If you’re creating content for your website and hoping it performs well on Google, you’ve probably heard of SEO. But another piece of the puzzle is just as important: trust. That’s where E-E-A-T comes in.
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are the signals Google uses to assess whether your content is helpful, safe, and credible, especially for topics that impact a person’s health, money, safety, or significant life decisions.
Interestingly, Google has clarified that you can’t simply “add” E-E-A-T to a page like a technical SEO setting. It’s not a feature. It’s a principle—something you build into your content, your people, your structure, and your reputation over time.
When Should You Worry About E-E-A-T?
You don’t need to obsess over E-E-A-T for every blog post, but it’s essential if your business falls into a “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) category. This includes industries like healthcare, finance, legal services, education, and even nutrition and fitness. If your content helps people make big decisions, Google wants to know it’s coming from a trustworthy source.
Even outside of YMYL spaces, E-E-A-T helps build brand trust and credibility. For example, professional services, B2B consultancies, and any brand built on reputation benefit from showing real people, real experience, and clear transparency.
What Principles of E-E-A-T Apply to All Content?
Even if your industry isn’t highly regulated, the core ideas behind E-E-A-T make your content stronger. Transparency builds trust. Practical advice builds credibility. And human stories create a connection.
Start by showing who you are. Use real names, add bios with qualifications, and link to professional profiles. Be helpful and answer real questions clearly—avoid fluff. Stay consistent with publishing and keep content up to date. And don’t be afraid to include your own or your team’s perspective; experience matters.
What Does E-E-A-T Look Like in Practice?
When writing content with E-E-A-T in mind, think about clarity and proof. Are you showing the reader why they should trust you?
This could mean adding author bylines with short bios, publishing testimonials from actual clients, or referencing trusted external sources.
It also includes the basics that many businesses overlook:
- privacy policies,
- cookie compliance,
- contact pages,
- and secure website connections (HTTPS).
These aren’t just technical add-ons—they signal to users and search engines that you take your business seriously.
How E-E-A-T Supports SEO
E-E-A-T isn’t a ranking factor in the traditional sense. You cannot optimise it with a plugin or keyword tweak. Instead, it works in the background, helping Google decide which pages to trust.
Strong E-E-A-T supports your SEO by making it easier for Google to rank your content higher, especially in competitive or sensitive industries. It also supports your audience by showing them you know your stuff, making them more likely to convert.
Want to explore the strategy behind this? Read our Content Strategy for SEO guide.
A Practical Example: Building E-E-A-T in Healthcare Content
A local health clinic struggles to rank on Google for its most important services. After adding clinician bios, publishing client testimonials, and creating experience-based blog content their staff wrote, the clinic saw a 64% increase in organic traffic in just six months.
More importantly, they received more qualified inquiries. People were engaging more with the content because it felt real, credible, and personal.
E-E-A-T isn’t something you tack on to a page
It’s something you build over time.
It’s a mindset rooted in transparency, credibility, and genuine expertise. Whether you’re publishing your first blog or revamping a central service page, showing that your content is created by real people with real knowledge makes a difference.
Start with what you have, focus on clarity and trust, and build from there. Authority stands out in a world of generic content.
