Scottsdale Web Design – Debunking Misconceptions on E-A-T (Part 2)

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In part 1, I previously discussed about the importance of E-A-T. Along with it, there are 4 myths busted. First, I started off with E-A-T is not part of Google’s algorithm, no such thing as an E-A-T score, followed by E-A-T is not a ranking factor or a ranking element, and some sites need to strongly center on E-A-T. More on this: Debunking Misconceptions on E-A-T (Part 1)

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  1. Concentrating on E-A-T won’t cover up technical problems.

To be honest, if you focus on E-A-T, it won’t make the problems go away. For example, page speed is under technical SEO. If your website is slow, of course, the ranking would be low.

Concentrating on E-A-T would not make speed issues go away. You will still acquire a low website ranking. So, focus on earning high-quality backlinks, on-page optimization, technical SEO if you want to gain a better SEO performance.

For those sites that were affected by algorithm upgrades, E-A-T should be taken to account here as well. There are many site issues like the general site quality, user experience problems, site’s architecture, page loading time, and many others. By fixing this, Google can index the website better.

  1. E-A-T is a thing of the past.

Truthfully, there were many things written about E-A-T, and experts asserted that this started around August 1, 2018 core update. Nevertheless, it was actually presented in 2014 edition of the Quality Guidelines of Google. Since then, Google spent efforts at enhancing the integrity and reliability of the Google search results. Hence, lessening the instances of fake news.

  1. The Medic update is NOT the ‘E-A-T Update’.

On August 1 2018, Barry Schwartz called an update the “Medic” update.

However,  many misinterpreted this as the “E-A-T Update,” which is not just wrong but deceptive as well. For the record, E-A-T is not the source of the decline of the performances amongst websites.

  1. Including author biographies does not affect ranking. 

The usual suggestion to enhance E-A-T is to make certain that all content has a section for the author. Ideally, every author should have a dedicated page or biography.

Some speculated that authors should make it clear and mention specific academic backgrounds and credentials. This will give people the assurance that the author is giving them good and trustworthy content. In Google’s Quality Guidelines, the raters must look into every author’s biography to know how much they know about the topics.

Nevertheless, John Mueller in one of the Webmaster Hangout mentioned that the author biographies is not a technical need.  Also, they do not need a particular kind of schema mark up to be efficient. Instead, he suggested on accomplishing a short user analysis. This is to truly assess if the readers find the authors are competent enough to write about the topic.

  1. E-A-T is not the sole cause of any decrease in website performance.

Meanwhile, the latest core updates predominantly affected sites specifically in the the medical or the healthcare sector. Since the August 1, 2018 core update, a lot of these sites have identical E-A-T levels.

However, the problems lie beyond the E-A-T scope. Having too many ads, and slow page loading times could be the culprit. So, you can’t blame it all on E-A-T!

  1. E-A-T won’t take effect instantaneously.

Since E-A-T affects the ranking indirectly, working on its’ conceived trustworthiness is a time consuming task. Therefore, it needs a lot of effort and valued time to accomplish. It won’t magically take effect!

 

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