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8 E-A-T Signals to Add to Your Website
Today, we’ll talk about what you can do if you believe Google is using E-A-T metrics in its algorithm or if you want to future-proof your website in case it does in the future.
Here are the **eight E-A-T signals** you can add to your website:
## 1. Author bio
One of the most common ways to lend authority to your content is to have it written by an expert. Or at least someone who appears to be an expert. This is why it is advised to disclose your authors rather than have the content written by a brand or a *staff member*.
Currently, the best practice for disclosing content authors is to have them stated on the article page. And then have the author’s name linked to a dedicated author’s bio page elsewhere on your website.
The common things to include in the author’s bio are:
* Photo
* Name
* Job title
* Description
* Social media profiles
* Experience (years in the field, published works, projects, etc.)
* Other articles published on your site
* LinktreeIf you want to go a step further, you can fortify author information with structured data, just to make sure that Google is able to find and identify author information correctly.
## 2. Article date
Google has claimed multiple times that the date of the article and the article freshness in general are not ranking factors. There have been multiple experiments in the SEO community trying to prove or disprove these claims by either changing the dates of all the articles on a website or removing the dates altogether. So far, I can’t say there is a single strategy that works best for everyone.
One thing that we do know is that the date of the article is considered important for getting into Google News and it’s listed in the transparency section of the Google News policies.
Same as with the author, you can use article schema to highlight the date of the publication.
## 3. References
The SEO community is fixated on earning authority through backlinks — getting other pages to link to your page. But, you can actually gain some authority by yourself linking out to other credible sources of information in your field.
Some of the ways you can incorporate references into your pages are by providing:
* Image credits
* Quotes from industry experts
* Properly anchored links within the text
* Dedicated reference blocks at the end of the page## 4. Policy pages
It’s repeated time and again, throughout multiple Google documents, that having easily accessible policy and customer service pages goes a long way towards the credibility and user-friendliness of your website. Quality raters in particular are specifically instructed to look for these pages in order to establish the website’s trustworthiness.
To this end, we recommend creating dedicated pages for all the types of policies relevant to your website and then linking to them from the footer of your website.
## 5. Business details
Kinda similar to the previous point, another signal of transparency is the disclosure of information about the company itself. When you provide goods, services, advice, or even just information, users would like to see who is behind the website. Being transparent about website ownership is a strong E-A-T signal. In the most practical sense, it works because there is someone to hold accountable in case anything goes wrong.
Some of the pages that can help you create a sense of transparency are:
* About (vision, mission, history, competitive advantages)
* Meet the team
* Our office
* Contact details## 6. User-generated content
Having user-generated content on your website is a great way to demonstrate that your website attracts actual users and engages them enough to leave comments and reviews. So it might be worth it in terms of E-A-T to allow visitors to leave comments, reviews, questions, and other types of user-generated content on your website.
On the flip side, user-generated content is a gateway for spam and Google might actually penalize your website for an unkept comment section. Make sure to take measures against spam on your website, like requiring a login or some kind of verification.
## 7. HTTPS
HTTPS is one of those signals that we don’t have to speculate about — it’s definitely important for Google as is frequently stated through various parts of Google documentation, including Quality Raters Guidelines. Recently, HTTPS is featured as one of the page experience factors, along with Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, and interstitials.
If you don’t yet have HTTPS enabled on your website, check with your hosting provider — most of them have a free SSL available, although enabling it might sometimes be tricky. If not, you can also obtain a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt, although it has to be refreshed every six months.
## 8. External signals
This is a bit of a cheat because external signals are not added to your website per se. But external signals are still important for your overall E-A-T profile and here are two of them that you can adjust.
### Backlink profile
The quality and size of your backlink profile are about the only E-A-T signals that Google can measure algorithmically. While growing the size of your backlink profile is a very long-term commitment, the quality can be improved relatively quickly.
### GMB listing
Google My Business is now the ultimate business directory and the key place you can go to to learn about a local business. The quality of your GMB profile, i.e. the fullness of information, the number of reviews, and the average rating are factored into ranking on Google maps, as well as across other Google surfaces.
Naturally, demonstrating E-A-T goes a lot deeper than creating a few extra pages on your website. For starters, the content itself has to be good before there is even a question of whether it’s credible. And it’s best to involve actual experts in creating the content too. So the advice here is mostly for those who have high-quality and expertly content and need to communicate it to Google.
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1 Reply
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Some good points here, definitely following the may update relevance, transparency and ultimately quality within best standards of SEO management is key
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