E-A-T and Quality Content

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Search Quality Raters

Search engines often highlight the need for high-quality content. 

But what exactly does that involve?

Google, for example, hires an external team of people called Search Quality Raters. The Raters’ task is to evaluate the quality of content for several different search terms. Raters also help Google to categorize information to improve its systems, by establishing what language a page is written in, or what is important on a page.

The output from the Raters’ findings is then fed into Google’s AI algorithms to help evaluate not just the web pages reviewed, but all web pages in Google’s indexes.

Google’s guidelines on creating quality content are extensive, and publicly available, and understanding this area is becoming increasingly important in SEO.

Quality Rater Guidelines

There are three core elements to focus on when considering Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines. 

These are:

• Page quality
• Understanding mobile user needs, and
• Needs met 

We can now look at each of these in a little more detail. 

Page quality 

First off, it’s Page Quality. Google’s Raters will look at the purpose of a webpage. The purpose of a page is the reason, or reasons why, the page was created. Most pages are created to be helpful for people, and many are created to make money. So, at a high level, the first step is to understand the page’s true purpose. 

Another factor to consider for Page Quality and quality content, is Google’s acronym E-A-T or, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. The amount of E-A-T that the Raters attribute to the page will be based on the perceived expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, as well as the main content itself and, of course, the website.

Keep in mind that there are high E-A-T pages and websites of all types. Even gossip websites, fashion websites, and fan forums can show evidence of high E-A-T. In fact, some types of information are found almost exclusively on forums and discussions, where a community of experts can provide valuable perspectives on specific topics. This means that if you have a website about architecture, for example, the main content should come from an ‘expert’ in that field if you want to achieve a high E-A-T rating. 

Some topics require less formal expertise. Many people write reviews of products or restaurants, while others write about their life experiences on blogs. These ‘non-experts’ may still be considered experts from a content point of view, based on their proven experience of subjective topics. 

When the content holds potential to impact a person’s happiness, health, or financial stability, Google classes these as YMYL pages, or ‘Your Money or Your Life’. Examples of such pages include content that focuses on news and current events, finance, and online shopping. It’s important to understand that Google’s Raters have very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages. That’s because the content of these pages can really affect the search user. So, if you want to achieve a high Page Quality score, and if your site contains YMYL pages, your content needs to satisfy high E-A-T standards. 

Understanding mobile user needs

There is also a high emphasis in Google’s guidelines on mobile usability and how a web page looks on mobile. Just like we have mobile-first indexing, Google is alluding to mobile-first usability, although it stops short of using that exact terminology. However, the guidelines do point out that our smartphones ‘should make tasks easy, even for mobile users with a small screen device’. 

Google also emphasizes that users ‘want results right away, at that moment, and may not be able to spend a lot of time to find what they are looking for’. So clearly, from a user experience perspective, the Raters are placing a lot of weight on your mobile performance.

Needs met

The last section of the rater guidelines is needs met. When assessing needs met, Search Raters are asked: “How helpful and satisfying is this result?” 

Looking at Google’s guidelines, we can see that Raters can respond in several ways:

• Fully Meets, is a special rating category that only applies to certain queries and results. All or almost all mobile users would be immediately and fully satisfied by the result and would not need to view other results to satisfy their need.
• Highly Meets, describes results that are helpful for many or most mobile users. Some users may wish to see additional results.
• Moderately Meets, describes results that are helpful for many users, or very helpful for some mobile users. Some or many users may wish to see additional results.
• Slightly Meets, describes results that are helpful for fewer mobile users. There is a connection between the query and the result, but not a strong or satisfying connection. Many or most users would wish to see additional results.
• Fails to Meet, means the result fails to meet the needs of the mobile users. All or almost all users would wish to see additional results. 

Meeting the needs of searchers is important, and, as we can see here, it’s also key in terms of satisfying Google’s Search Quality Raters. Before optimizing a page for SEO, you should therefore ask yourself: 

• How well does this content meet the needs for the keywords I’d like to rank for? 
• And does this content satisfy the same intent, or a similar intent, when compared to other pages that rank on the first page of Google?

The bottom line is that if your page does not get a Highly Meets or Fully Meets rating from a mobile device, even with the best keyword optimization, it’s unlikely to rank.