Have you been optimizing your site for Google EAT? If not, there’s still time to get started!
You didn’t have to be an SEO professional to know that it has been quite some time since Google Page Rank was considered relevant for any type of ranking context whatsoever. Once one of the best indicators of how much Google trusted a website or how much authority they had, in recent years astute SEO specialists have noticed that it was getting updated less and less. Now, Google has even made it official that Page Rank is dead and gone and it’s not ever coming back.
So what can be done when it comes to figuring out how much authority or trust a website has going for it? Read on to learn more.
First Of All, Size Does Matter
While publishing hundreds of posts full of fluff that don’t really say anything really won’t help you, it is still important to have a lot of content. Smaller sites aren’t respected as much as larger ones and a large website of 1,000 solid pages of really good content will be seen as having more authority than one with 30 pages, and that builds trust since Google and other search engines can see that you have continued to add truly great content over and over and over again.
Domain & Website Age
This isn’t something you can control at all, especially early on, but the good news is that the longer you keep at it with building a website at the same domain, the more age it is going to have and that does make a difference when considering Google EAT factors. Older websites have more authority and trust than newer ones do, assuming they have never been penalized by Google.
The returns on this do diminish after a certain point, but generally speaking the older the website, the better.
Have An Active Social Media Footprint
Social media has been important for years and this isn’t just with SEO, but since social media is such a major part of being online, search engines tend to be very suspicious of any major website that doesn’t have any type of social media footprint. They should be – who doesn’t have a basic Facebook page or Twitter account nowadays?
Combining any SEO efforts with social media is critical to creating a profile that inspires trust with the search engines instead of encouraging doubt.
About Us & Contact Us Pages
These two pages are one of the few things that can be controlled immediately on even the newest website. Whether a small local business, developing a blog with a following or creating an authority website, you want to have clear pages that give people a way to contact you, as well as an about page that clearly states who is behind the website or blog and why that person (or those people) are authorities in their field.
Having these pages fully filled out is a great easy way to show the search engines why your website should be trusted.
The Quality Of Your Content
Nothing else in this article really matters if you’re not throwing down extremely high-quality content. This isn’t just about SEO, it’s about proving you know what you’re talking about and that others should listen to what you have to say. Be sure to optimize your content for the correct search intent as well. The overall quality of your content is extremely important when building both trust and authority.
In Conclusion
While Page Rank was always a decent indicator, the truth is that by following the various examples on this page and taking care to develop the best website possible without cutting corners or bending the rules and given enough time and effort you will develop the type of website that will have a lot of clout with search engines like Google.
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