What is E-A-T? And How Can my Ecommerce Site Improve it’s E-A-T Score?
Online shopping has absolutely dominated the modern world. These days, it’s likely that a huge proportion of the public would rather quickly order their new jeans online than have to look through shop after shop to find the ones they want.
This means, although we don’t like to say it, physical shops and stores are slowly going out of business. So, I’d strongly advise anyone who is setting up a business or currently owns a physical store to sell products, to jump on the ecommerce band-wagon!
If you’re going to run a successful ecommerce site, you are going to need to have a good E-A-T score. But how can you, if you don’t know what on earth E-A-T score is or what you need to do to improve it? You can’t is the answer to that! Luckily for you though, we’re here to tell you all about it.
What is E-A-T?
E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness and is something that Google’s algorithm scores your content against. Basically, you want your E-A-T score to be as good as possible. This is so that Google ranks your ecommerce site higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
These algorithms are created to mimic ‘search quality raters’ to analyse how entertaining, relative or informative your content would be to the average human reader.
So what does Google look for as evidence for ‘Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness’?
Expertise
In order to not only impress the algorithm but also visitors to your site too, you need to show them that you’ve got a detailed understanding of your industry. This will mainly come from having quality and original content on your website relating to the products that you sell. This could be a page showing where you source the materials/ingredients from that goes into your products or it could be a post explaining exactly how your products are made.
For example, no one would want to buy bath products from a site that seems to know nothing about cosmetics or hygiene. It’s far more likely that they’re going to buy their bath bombs from a site like Lush, which has pages like these;
A page literally showing exactly how their products are made. Google would see this as perfect content for evidencing industry expertise.
Who you work with
One way you can improve your site’s expertise is by choosing who your manufacturers are and whether or not your site should be linking to theirs. If you are working with a manufacturer whose reputation isn’t that great, then that will reflect badly on you and should you link through to their site, you could harm your site’s ranking.
Whereas, if you were working with a manufacturer that has a great reputation and appears near the top of page one for relevant searches, this would only have a positive impact on your site’s E-A-T score if you are seen to be affiliated with them.
Using ‘industry-influencers’
Another way to help prove your expertise is by asking influencers who are recognised for their knowledge in your specific industry to give you some good recommendations. Then with any luck, your potential customers will recognise your chosen influencer. This could make them think – ‘Well if they use it, then it must be good!’.
Site speed
No body likes a slow website. But no body hates slow websites more than Google themselves. If your website slow and has poor functionality, visitors will automatically think that it’s unprofessional and not worth their time. Not only this, but Google looks at site speed as another ranking factor, so they won’t be to keen on your website either.
If you want to check how quick your website is, we would advise popping your web address in at pingdom. See how long it takes for your website to be load. If it’s anything over 3/4 seconds, then that is a concern.
Authority
Okay, so Google believes your site demonstrates a high level of expertise through quality content and site functionality. That’s brilliant. But in order for it to rank your site really highly, it is also looking for authority.
This section of the E-A-T score is much easier for bigger companies, like Lush to perform well in. Any website that’s been running for a number of years, has consistently received high levels of traffic and sales through the site over the years will be recognised as having authority.
Smaller and newer businesses will naturally find it harder to score as well on this component. This is because authority comes over time. The only real way of speeding up this process is by gaining backlinks to your site from reputable sites within your industry. But again, link building certainly isn’t easy – but that’s for another post!
Trustworthiness
Having your customers and potential customers feel like they can trust you is such a vital part of the ecommerce world. If your brand doesn’t come across as something users can trust, then your sales will be pretty much non-existent. To make sure that your ecommerce ticks the ‘trustworthiness’ box of your E-A-T score, you need to consider a few questions;
- How easy is it for users to contact you?
- Are there confirmed reviews and ratings from past customers?
- Do your product description pages answer any questions that users may have?
- Is it easy for your customers to understand the return process?
- Are there any off-putting surprises at the checkout?
Think about how your ecommerce site answers these questions. If the answers to any or all of the above aren’t positive ones, then you have some work to do. The best starting point would be to look at how you can encourage more of your customers to leave reviews. This could be achieved even just by offering an incentive (discount on future purchases, entry into a competition) to anyone that leaves a review.
On the other hand, your happy that none of those questions are a concern for you, then great! Both potential customers and Google should view your site as trustworthy!
Summary
Overall, having a good E-A-T score benefits your ecommerce site immensely. Plus, the better your score gets, the more successful your ecommerce brand could become! Just consider, from our tips, how you can better each individual section of your E-A-T score to impress search engines and be ranked higher by Google.
