Building Real E-E-A-T Signals
Turn Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust into concrete, on-page and off-page proof.
E-E-A-T - Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust - is not a score you can read in a dashboard. It is a framework Google's quality raters use, and it maps to signals its systems approximate. The senior skill is turning each letter into something concrete on the page.
Make each signal tangible
| Signal | What it means | How to prove it |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | First-hand use | Original photos, test data, "I used this for 6 months" detail |
| Expertise | Real knowledge | Named author with a real bio and credentials, accurate depth |
| Authoritativeness | Recognized in the field | Citations, mentions, and links from respected sites |
| Trust | The site is safe and honest | HTTPS, clear contact/about, sources cited, disclosed sponsorship |
Trust is the center
Google has said Trust is the most important member of the family - the others feed into it. A page can be expert and still untrustworthy (hidden ads, no accountability). Get the trust basics right first: accurate content, a real author, a real organization behind it, and easy ways to check both.
Author entities
Give authors real, persistent identities: a bio page, consistent naming across the web, Person structured data, and links to their profiles. This helps engines connect your content to a credible human rather than an anonymous byline.
Example
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Person",
"@id": "https://example.com/authors/mia-torres/#person",
"name": "Mia Torres",
"jobTitle": "Q Grader & Coffee Educator",
"description": "Licensed Q Grader with 8 years roasting and cupping experience.",
"url": "https://example.com/authors/mia-torres",
"sameAs": [
"https://www.linkedin.com/in/example",
"https://example.com/authors/mia-torres"
]
}When to use it
- A medical publisher adds board-certified physician review badges, a named medical reviewer schema, and a linked reviewer bio page, recovering from a Core Update demotion that penalised YMYL content without verifiable expertise.
- A finance blog creates an 'Expert Contributors' page with CVs, LinkedIn profiles, and publication credits for each author, building the off-page authoritative signals Google Quality Raters use to evaluate YMYL sites.
- A software company publishes original research studies with methodology appendices and data downloads, earning citations from universities and news outlets that strengthen domain-level Trust and Authoritativeness.
More examples
Author schema with verifiable credentials
Linking the author Person entity to ORCID, PubMed, and LinkedIn via sameAs gives Google verifiable, off-site evidence of Expertise and Authoritativeness on the article's topic.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@graph": [
{
"@type": "Person",
"@id": "https://example.com/authors/dr-alan-smith/#person",
"name": "Dr. Alan Smith",
"jobTitle": "Board-Certified Cardiologist",
"description": "Dr. Smith has 18 years of clinical cardiology experience and has authored 40+ peer-reviewed studies.",
"url": "https://example.com/authors/dr-alan-smith/",
"sameAs": [
"https://linkedin.com/in/dr-alan-smith-cardiology",
"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-2345-6789",
"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Alan+Smith+cardiology"
]
}
]
}Trust signals on an About page
An About page with accreditation details, linked editorial policies, and a contact address provides the Trust layer of E-E-A-T that Quality Raters check on YMYL sites.
<!-- /about/ — key Trust page elements for YMYL sites -->
<main>
<h1>About Acme Health</h1>
<!-- Verifiable credentials and regulatory status -->
<p>Our content is reviewed by board-certified physicians.
Acme Health is accredited by the Health on the Net Foundation
(HONcode Certification No. HON-123456).</p>
<!-- Editorial and corrections policies -->
<nav>
<a href="/editorial-policy/">Editorial Policy</a>
<a href="/medical-review-process/">Medical Review Process</a>
<a href="/corrections/">Corrections Policy</a>
</nav>
<!-- Contact and accountability -->
<address>
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>
</address>
</main>Track E-E-A-T signals audit checklist
A per-page E-E-A-T audit checklist makes the four dimensions of Google's quality signal concrete and actionable for editors, writers, and developers.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# E-E-A-T signal audit per page type
echo "=== YMYL Article E-E-A-T Checklist ==="
echo "Experience signals:"
echo " [ ] First-hand examples or personal experience cited"
echo " [ ] Author has direct experience with the topic"
echo
echo "Expertise signals:"
echo " [ ] Named author with credential bio and schema"
echo " [ ] Content reviewed by a domain expert"
echo " [ ] External citations to peer-reviewed or primary sources"
echo
echo "Authoritativeness signals:"
echo " [ ] Author has external profile (ORCID, LinkedIn, publications)"
echo " [ ] Site has inbound links from authoritative domains in the niche"
echo
echo "Trust signals:"
echo " [ ] Editorial policy page exists and is linked from article"
echo " [ ] Corrections policy linked"
echo " [ ] HTTPS, privacy policy, contact page present"
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