EAT a ranking factor?

Yes, Google started to talk about E-A-T in 2013, and every algorithm update since then focuses on improving Google’s knowledge about your site’s Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

What are YMYL pages?

YMYL means “Your Money or Your Life”. Any page, including content that can affect someone’s health, happiness, safety, or financial stability, is a YMYL page. Google is more strict ranking these websites. Articles should be trustworthy, the website has the authority, and the writer is an expert in this field.

Thank you for reading!