7) Writing with Expertise, Authority, and Trust (OUTDATED)
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
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Feel welcome to share your opinions on each of the EAT factors or ask any questions
@SoulfullyAButterfly Helpful information thanku so much
@SoulfullyAButterfly
It was very informative. I agree that conetent needs to researched well upon as it should have factual information otherwise the readers can be easily mislead into believing false information as many people do these.
@SoulfullyAButterfly
It is very important to check the reliability of what we share with others, thank you for this article
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Hi, can you please simplify this part? I didn't understand it properly as I'm not very aware of certain terms.
Also, some of the cites we visit don't have ratings. Then how can we figure out if they're trustworthy? Please suggest some other ways as well.
Thank you.
sites*
@Yougotmyback thanks for these questions
back-links are hyperlinks to your own content, which when clicked show similar content - so in this case we are talking about "internal" backlinking, i.e. linking our own site content (even if written by others). For example, if you are writing an article about self-care myths and include some wellbeing affirmations to tackle myths too, some possible internal links on 7 Cups include an expert article with a self-care guide, a self-care challenge on our forums, and so on. We might even say that self-care is easier if we have a community to support us and link to our chatroom or similar community resource.
Now when it comes to Trust, as mentioned, some indicators are having a good About Us page, having social sites that help you understand they have some authority over their content, or even About the Author pages where you can see they are experts. meaning Trust is also connected to E and A elements. When it comes to objective facts/statistics, just like in any other research article, we do want to try quote (external backlink) to trustworthy or established pages such as the APA for mental health facts/stats for example.
I hope this helps clear things up!
That makes sense. Thank you for answering!
The information about EAT is incredibly helpful. Articles need to be reliable, transparent, and honest to establish trust. To be reliable, we need expert quotations and thorough research to back our content. To be transparent, we must cite sources from reputable authors. For trust, we need positive reviews and strong credibility.
@SoulfullyAButterfly
It was hard to understand this post, maybe too much text, I would have shortened it a bit.
What I more or less understood
Expertise: well-researched and credentialed content
Authority: citations and social sharing can build a content's reputation.
Trust: Positive reviews and clear author details help verify the content's validity.
@LotusFury
I feel that a shorten version wouldn't explain the essence of the hard work that newspaper writers, journalist, article writers, and book writers use to establish connection with their specified audience. I can understand where you are coming from though.
I have read and think this will be really helpful during the article writing!
@sleepysalem @SoulfullyAButterfly
My thought on E.A.T is that each serves a purpose when writing, and wanting to engage your audience. Especially with it being an article vs a book. Even though book writers (depending on genre) us their own forms of E.A.T which is a lovely thing to admire/speculate. Thank you for sharing this with us, and showing us a new ward to form connection with the audience.
Extremely helpful, thank you very much!