Three Keys To Google Rankings: Expertise—Authoritativeness—Trustiworthiness

At the risk of showing my age, today’s topic takes me back to middle school and a song any guy that age would never forget—a parody by Weird Al Yankovic that turned a Michael Jackson great from “Beat It” into “Eat It.”

Just EAT it. (If you are over the age of 40, I apologize for the earworm.)

While the actual content of that song is irrelevant to the topic of improving your Google search rankings, the title fits: EAT it. EAT is an acronym for “Expertise—Authoritativeness—Trustworthiness,” three key factors Google uses to assess the usefulness of information on webpages.

This infographic from Spiralytics outlines how to use the EAT approach when creating web content.

Much of what the infographic details meshes with our approach to creating quality content, not only for your own website and business blog, but for other channels as well, including social media, contributed thought leadership articles, and downloadable materials including ebooks and reports.

Read up on more ways to improve the quality of your content using the EAT approach:

• Lessons From 15 Years: Successful Marketing Relies On Great Content
• Quality Counts When Crafting Blogs & Website Content
• Lessons From 15 Years: Use Surveys & Original Research To Fuel Content
• Ban Buzzwords From Your Website Copy
• What Stories Can Your Data and Marketing Content Tell?

Content that meets the EAT criteria—expert, authoritative and trustworthy—gives Google reasons to point searchers toward your website with confidence. That can increase your website traffic, decrease your bounce rate and further improve search rankings when visitors remain and interact on your website.

Other ways of maximizing your search results rankings include being sure to include relevant keywords in important places on each page of your website, including headers, page title, meta data, image file names, alt text and more. If you are looking for an easy way to plan and organize your on-page keyword usage, download our On-Page SEO Planning Template. It can also be used to audit your existing pages.

What other questions do you have about SEO, content creation and using original research and data for your integrated marketing strategy? Schedule a time to chat with me if I can be of assistance as you refine your 2021 plans.