E-A-T Checklist for SEO

A useful checklist for you to review when auditing your brand’s web presence against your competitors in relation to the E-A-T principle.

Is your brand seen as an expert, authoritative and trustworthy to Google? Read our checklist for more information.

Authorship credibility

• Is your website content being authored by authors with expertise, authority and trustworthiness footprints on the web?
• Have you created author pages for your website contributors that outline their expertise?
• If you search “author name” topic ~site:yourwebsite.com in Google do your authors have much relevant coverage?

Backlinks & ‘linkless’ links

• Does your website have a backlink profile that is stronger than those of your competitors?
• If you search for your brand name using content analysis tools (e.g. BuzzSumo) or Google News does it return a greater number of results for your brand versus your competitors’ brand names?
• Are you getting regular rel=follow backlinks to your website from credible (high authority) referring domains?
• Are you getting a greater number of unlinked mentions than your SEO competitors on credible domains?
• Is your website linked to, or brand name mentioned in the correct context, on websites you expect Google to ‘seed’? (‘Seed’ websites are manually assigned by Google quality raters – e.g. New York Times)

Review sentiment

• Do I have a review generation strategy in place to facilitate a medium / high velocity of positive reviews for my brand / website? Check websites such as the following…
  • Yelp
  • Better Business Bureau
  • Amazon
  • Google Shopping
  • Google My Business
• Do your competitors have a much greater number reviews online?
• Are competitors generating a much greater velocity of positive reviews than your brand?
• How does your brand compare to your SEO competitors on websites such as Better Business Bureau or TrustPilot?

Wikipedia presence

• Does your brand have a Wikipedia page?
• Do your competitors have a Wikipedia page?

Content

• Can you increase your perceived E-A-T scores by publishing original research that gets mentions on authoritative websites?
• Are you able to summarise new third party research and attract links?
• Can you connect with journalists via HARO or via Twitter to offer useful information?
• Are you working to develop genuinely valuable relationships with authorities in your field for future collaboration opportunities?

Forums

• Are you monitoring forum discussions for relevant questions where you can offer useful information on credible forums likely to have an impact on your E-A-T score?
• Is it evident that your competitors are much more active in forum conversations than your brand?

Brand trustworthiness

• Does your brand have lots of negative reviews online complaining about staff, refunds or other issues?
• Is it easy to find customer complaints about your brand online via Google?

On-site page content

• Does your website content reflect expertise, authority and trustworthiness?
• Is your About Us page easy to find for users and crawlers?
• If you would like a free consultation on your brand’s web performance in relation to the E-A-T principles, please reach out to us.