Google E-E-A-Tupdate is a guiding principle to evaluate the page quality of websites. Here is everything you need to do to incorporate E-E-A-T to optimize your SEO.
Assume that you’ve launched a new business. You need to get the tax filings done.
Whom do you approach?
A Chartered Accountant specialising in business tax filings or some random guy who read three posts from personal finance?
The former, right?
Considering how obvious it is, you wouldn’t think a second time to make that choice for a CA. We all need the most credible information from an expert source for our queries.
Google has implemented this as core criteria to evaluate website rankings in the SERPs. We just know it by the term E-E-A-T.
So what exactly is Google E-E-A-T update? And how crucial are the E-E-A-T guidelines for hyperlocal discovery in the SERPs?
This article will analyse the importance of E-E-A-T for local businesses and how to improve and demonstrate E-E-A-T to increase discoverability in local searches.
In 2014, Google published a document titled “Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines,” through which the company announced that the content that emphasised experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) would greatly influence higher positions in SERPs.
While many would mistake E-E-A-T as an algorithm or an update, It Isn’t. E-E-A-T is a principle. It was conceptualised from multiple algorithms to evaluate the overall quality of a web page.
E-E-A-T is particularly important for Your money your life (YMYL) content because of the crucial implications it could have on the livelihood of the user upon applying the unreliable information from the SERPs.
While Medicine, healthcare and finance are a few of the categories that fall within the YMYL content spectrum, the influence of E-E-A-T goes a long way, and Google business SEO isn’t an exception either.
But what if you aren’t interested in performing all this technical E-E-A-T stuff? What if you were to simply add your business to Google and not bother about these optimizations?
As long as you don’t want to drown your business deep in this ever-competitive game of SEO, you may want to tweak certain things to be perceived with a better image in the SERPs.
Your business delivering great service to all your customers doesn’t imply better visibility on Google. Things work a bit differently with the internet.
Businesses that can establish themselves as expert authorities within their niche through better content marketing strategies can quickly gain an advantage in the SERPs.
Providing top-tier service to your customers yet missing out on the opportunity to expand your customer base would be quite an unfair take from a business perspective.
Still confused?
To comprehend the Influence of E-E-A-T over Local search engine, you must first be aware of what this principle means for local businesses.
You already know that E-E-A-T is a principle and has its roots of influence over every web page incorporated with Google.
Let’s now see how E-E-A-T works things out regarding hyperlocal discovery.
As per Google, local businesses should create content that positions them as an authority, both within their Industry and immediate geographic vicinity.
To put it in simpler terms, to reap the benefits from local search, your venture must be the entity that the algorithm associates with a particular “Near me” query within your area of operation as a business.
Here’s how Google works it out with E-E-A-T for local search engine:
1. Prominence — Prominence is about the information Google can look up about the business, such as blogs and web content or ratings and reviews.
2. Relevance — The sync ratio between the user’s search query and the appropriate service, solution or product offered by a business.
3. Distance — The proximity of a local business enlisted with Google business optimization and that of the location of the user who searched for a “Near me” query similar to the service offered by the business.
Prominence and Relevance are the Key E-E-A-T aspects to notice here. Both these factors share a common conception that your business should have a solid content game incorporated into your marketing strategy to attain hyperlocal discovery.
Sounds complicated? Keep reading.
Here are four simple ways following which you can create EAT content for your local business’ hyperlocal discovery:
The attention span of customers has only shortened over the years. Your home page is where visitors from different sources are redirected. A compelling copy backed by authentic proof of work can quickly establish you as a credible brand within the consumer’s mind.
Better the home page, better the retention and engagement rate. Guess what that means for Google? Expertise and Authoritativeness.
Customers are the ones who “Spill the bucks”. Hence, it’s pretty obvious for them to have many questions.
Perceiving the product/service through your customer’s eye, identifying all the potential queries and addressing the same through the FAQ section of your business website is a tried and tested way to develop consumer trust and loyalty.
From the consumer’s end, trustworthiness towards a business goes a long way toward promoting the service everywhere across the Internet. The prominence factor comes into play here to eventually compensate for your E-E-A-T efforts with hyperlocal discovery.
Blog posts make up the big chunk of what we know as Google. So, utilising long-form content to demonstrate industry experience, especially within the area of your business, could quickly put you on Google’s whitelist for “Authenticity”.
While gaining traction with blogs looks like a long-term game, there are a few ways you could do it from your side. They are as follows:
Include a detailed Bio for all your staff writers.
Utilise authors who are experts in the field and have gained credibility writing content for the same.
Ensure that industry experts review all your content. E.g., Food articles reviewed by a doctor or dietician.
As a business owner, if you wish to drive in the potential leads to your local outlet, Google business optimization is your answer. GMB does a great job attaining hyperlocal discovery to local ventures as a platform solely to promote local businesses by analysing traditional success factors like reviews, ratings and customer response.
If you aren’t still using GMB, it’s high time to make a business profile for your local business. With the right optimisations, Google My Business will transform your already established business into a thriving one.
Now that you’re aware of Google E-E-A-T update and its crucial for hyperlocal discovery, it’s time to incorporate a similar content strategy for your business website.
Designing a content plan and implementing it for every website vertical seems possible. But committing to constant updates, customer queries and round-the-clock availability on GMB…
Sounds like a hassle, doesn’t it?
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