E-E-A-T in practice: showing Google and customers you know your field

E-E-A-T comes from the guidelines that external quality raters use to assess Google’s search results. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. The first “E”, experience, was added by Google at the end of 2022.

It’s worth starting with what E-E-A-T isn’t. Google says plainly that it isn’t a single ranking factor, and raters’ assessments don’t change the positions of specific pages. Search systems are, however, meant to reward content that shows these qualities. So you can’t “add E-E-A-T” with a snippet of code. What you can do is build a website that makes clear who is behind it and why they know what they’re writing about.

Trust matters most

In the guidelines, trust sits at the center, and the other three elements are there to support it. For a B2B company that means a few very down-to-earth things:

• Full company details: legal name, registered address, company registration or tax number, contact details. Not just a form.
• Prices, or at least price ranges. A company that says nothing about cost makes people guess.
• A privacy policy and terms that match what the site actually does with data.
• Publication and update dates on articles, so readers know whether the information is current.
• No claims that can’t be checked. “The best agency in the country” lowers trust rather than building it.

Experience: show that you’ve done it

Experience is the difference between an article written from other articles and a text by someone who has been through it. It shows in the details:

• your own data and screenshots instead of generalities,
• a description of what didn’t work, not just a list of best practices,
• specific numbers, dates and tool versions,
• photos from real work instead of stock photos.

If you have nothing to say about a topic from your own experience, that’s a sign it may not be worth writing about.

Expertise: answer the next question

An expert’s text differs from a beginner’s guide in that it anticipates the reader’s next question. “What does it cost” is followed by “what drives the price”, then “how do I compare offers”. Content that stops at the first question leaves the reader back in search.

Precision helps too. Correct names, specific thresholds and clear assumptions show expertise better than length does.

Authority: what others say about you

You can’t write authority onto your own website. It’s built elsewhere:

• mentions and links from industry publications,
• talks, podcasts and guest articles,
• customer reviews with a name and company, with their consent,
• case studies where the client is named.

Authors with real names

Every article should have an author who exists. A byline with a full name, a short note on what they do and a link to the About page or a LinkedIn profile. “The editorial team” isn’t enough, and an invented expert with a stock photo is a risk once someone checks.

What to avoid

• Mass-produced content without editing. Since 2024, Google’s spam policies explicitly describe the abuse of publishing large numbers of pages made mainly to rank in search.
• Articles on every topic. A company that writes about everything looks like it specializes in nothing.
• Reviews and testimonials that can’t be verified.

A checklist

1. Does the site show full company details and a way to get in touch other than a form?
2. Do articles have a named author and a date?
3. Does the content include your own data, examples or screenshots?
4. Are customer testimonials signed?
5. Does the site answer questions about price?
6. Does anyone outside the company write about you or link to you?

Good content starts with knowing who reads it. If you don’t have that yet, start with a B2B persona built from customer interviews. And if you’d like us to run content and SEO together with you, see how we approach marketing.