The evolution of the Google search algorithm and that of other search engine algorithms over the last decade has been highly focused on providing search engine users with results that are increasingly relevant to the intent of the user. to increase relevance, search engine algorithms have started to elevate businesses and service providers that post and share content establishing themselves as having expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in their industry niche. Referred to in SEO marketing as maximizing a company’s E-A-T, this concept is used by Google to evaluate the quality of a service provider or business’s page and determine how well it aligns with the search being performed, and the combination of these factors determines where a page ranks in a search engine results page (SERP).
The EAT principle, which gained notoriety and importance following the Medic Update in 2018, is less a ranking requirement and more a concept used to ensure that Google is serving up material that holds a degree of authority and weight to researchers, thus improving the search engine user’s experience and overall satisfaction.
With consumers post-COVID-19 more concerned with a brand’s expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, it follows that SEO marketing professionals should be doing everything they can to create content and landing pages that maximize E-A-T for the pages they manage. to provide our community guidance around establishing stronger SEO EAT strategies, UpCity partnered with Pollfish to survey 600 U.S. small businesses on how their SEO EAT strategy has evolved from before COVID-19 to now in 2022. We organized their responses around the following aspects of the study:
- Pre-COVID SEO EAT Strategies
- 2022 SEO EAT Strategies
In addition to the Pollfish survey data, we’ve gathered insight from the wider community of small business owners, entrepreneurs, and SEO experts to guide readers on how best to structure their SEO EAT strategy for the remainder of 2022 and into 2023.
Pre-COVID SEO EAT Strategies
45% of small businesses stated that increasing EAT was only somewhat important to their SEO strategy pre-COVID-19
Search engine optimization is an extremely complex undertaking when it comes to modern marketing strategies, and involves not only technical components but also on-page and off-page elements. Before the pandemic, the Pollfish data shows that SEO EAT tactics were only one of a slew of SEO strategies being juggled by a majority of marketing experts, and weren’t considered a priority over any other tactics.
While some of the Google search algorithm updates to this point had emphasized a brand’s ability to come across as authoritative in its industry niche, such as the Fred update in 2017 or to provide content conveying expertise, thus instilling trust in page visitors, it wouldn’t be until 2021, when the Pandemic had already shifted consumer behaviors significantly, that a Google algorithm update concerning product reviews would cause businesses to reconsider the role EAT plays in their SEO strategies.
14% Increasing EAT wasn’t an important part of my SEO strategy
41% Increasing EAT was a key part of my SEO strategy
45% Increasing EAT was somewhat important but not the main goal of my SEO strategy SEO strategy
29% of SMBs noted that all elements of EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) were equally important to them pre-COVID
While our respondents stated that incorporating EAT elements into their SEO strategy wasn’t the main goal of their pre-COVID efforts, that doesn’t mean EAT didn’t play a role at all. One of the three EAT elements was often an underlying component in many different strategies. As supported by the Pollfish data results, were considered equally important goals for pre-COVID businesses to incorporate into the big picture.
In 2018, Google pushed out what later became the Medic Update to its algorithm. It was called this because it largely impacted healthcare, medical, fitness, and other similarly focused sites at the time. Other sites greatly impacted by the update were found to have an eCommerce component, and it later became clear what Google was trying to accomplish with this update. At the time, Google was becoming increasingly concerned with ensuring that “your money, your lifestyle” (YMYL) content, content that provided searchers with important guidance that could greatly impact their lives, be provided by highly skilled experts in relevant fields and that consumers be able to trust that content with a great deal of certainty that it was factual.
The Medic Update then was Google’s way of forcing brands that might be influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions on life-changing products or services, to provide factual and relevant information in their content, ensuring such content would be free of misleading and inaccurate marketing filler. Because of this change, establishing expertise has since become an important goal bloggers attempt to accomplish with any piece of content. Boosting the importance of expertise in brand marketing has pushed brands to create informational blogs and landing page content to rank highly on Google.
This strategy focus means that more brands are seeding their online lead generation funnels to maximize conversions by relying on more qualified content that potential customers are more apt to consume and find useful. This focus would eventually come to result in a better overall experience for searchers by pushing brands to focus on establishing themselves as experts in their field and not relying on the misleading tactics that served the same purpose in the past.
Establishing brand authority is often accomplished through off-page SEO tactics because optimization takes advantage of the fact that Google and other algorithms take into account your entire web presence. Off-page link building and other mentions of your brand help to show readers and potential consumers of other blogs and web pages that your brand is an authority on a given topic, influencing them to then follow those links to your targeted inbound marketing pages.
As readers see your brand more often on other blogs, and increasingly find informational content when they arrive on your page, the combination of these positive brand impressions over time will instill a sense of trust in your brand that might be otherwise difficult to achieve through traditional paid marketing channels. The more that readers and consumers trust your brand, the more they will share those impressions across social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook and suggest to colleagues and peers that they interact with your organization.
22% – Authority
24% – Expertise
25% – Trust
29% – All elements of EAT were equally important to me
To understand how EAT tactics have evolved in response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, UpCity feels that it is important to first establish how brands incorporated EAT before the outbreak. We’ve gathered some insight from small business owners and SEO experts to show the strategic logic behind the metrics established in the Pollfish survey. As you can see from some of the responses, marketing experts weren’t fully sure of how to prioritize EAT in pre-COVID-19 marketing strategies.
“EAT was an important part of our strategy before COVID. That’s because it helped me understand if my content was good or not. As a result, I could improve my website accordingly to rank higher on Google.”
—Alex Williams, CFO, FindThisBest
“No, EAT wasn’t an important part of my SEO strategy. That’s because our main focus was exclusively our on-page SEnalyze our website and keep it fresh.”
O to help a—Tim Shroeder, Founder, LearnAboutShoes
“SEO EAT has played a crucial role in our optimization strategies pre-COVID, mainly for its value in understanding our customers better. We continue to integrate this ranking factor to make our clients feel secure and safe with the resources and information we provide on our website. Quality customer service comes with a full grasp of how customers respond to our content and why they prefer us over the competition, and EAT delivers this effectively.”
—Nunzio Ross, Founder and CEO, MajestyCoffee
However, when broken down by U.S. region, 29% of Northeastern businesses most valued Trust compared to 28% of businesses on the west coast that prioritized Authority
Regional marketing tactics can vary greatly depending upon the demographic segment you’re attempting to reach. Interestingly the South and Midwest were able to rely upon marketing strategies incorporating the various EAT elements equally before COVID-19, but the respondents from the Northeast and West U.S. geographic regions tell a different story. In Northeast markets, SEO specialists before the pandemic specifically leveraged Trust strategies to drive consumer behavior through EAT-focused marketing. Alternatively in the Western region of the U.S., SEO marketers focused their efforts on establishing brand authority.
28% – Authority
29% – Trust
30% – All elements of EAT were equally important to me
38% – All elements of EAT were equally important to me
A majority of respondents overall noted having an informative company/team page as their top EAT tactic pre-COVID
Regardless of which element of EAT a brand did happen to focus on before the pandemic, a majority agreed that the best method for establishing and conveying each EAT component on their website was to have an informative company or team page users could view to learn about the brand quickly and efficiently.
Authority and expertise can be tricky to establish, but one of the most effective methods before the pandemic seemed to be well-written bio pages to show the background and expertise of authors. Other pre-COVID methods for establishing and conveying expertise and topic authority included leveraging long-form articles in your marketing content approach, showcasing consumer-sourced content such as testimonials and reviews on your website and social media pages, and speaking offsite at third-party conferences or holding webinars to share your expertise with a wider audience.
Having an informative company/team page
Having well-written author bios
Publishing long-form article content on my company site
Showcasing customer testimonials and/or reviews on my website
Leveraging PR outlets/opportunities like HARO
Speaking at conferences and/or conducting webinars
Guest posting on third-party websites
Publishing industry-related posts on social media
Leveraging an awards and/or press page on my website
Encourage customer reviews on third-party websites
Tactics for improving the EAT qualities of your online presence before the pandemic encompassed a fairly wide range of approaches from a marketing SEO perspective. From the point of view of small business owners and operators, these tactics were largely intended to help reach a wider audience and grow brand recognition to appear in more search results in appropriate business niches.
“Since we deal with topics related to medicine and finance, we have always valued authoritativeness. We establish ourselves as having authority on the subject through our knowledge and expertise. This attracts a large number of people to our website. To further enhance authoritativeness, we explicitly provide credentials of the author and sources.”
—Aima Irfan, Editor in Chief,InsideTechWorld
“The major element we focused on was Expertise, given how Google prioritizes promoting original content developed by experts who have knowledge in the relevant industry.”
—Casey Ames, Licensed Realtor,GemStateCashOffer
“We were more focused on authoritativeness. Being authoritative established us as credible content creators, which ultimately meant users turned to us for information and content.”
—Rashard Alomari, founder and CEO of Fair Cash Deal
The responses we received varied further by the element of EAT that small businesses prioritized pre-COVID
The specific element of EAT that a brand chose to prioritize in their SEO efforts largely impacted the type of content or SEO strategy they leveraged before COVID-19. For brands focused on establishing expertise, they largely relied on long-form content on the company website. For authority-centric SEO strategies, brands were more reliant upon informative company and team overviews. Similarly, brands focused on boosting trustworthiness relied on well-written author bios to showcase the knowledge and professionalism of their staff.
With a large number of our respondents stating that they considered all elements of EAT to be equally important, it’s interesting that those respondents prioritized conference appearances and webinars as their primary strategies for building EAT, given how challenging respondents found it to discover opportunities to leverage those opportunities, which we explore more in the next section.
| Majority breakdown by EAT element | |
|---|---|
| Expertise | Publishing long-form article content on my company site |
| Authority | Having an informative company/team page |
| Trust | Having well-written author bios |
| All elements of EAT are important to me | Speaking at conferences and/or conducting webinars |
In prioritizing different elements of EAT, brands took different tactics to improve their SEO in the years leading up to the pandemic.
“Including clear sources and credits is one of our main strategies to increase EAT. It helped us build our credibility, authority, and trustworthiness.”
—David Lee, Digital Marketing Manager, Neutypechic
“Guest blogging was my major strategy to boost my website’s EAT standing before COVID. The goal was to increase EAT by being featured in relevant and high-authority websites and at the same time reaching new audiences, hitting two birds with one stone.”
—Jim Campbell, Founder, Epic Caribbean
“Reputation management campaigns ensured that we were continually adding and highlighting new reviews. We encouraged word of mouth marketing through scripting and consistent outreach.”
—Jerry Han, CMO, PrizeRebel
Most SMBs stated that low brand exposure was their biggest challenge in improving EAT pre-COVID
While focusing SEO efforts on boosting their expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, many SMBs before COVID-19 faced a slew of challenges. Crowded industry niches made it difficult to stand out from the competition, which also impacted brand exposure opportunities. And while various Google algorithm updates prioritized EAT several years before the pandemic, many respondents to the Pollfish survey pointed to a lack of website content and a shortage of reviews and testimonials as challenges. Perhaps one of the most telling challenges on the list is how outsourcing has been impacting brands, a significant number of respondents pointed to a lack of qualified and expert in-house employees to support efforts to boost EAT components.
Low brand exposure
Lack of networking opportunities
Not enough in-house resources to implement projects
Too much online competition
Lack of website content
Not enough customer reviews and/or testimonials
Dealing with negative customer reviews
Difficulty keeping website up-to-date
Not enough in-house employees to showcase company EAT
Difficulty finding media coverage
Challenges pre-COVID-19 in managing SEO EAT tactics were largely in keeping up with the constantly evolving customer behaviors and Google’s algorithm updates. Small business owners and SEO experts shared with us some of the specific challenges they faced in building the strength of their SEO EAT tactics ahead of the pandemic.
“The biggest challenge was constantly auditing and updating our content and overall website. In the pre-COVID world, there were not so many talents or potential employees that work on SEO so we had a harder time going through our content and website. This activity ate most of our time but once they were updated, they ranked better in terms of EAT.”
—Veronica Thompson, COO, Everyday Power
“Google’s search engine algorithm has always been complex, but it seems to have become even more complicated in recent years. Google is constantly changing and updating its algorithm to provide the best user experience possible. This can be difficult for brands and businesses trying to optimize their website for Google searches. We will discuss some of the pre-COVID strategies that succeeded in helping brands and businesses achieve high Google EAT scores.”
—Zack Williams, Owner, ROI Marketing Firm LLC
“Identifying reliable data sources was our biggest challenge. This is already a given since there are so many sources of published data on the Internet, but not all of them are reliable and fact-checked.”
—Arthur Worsley, Founder, The Art of Living
These answers also varied by respondents’ most prioritized elements of EAT
As with strategies that were most often leveraged, the component of EAT that SMBs prioritized in their SEO strategies largely determined the types of challenges our respondents pointed to as the most vexing. The types of challenges each faced stemmed directly from which element of EAT they prioritized.
For example, those who focused on building expertise by publishing long-form content on their websites cited low brand exposure as their biggest challenge. While long-form content was a pathway toward building expertise, it was hard to drive readers to that content because it was difficult to differentiate their brand in crowded online spaces.
Similarly, authority-focused brands, which tended to prioritize brand and team pages to convey authority, found it most challenging to boost their authority because they lacked the in-house resources to convey that authority or execute external campaigns to support their efforts.
While staff bios helped brands to prioritize trustworthiness, many respondents found it hard to invite and gather customer reviews and testimonies to back up the claims that their staff is the most skilled and capable of handling customer needs.
For respondents that prioritized expertise, authority, and trustworthiness equally, though they sought to leverage speaking appearances and webinars to build all three, many felt it challenging to find appropriate opportunities to speak or enough interest to hold those webinars.
| Majority breakdown by EAT element | |
|---|---|
| Expertise | Low brand exposure |
| Authority | Not enough in-house resources to implement projects |
| Trust | Not enough customer reviews and/or testimonials |
| All elements of EAT are important to me | Lack of networking opportunities |
Search engine optimization strategies before the pandemic were diverse and focused on several tactics to keep up with the multitude of Google algorithm updates. While EAT was a component of many brand strategies, it wasn’t necessarily a priority for a majority of brands. We’ll show in the next section how EAT gained importance for many brands throughout COVID-19 as the consumers shifted priorities in their online content consumption, and how this impacted EAT strategies post-COVID.
2022 SEO EAT Strategies
48% of small businesses stated that increasing EAT is now a key part of their SEO strategy in 2022
Google’s 2018 Medic update made it clear to many marketing professionals and business owners that building expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in their marketing strategies was a necessary tactic to remain competitive and relevant. While brands elevated these strategies, consumer online activities before the pandemic still necessitated a diverse approach to SEO. In forcing much of the population to remain home due to quarantine measures and business closures, the pandemic changed the behavior of online consumers significantly.
The post-COVID consumer is more discerning and concerned with the reputation and expertise of the brands they choose to consume. They spend much more time researching new products and services and they read more reviews now than in the past before making a purchasing decision. Social media sharing has become much more important to the user experience. Because of these changes in behavior and priorities, brands seeking to improve their SEO and more effectively rank in SERPs have moved to prioritize EAT in their marketing efforts.
12% – Increasing EAT isn’t an important part of my SEO strategy
41% – Increasing EAT is somewhat important but not the main goal of my SEO strategy
48% – Increasing EAT is a key part of my SEO strategy
We gathered some additional insight into how brands EAT strategies have evolved in 2022 as the economy recovers but consumers continue to prioritize EAT principles in their search habits.
“EAT is an important part of our SEO strategy in 2022 because we believe it is a key ranking factor that Google looks at when determining organic search results. We also think that EAT can help us to better understand and address the needs of our users, which is essential in providing them with a positive customer experience on our site.”
—Will Yang, Head of Growth, Instrumentl
“EAT is definitely an important part of my SEO strategy in 2022. I believe that the quality of your content is becoming more and more important as Google continues to evolve and get better at understanding user intent. In addition, I think that trust is also a key factor, especially given the current climate of fake news and misinformation. Readers want to know that they can trust the sources of the information they’re consuming, so it’s important to be clear about who you are, what your credentials are, and why your readers should listen to you.”
—Sinoun Chea, CEO & Digital Marketing Consultant, ShiftWeb
29% of SMBs still note that all elements of EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) are equally important to them
While more brands are prioritizing EAT in the post-COVID era, the distribution of the specific element of EAT that brands prioritize has remained much the same to pre-COVID levels, and a majority of our respondents continue to give equal weight to all three elements in their marketing strategies.
23% – Trust
23% – Authority
25% – Expertise
29% – All elements of EAT were equally important to me
For 2022 and moving forward, brands have focused on EAT elements most relevant to the needs of their business and the focus of their SEO strategies.
“Right now, the most important component of EAT for my business is authoritativeness because I want my audience to know that my blog is a reliable, accurate, and updated source of information for outdoor activities and equipment.”
—Peter Hoopis, Owner & CEO, Peter Hoopis Ventures
“I’m working on building my website expertise. This element is my biggest priority in terms of strategy at the moment because I want my brand to be the first that comes to mind. I specialize in writing strip mall product reviews, so it is key that I build a level of expertise that people will find my input credible.”
—Josh Tyler, CEO, Tell Me Best
“Trustworthiness is an important element that we track. Trust allows prospective users to understand our services which helps increase our website’s traffic.”
—Ryan Cassidy, Real Estate Broker, Triangle House Hunter
While 31% of northeastern SMBs are still prioritizing Trust, 29% of west coast businesses are now focusing on Expertise
Little has changed for many brands when we look at our respondents on a geographical level. While the South and Midwest treat all elements of EAT equally in their SEO tactics and the Northeast continues to prioritize trustworthiness, Western businesses have shifted attention from authority to expertise, likely in response to regional data gathered by those companies showing that focusing on expertise will garner much better SEO results.
29% – Expertise
31% – Trust
32% – All elements of EAT were equally important to me
36% – All elements of EAT were equally important to me
A majority of respondents overall are currently focusing on customer testimonials and/or reviews on their websites to boost EAT, along with having an informative company/team page
The 2018 Medit update wasn’t the only Google algorithm to impact EAT tactics of marketers. In 2021, Google released a series of updates to its algorithm focused on prioritizing customer product testimonials and reviews. These updates were intended to push content to the forefront that helped consumers make YMYL decisions on the products and services in their lives, rather than boosting thin content bloated with keywords intended only to capture ranked positions in SERPs. This is why many brands have focused on proper keyword research and review management in their marketing strategies over the last year to gather and showcase those reviews to potential consumers.
The respondent data also shows that while long-form content is still an important tactic, it’s a tactic that’s been largely supplanted by content focused on conveying to potential consumers the various ways brands can show their expertise and authority. Brands are accomplishing this through informative company and team pages and well-crafted author bios for their content creators. They are also more actively leveraging social media content to engender trust in their readers and showcase their expertise on relevant topics.
We gathered insight from the small business community to discover what strategies for increasing EAT they are leveraging in 2022. The responses we received are largely in line with the data we gathered from respondents through our Pollfish survey.
“There are several ways to increase EAT that we focus on: event appearances and sponsorships, brand mentions, and partnerships. Brand mentions are extremely effective for businesses because they show social proof, which can be useful also for non-SEO reasons. For example, if a ranking compares a few similar products, you should be there with your product too. Similarly, if someone is comparing your competitors in their article, it’s always worth trying to contact this person and pitch the idea of mentioning your product.”
—Gosia Hytry, Head of Content, Spacelift
“One of the key elements of our EAT strategy this year is continuing to perfect our content on YouTube. We’ve been building a really exciting channel for the past six months, sharing our expertise in both long and short-form videos. This helps us to grow our audience, drive sales to our membership website, and of course, build our visible reputation as experts.”
—Daniel Apke, CEO, Land Investing Online
These answers continued to vary by respondents’ most prioritized element of EAT
The strategies leveraged by businesses continued to depend upon what aspect of EAT they prioritized in their SEO strategy, but in the wake of the pandemic shifted across the spectrum to different tactics largely inline with the strategy changes discussed in the previous section.
In their post-COVID strategies, brands that prioritize expertise are focusing on review generation and showcasing testimonials from new customers and existing customers alike to grow organic traffic to their websites and gain market share. Brands focused on building brand authority have turned to leverage awards they’ve received and press coverage about their business on a specific page on their website.
For businesses trying to build a sense of trust with visitors, informative company and team pages are their new methods for boosting the perception of their brand. Having spent over a year not being able to attend conferences and becoming burned out on webinars and other online interactions, businesses giving equal weight to all elements of EAT have resorted to maintaining a more informative company or team page as well.
Showcasing customer testimonials and/or reviews on my website
Having an informative company/team page
Publishing industry-related posts on social media
Having well-written author bios
Encourage customer reviews on third-party websites
Leveraging an awards and/or press page on my website
Leveraging PR outlets/opportunities like HARO
Publishing long-form article content on my company site
Guest posting on third-party websites
Speaking at conferences and/or conducting webinars
Most SMBs said that too much online competition is their greatest challenge in improving their 2022 EAT
This is perhaps the most interesting finding that came out of our Pollfish survey. It’s also one of the most anticipated, given the shift in commerce and business practices forced upon consumers by quarantines, business closures, and social distancing measures. Multiple studies show that online content consumption skyrocketed in the wake of the pandemic, and many brands that didn’t have an online presence launched eCommerce platforms to remain relevant and capitalize on the increase in online shopping. This has caused the post-COVID online landscape to become glutted with competition and has made it increasingly difficult to stand out from competitors.
Other challenges are related to this mass migration to online channels. Constant updates and maintaining a flow of fresh content requires constant maintenance of online assets, which are difficult for small brands to keep up with if they don’t have the resources or manpower necessary to keep up with the necessary updates. More brands vying for attention in online channels means that the opportunities to be featured in media coverage are limited. Similarly, brands are finding it difficult to source quality reviews and testimonials to boost the perception of their services or products enough to trip the search engine algorithm requirements.
Too much online competition
Not enough in-house employees to showcase company EAT
Difficulty keeping website up-to-date
Difficulty finding media coverage
Not enough customer reviews and/or testimonials
Lack of networking opportunities
Not enough in-house resources to implement projects
Low brand exposure
Lack of website content
Dealing with negative customer reviews
SEO continues to be a challenging undertaking for marketing teams, and the focus on EAT in 2022 hasn’t made SEO any easier to execute. We posed the question to small business owners, startups, and SEO marketing experts to find out the perspectives behind the data gathered by Pollfish.
“The biggest challenge is always time. It takes time to grow SEO, to create more content to be considered a topical authority, while still having enough time to create your strategy and update old content. That’s why I believe AI SEO tools are giving even small bloggers a chance to compete.”
—Samantha Brandon, Founder, SamanthaBrandon.com
“We struggle to find relevant experts to fact-check the content. Depending on the niche I’m operating, mainly health and wellness, it can be challenging to find real experts willing to do this work.”
—Samuel Park, Founder, TechMaestro
“As a small business owner, the biggest challenge in increasing EAT is often competing with larger businesses that have more resources to dedicate to their SEO. Larger businesses can often outrank smaller local businesses in search results, making it difficult for customers to find them. In order to increase EAT, small business owners need to focus on creating high-quality content that is both relevant and useful to their target audience. They also need to make sure their website is optimized for search engines, and that they are actively promoting their content through social media and other online channels.”
—Iam Akshav, Founder, OnlineCourseing
These responses continued to vary by respondents’ most prioritized elements of EAT
With the link between expertise and authority, it follows that brands struggling with executing their SEO EAT strategies are facing similar shortages in in-house resources. For brands focused on expertise, it’s crucial to prove their expertise through research projects, surveys, and other projects designed to showcase their skills. Authority requires a brand to showcase its in-house talent, a highly challenging undertaking given the Great Resignation and other obstacles related to hiring and maintaining staffing levels facing businesses in the post-COVID economy. When it comes to building trust, the reliance upon social proof marketing tactics has tapped customers on many levels, and brands are struggling to gather the reviews and testimonials necessary to support proper trust-focused SEO Eat strategies.
For businesses that give equal weight to all EAT elements, the glut of brands clogging online channels has made it difficult to stand out in the crowd and distinguish one’s branding from others in unique and exciting ways while still coming across as an authoritative voice or expert in a given field. Marketing tactics have reached such levels that many consumers prefer to read content about a brand than being advertised, so it’s a fine line that brands must walk to not alienate the trust of potential clients or current customers.
| Majority breakdown by EAT element | |
|---|---|
| Expertise | Not enough in-house resources to implement projects |
| Authority | Not enough in-house employees to showcase company EAT |
| Trust | Not enough customer reviews and/or testimonials |
| All elements of EAT are important to me | Too much online competition |
The post-COVID online landscape has become increasingly crowded and difficult for brands to navigate while properly differentiating themselves from competitors. The growing focus on EAT principles in SEO was a natural outcome of brands driven to expand their online presence by the pandemic and subsequent shift in consumer purchasing activity to online channels and the increase in online content consumption that accompanied quarantines and business closures. As the pandemic waxes and wanes its way across the United States, brands continue to struggle to keep up with meeting the needs of consumers while building and enhancing their online SEO tactics to meet the ever-changing demands of Google’s search engine algorithms.
Small Businesses Must Focus Their SEO Strategy to Prioritize EAT for the Coming Year
Search engine optimization was already an extremely complex, multidisciplinary undertaking before Google added the need for brands to prioritize expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in their content marketing strategies. Now that Google, Yahoo, and other search engines are catering much more specifically to consumers’ behaviors and expectations of high-quality search engine results, your SEO must focus on each of the EAT principles that best suit your brand’s overall marketing strategy to remain competitive on SERP rankings. This can be especially true for small local businesses looking to rank highly in local search results, where they are competing with the marketing budgets of much larger international brands.
The results of this survey paint a fairly clear picture of the challenges facing many small businesses in properly executing SEO initiatives. Resources are scarce, the market is crowded, and it’s hard to differentiate your brand because it’s difficult to keep up with content generation goals and customers aren’t providing reviews at a level that meets the needs of the entire economy. Give your team the tools they need to prepare your brand for the year ahead and ensure that your SEO EAT strategy is properly crafted to meet the challenges we’ve laid out in this article.
If you don’t have the personnel with the expertise to accomplish this, you can find an SEO agency with whom to collaborate to provide your team with the necessary guidance and resources. Either route you take, make sure that you’ve prioritized maximizing your brand’s expertise, authority, and trustworthiness for the remainder of 2022 and into 2023, or risk losing ground in the never-ending race to reach the top of the first page.