7) Writing with Expertise, Authority, and Trust
As discussed before, several best writing practices help ensure content that is valuable for awareness and support.
In this discussion, we will understand how to ensure quality content alongside best writing practices through incorporating expertise, authority, and trust within the content.
Background
The internet is a primary place where users worldwide look for information and support. The topics searched up include those that fall into the health, safety, or financial domains. Consequently, false information or content that has quality problems such as those that violate best practices can be potentially damaging to significant levels thereby negatively impacting a user’s happiness, health, or wealth. To buffer this, the Google algorithm (and Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines) used to display top content pages considers factors that include: Expertise, Authority, and Trust to ensure protection from low-quality content. These factors are commonly known as EAT in short.
As mental health is part of the health domain and is a significant area searched, the EAT factors are vital to consider when developing content.
Since 2018, the EAT factors not only apply to a website’s main content pages but are also considered when reviewing the content creators (i.e. authors).
EAT and How To Incorporate EAT into Website Content:
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Expertise:
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When considering the expertise factor for website content, expertise refers to the extent to which the website or organization is known and has the suitable credentials and any expertise supporting factors such as awards or external recognition.
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Expert Content is Researched Based: consider stepping into the shoes of your audience and perform a keyword research whilst thinking about their needs. Through your keyword research, grasp why the audience has searched for those keywords (topics). Knowing the intent of the topic queried helps you guide content on solutions and helpful information that can not only meet but exceed the user’s needs.
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Expert Content is Comprehensive yet Digestible: Try to ensure your content is simple and has good formatting, avoid confusing structures or things that are too difficult to understand unless you break down and explain difficult concepts.
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Expert Content is Supplementary: After answering the main intent of a searcher’s query or possible needs regarding a content topic, supplement your content by thinking about further supporting/supplementary content that could further enhance and support the topic: this is when back-linking comes in handy! Audit your existing content and identify which of your published pages can be backlinks to the new content piece. Think of what further topics/content pieces can be branched from existing content and include them on your content development agenda.
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Authority
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Authority refers to the ratings the website and its content get on the basis of genuine ratings as well as content relevance.
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Authoritative Content is Cited: External pages rely upon and cite the content as their sources of information. Citations include external back-linking as well as mentions on the news or social media.
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Authoritative Content is Widely Shared: This is where marketing can help boost the content to build authority. Content with authority is regularly and widely shared and mentioned across social media. Engagement efforts can help drive this factor.
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A Wikipedia Page Boosts Authority: A Wikipedia page for the brand, organization, or even people in a company helps boost authority.
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Brand Authority Matters: A signal to authority is when users search your brand name for their content needs.
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Trust
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Trust refers to validity - a website can have validation pages such as an About Us page or other main pages. Trustworthiness is also determined through positive reviews and user support.
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In terms of content, trust can be boosted through the inclusion of an author's biography as well as external sources being cited, especially if they are other authoritative sources.
Feel welcome to share your opinions on each of the EAT factors or ask any questions!
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This post is brought to you by the Content Development and Marketing Program, find out more information about the program here
Interesting and useful information. Thanks.
QS: is there anywhere we can see how Google has evaluated our content on the EAT parameter?
@Creamyyy Great question, in general Google does not disclose how the algorithm exactly works, though EAT is a great parameter to keep in mind especially for YMYL sites (including medical information/health-related ones) - a general fact is that EAT ratings are also determined by several algorithms so it is an important aspect regardless.
While Search Quality raters may manually review our EAT factors, they are not themselves a ranking factor yet they do determine quality content and so indirectly play a part in the ranking which is based on algorithms that are looking for certain content aspects - think of EAT elements necessary as for content design or content creation guidelines.
I like that the EAT acronym makes it easy to remember so one can always have these factors in mind when creating content. EAT your words before you post!
@Bluebottle Love your take on the EAT concept.
It was very funny.
EAT your words.
I do not think, that is what @SoulfullyAButterfly had in mind, for the EAT concept, however.
Maybe it is something to consider, for future CDM,Trainees/Students, however.
Just joking of course.
What did you learn today,from @SoulfullyAButterly, CDM Course?
Well we learn to EAT your words.
How do we do that?
I have no idea.
Please ask @Bluebottle or @SoulfullyAButterfly to teach you.
Oh, how I love Content Development.
It is really fun to do.
Welcome to the Content Development and Marketing Course, @Bluebottle.
We are so glad to have you here.
We hope you learn a lot.
We also hope you have some fun, as well.
@Happy900 Hi Happy, I think what @BlueTurtle5 was meaning was that we should check if all of our words i.e. content meets EAT before we launch/publish it 
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Yep, that's what I meant :) Read and digest what we have written before putting it out into the world to make sure it meets the criteria set forth.
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Nice
@SoulfullyAButterfly I never knew this, this was really cool and helpful to learn.
@SoulfullyAButterfly
I didn't know about this yet. It was very informative and interesting! Thanks for sharing
This Is great , thankyou for sharing such helpful insights and information. Good to know how EAT standards help in filtering quality content .😊
@SoulfullyAButterfly
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Wow, I have never heard of EAT before joining this course. It is very important to be aware of this when writing online contents.
Thank you for the notes. I'm also enjoying reading others queries and answers on this thread.
@kindLemonade thank you for this feedback!
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Oooh! Really interesting to know that a Wikipedia page boosts authority!
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Thanks for sharing tips on how we can incorporate EAT into our website content! I honestly didn't know any of this before joining the CDM course 
@SoulfullyAButterfly
The concept of "EAT" styled articles is the most useful way of writing, especially in this field and style. I will try to style my writing to reflect those principles.
