Written by: W&P Web Designers

Date: 13/12/2024

Introduction
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Google E-E-A-T │
│ (Experience, Expertise, │
│ Authoritativeness, Trust) │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┐
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
Experience (E) Expertise (E) Authoritativeness (A)
– First-hand involvement – In-depth knowledge – Credibility in the field
– Hands-on examples – Accurate, up-to-date – Recognition by peers,
– Demonstrated usage of information industry and media
– Personal stories, – Skilled writing, – Verifiable credentials
images, videos, research-based content and endorsements

│
▼
Trust (T) [Foundational]
– Transparency about who created the content
– Clear citations, references, and sources
– Consistent editorial standards
– Positive reputation and user feedback

 

 

What E-E-A-T Isn’t

What is Google E-EAT, and what is it isn’t

Many web design agencies and SEO businesses think that Google E-EAT is a ranking factor and part of Google’s algorithm.

However, Google E-EAT is essential and is not a ranking factor.

Instead, it’s like an overarching set of guidelines that different types of publishers, businesses and copywriters need to know about.

It’s a bit like guidance and setting standards. Google expects content marketing to be top-quality.

It should be helpful well well-written; it should also demonstrate the following:

Experience: the author should demonstrate real-life experience of what they are talking about

Expertise: the author of the written work should demonstrate that they are an expert on what they are talking about

Authoritativeness: the author should demonstrate authoritativeness

Trustworthiness: The author should demonstrate trustworthiness by demonstrating that they are experts on the subject, have researched the topic they are writing about, and have added a lot of helpful advice, relevant facts, and statistics.

 

Google E-EAT is nothing new.

So, Google E-AT was first introduced in 2014. However, do note that back then, “experience” was not part of Google’s guidance.
Yet now it is. That’s because Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines were updated, and now Google wants to see that the author has real-life experience of what they are talking about.

For example, whether it’s how to bleed a radiator or how to remove a stone chip from your bonnet, Google wants to see helpful and useful advice. It also wants the author to show real experience.

For example, suppose a plumber writing an article on how to bleed a radiator is a highly experienced plumber/heating engineer. In that case, they will offer detailed advice that goes above and beyond what some articles provide. So, since Google’s Helpful Content Update and Google E-EAT update, Google now wants really helpful, well-written articles to be published.

 

What on earth has this got to do with web design?

Well, a lot. That’s because if the content marketing is not superb quality, very high quality, it won’t have a high Google E-EAT score.
If it doesn’t have a high Google E-EAT score, Google algorithms will not place that article high on its organic ranks.

So, basically, the website will not get any or very few organic visitors unless the content marketing is very high quality and has a high Google E-EAT score.

Googlebot, Google’s algorithm and authoritativeness and trustworthiness

Google’s algorithm wants to work out which pages offer the best information that is most authoritative and trustworthy.

How does a web design agency demonstrate experience

So, the first part of Google E-EAT is experience.

Now, a really top web design agency will understand that to prove that the business and its employees are experts at what they do, you need to show real-life experience.

A great way of doing this is to set up a page for each employee.

Write a bit about them, then state their experience in that business sector.
Then, go the extra mile, link directly to their LinkedIn profile, and ensure their LinkedIn profile is complete, adding their qualifications and employment history.

Googlebot will crawl and index the page where you have described the employee and written a description for them.

However, Googlebot will also crawl and index the LinkedIn page because you should offer a link directly from your company website to the LinkedIn page.

Helpful and detailed as possible

So, if your business is going to write the content marketing for each page, say, the evergreen content marketing, then we recommend making it as detailed and helpful as possible.

Now, if you’re starting a business, let’s say a brand new company in Cardiff Bay, well, you might think, do we want to spend hundreds of hours writing content marketing?

Well, the answer should be yes, and we shall explain why.
Content marketing, especially evergreen content marketing, could be on your website for the next 10 years, so potentially thousands of shoppers will read it.

Now, because this text, say on the About Us page, the home page, or the contact page, won’t change that much, you should write helpful and effective content marketing.

So, this improves your chances of ranking higher in the SERP’s.

So, if you have the time, your business should write the content marketing, not the web designers. You will know your business better than anyone, so you should write content marketing. This way, you can improve your Google E-EAT score.

Pandu Nayak’s

It’s been commented online that Google uses something called “deep learning models” and information satisfaction to work out whether a shopper liked that page.

Talk to any good web design agency, and they will say that to improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation, you need high dwell time and a low bounce rate.

To get this, you need to write high-quality content marketing.

Again, this is why we stress that when you have your website designed, you put a lot of effort into writing the content marketing, so it’s very high quality right from the start.

This way, when Googlebot first crawls and indexes that text, your company website stands a much better chance of Google’s algorithms ranking that content higher in Google’s SERPs from the get-go.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Googlebot │
│ (Crawling & Rendering) │
└───────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌───────────────────────┐
│ Start with Seed URLs │ <— (e.g., from previous crawls,
└───┬───────────────────┘ submitted sitemaps, links from
│ external sites, Google’s index)
v
┌──────────────────────┐
│ Fetch Page Content │ <— Googlebot requests the page’s HTML,
└───┬──────────────────┘ CSS, JS, images, etc.
│
v
┌───────────────────────────┐
│ Rendering & Parsing Page │ <— Googlebot “renders” the page similar
└───┬───────────────────────┘ to a user’s browser, executing JS to
│ discover dynamically generated content.
v
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Extract Internal & │ <— Links within the page are discovered:
│ External Links │ • Internal links lead to more pages on
└─────┬────────────────────┘ the same site.
│ • External links lead to new domains.
v
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Add Newly Found URLs to Crawl Queue (Frontier) │ <— Each new link
└─────┬───────────────────────────────────────────┘ is evaluated
│ based on priority
│ (PageRank, freshness,
│ crawl budget, etc.)
v
┌──────────────────────┐
│ Check Robots.txt and │ <— Before crawling, Googlebot checks
│ Meta Robots Tags │ robots.txt directives and meta tags for
└───┬──────────────────┘ permission. Disallowed pages are skipped.
│
v
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Apply Crawl Rate Limits │ <— Googlebot adjusts crawl frequency and depth
│ & Crawl Budget │ to avoid overwhelming the server. Sites with
└───┬──────────────────────┘ slow responses or high load may be crawled less.
│
v
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Google’s Indexing Pipeline (Post-Crawl Processing)│
└─────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Content Analysis │ <— The fetched and rendered content undergoes
│ (Text, Structured Data, │ semantic analysis, extraction of entities,
│ Media, etc.) │ application of NLP, and interpretation of
└───────────┬─────────────┘ structured data (Schema.org).
│
v
┌───────────────────────────┐
│ Duplicate Content & │ <— Duplicate pages are identified and
│ Canonicalisation Checks │ canonical URLs chosen to consolidate
└───────────┬──────────────┘ ranking signals.
│
v
┌──────────────────────┐
│ Assign Relevance, │ <— Each page is evaluated for topic relevance,
│ Quality and Rankings │ E-A-T signals, internal and external link
└───────────┬──────────┘ context, user engagement metrics (historical),
│ and other ranking factors.
v
┌──────────────────────┐
│ Add to Google Index │ <— The page is indexed, meaning it’s now
│ for Potential SERP │ eligible to appear in search results
│ Inclusion │ when relevant queries match.
└──────────────────────┘

Expertise

Google’s quality raters and algorithms are interested in the author’s expertise and knowledge.

Google’s algorithm is now very, very clever.

So, if the author is writing “content thin” or marketing waffle, Googlebot and Google’s algorithm will know, and the work will not rank high.

However, if the author states a mini-bio at the top that can be crawled and indexed, this will initially tell Googlebot their level of expertise.

Then, if the written work is detailed, well-written, and contains a lot of facts and statistics, and it’s clear to everyone that the person is an

absolute expert on the subject, this work will rank higher.

Yet, with that said, you still have to write the work, so it’s interestingly engaging.

You might be the world’s biggest expert on robotics or artificial intelligence, yet if you send a reader to sleep, this will have a high bounce rate.

Why you need to avoid high bounce rates:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ TRAFFIC │
│ (Organic Search, Paid Ads, Social, │
┌───────────────────┐ │ Direct, Referral, Email Campaigns) │
│ USER ARRIVES │ └───────────────────────┬────────────────┘
│ ON LANDING PAGE │ │
└───────┬───────────┘ │
│ Session Starts │
▼ │
┌───────────────────┐ │
│ LANDING PAGE │ │
│ User sees content│ │
│ (Text, Images, │ │
│ Headlines, CTAs)│ │
└───┬───────────────┘ │
│ Engages? (Clicks link, Plays video, Scrolls?)│
│ │
YES ──┤ │ NO (No Engagement)
▼ │
┌─────────────────────┐ │
│ SECONDARY INTERACTION│ │
│ (Navigates to other │ │
│ pages, triggers event)│ │
└─────────┬───────────┘ │
│ (No longer a bounce) │
▼ │
┌──────────────────┐ │
│ CONTINUED SESSION │ │
│ User explores site│ │
│ Additional signals│ │
└───────┬──────────┘ │
│ Ends eventually │
▼ │
SESSION ENDS │
│
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ BOUNCE RATE │
│ If NO ENGAGEMENT occurred after landing │
│ page-load: This session counts as a │
│ bounce │
└───────────────────────┬─────────────────┘
│
▼
┌────────────────────────┐
│ CALCULATION STAGE │
│ Bounce Rate = (# of │
│ single-page sessions / │
│ total sessions) * 100% │
└────────────────────────┘

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ FACTORS INFLUENCING BOUNCE RATE │
│ │
│ * Page Load Speed (Slow load → Higher bounce) │
│ * Content Relevance (Mismatch → Higher bounce) │
│ * UX & Design (Confusing layout → Higher bounce) │
│ * Intrusive Ads/Pop-ups (Annoying → Higher bounce)│
│ * Mobile Responsiveness (Poor experience → Higher │
│ bounce) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ IMPROVEMENT STRATEGIES │
│ │
│ * Optimize load times (CDN, caching) │
│ * Create relevant, high-quality │
│ content that meets user intent │
│ * Improve site design and navigation │
│ * Add engaging media and internal │
│ links │
│ * Conduct A/B tests, analyse user │
│ behaviour, and iterate accordingly │

 

So, basically, you need top-quality content marketing, but it needs to be interesting and hold the shoppers’/readers’ attention. If you don’t, and you bore them or send them to sleep, they will leave the page and not read any more.

As any good web designer will tell you, you should work hard to improve dwell time while decreasing the bounce rate on your main pages.
Split testing

This is why your top web design agencies spend vast amounts of time split testing, which is also called A/B testing:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Initial State** │
│ – Existing website design & content │
│ – Baseline traffic, engagement, SEO ranking │
└─────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Define Objectives & KPIs** │
│ – Conversion goals (sign-ups, sales, leads) │
│ – Engagement metrics (CTR, time on page) │
│ – SEO metrics (organic traffic, SERP rank) │
│ – User satisfaction (NPS, surveys) │
└─────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Brainstorm Hypotheses** │
│ – UX team: “A cleaner layout may reduce bounce.” │
│ – Content team: “A more compelling headline may │
│ improve CTR.” │
│ – SEO specialist: “Better internal linking may │
│ improve page authority.” │
│ – Marketing team: “A more visible CTA increases │
│ conversions.” │
└─────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Select Page Elements & Variations to Test** │
│ – Headlines, CTA button color/placement │
│ – Navigation menus, product images, form fields │
│ – Page load speed tweaks, responsive layouts, microcopy │
│ – Internal link structure, schema markup │
└─────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Prepare Test Variants** │
│ – Version A: Control (Current design) │
│ – Version B: Variant (Modified element) │
│ – Use robust A/B testing tools (e.g., Google │
│ Optimize, Optimizely, VWO) │
└─────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Split Audience Traffic** │
│ – Randomly assign users: 50% see Version A, │
│ 50% see Version B │
│ – Ensure test runs long enough for statistical │
│ significance │
└─────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **User Interaction & Data Collection** │
│ – Track user actions: clicks, scroll depth, conversions │
│ – Monitor metrics: bounce rate, time on site, form completions │
│ – Use analytics tools (Google Analytics, Heatmaps, Session Replays)│
│ – Capture SEO metrics: keyword rankings, organic impressions │
└─────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Data Analysis Phase** │
│ – Compare Variant A & B on defined KPIs │
│ – Statistical analysis (confidence intervals, p-values) │
│ – Identify “winners” and “losers” │
│ – Segment data by device type, geography, user demographics │
└─────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Decision & Implementation** │
│ – If Version B outperforms A: │
│ – Update the live site with winning elements │
│ – Inform the design team to adopt winning patterns │
│ – Inform the SEO team to leverage improved UX signals │
│ – Document results & rationale │
└─────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
v
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ **Refine & Iterate Continuously** │
│ – Repeat testing on new elements (iterative improvement) │
│ – Incorporate findings into long-term UX strategy │
│ – Update content strategy to align with user preferences │
│ – Enhance internal linking, site speed, and mobile responsiveness │
└─────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
v

How can web designers improve a business’s authoritativeness?

Backlinks

You might then hire your web design agency for work other than building and designing the website.

You might want to hire them to improve the SEO every month.

If you want to improve a website’s authoritativeness, you need to build very high-quality no-follow and do-follow backlinks, complete with white-hat anchor text.

 

Good reviews
Suppose your business accumulates many positive reviews on Trustpilot, for example, or your Google Business profile. In that case, this can improve your authoritativeness and your Google E-EAT score.

Be a thought leader

You want to be a thought leader to stand out from the crowd.

You want to be a face that people recognise as one of the experts in your industry.
Semantic SEO

Ideally, you want your name mentioned and links to your company website. When you accumulate a lot of backlinks, plus your business is mentioned in leading publications, then you will become a thought leader.

When you become a thought leader and an expert in your business sector, your business’s content marketing will rank higher in Google.

 

E-E-A-T – Trust

How can my web designers help us improve our trust

All content marketing on your company website should be well written; you should also add relevant facts and statistics.

So, for example, if Harvard University has published facts on what you’re writing about, cite these facts and include a link back to the page where you read them on the university’s website.

This will show Googlebot and Google algorithm that you have carried out research and cited sources that are also highly regarded and respected. Therefore, by doing this, Google’s algorithms are likely to trust your business’s content marketing even more.

So, the top web designers and the leading web design agencies often link to reputable websites to cite their facts and statistics. This shows that the author has researched what they are writing about, so the work is considered more reliable and trustworthy because you have done your research.

 

Add an SSL certificate.

You should add an SSL certificate to your company website as well.
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ CLIENT │
│ (User’s Web Browser) │
└───────┬─────▲───────────┘
│ │
│1. │
│ │
▼ │
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ SERVER │
│ (Website’s Host Machine) │
└───────┬─────▲───────────┘
│ │
│2. │
│ │
▼ │
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY │
│ (Trusted Third Party) │
└──────────────────────────┘

Step-by-Step SSL Handshake and Encryption Process:
————————————————-

1. **Client Hello:**
– The client (browser) connects to the server over HTTPS and sends a “Client Hello” message.
– This message includes the client’s supported encryption protocols (e.g. TLS versions) and a list of supported cypher suites.

Diagram Pointer:
`CLIENT ───(Client Hello)──> SERVER`

2. **Server Response (Server Hello & Certificate):**
– The server responds with a “Server Hello” message, indicating the chosen encryption protocol and cypher suite.
– The server then sends its SSL certificate, which contains:
– The server’s public key.
– The server’s identity details.
– Digital signature from a Certificate Authority (CA) verifying authenticity.

Diagram Pointer:
`SERVER ───(Server Hello, Certificate)──> CLIENT`

3. **Certificate Verification:**
– The client’s browser checks the server’s certificate against its store of trusted Certificate Authorities.
– The CA’s signature on the certificate validates that the server is indeed who it claims to be.
– If the certificate is valid and trusted, the browser proceeds. Otherwise, it warns the user.

Diagram Pointer:
`CLIENT (Browser) <───(Check with CA)───> CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY (CA)`

4. **Key Exchange:**
– The client generates a “pre-master secret” (a random number) and encrypts it using the server’s public key in the certificate.
– The encrypted “pre-master secret” is sent back to the server.

Diagram Pointer:
`CLIENT ───(Encrypted pre-master secret)──> SERVER`

5. **Session Keys Generation:**
– The client and the server use the “pre-master secret” to derive the same symmetric session key.
– This session key is used to encrypt and decrypt data for the remainder of the session using fast symmetric-key cryptography.

Diagram Pointer:
`CLIENT & SERVER (Compute session keys internally)`

6. **Secure Data Exchange:**
– All subsequent communication (e.g., HTML, CSS, images, or sensitive information like login credentials and credit card details) is now encrypted with the agreed-upon symmetric key.

– This prevents eavesdroppers or malicious third parties from reading or tampering with the data in transit.

 

In summary:

In summary, you need to have a well-designed website. That’s for sure; it must offer shoppers a good user experience.
But also, because of Google E-EAT, the website must show a high E-EAT score.

Therefore, to achieve a high E-EAT score, the written work on your website must show that the author has a high level of experience and expertise in the subject matter.

Then, it would be best to improve the authoritativeness by building backlinks.

To improve trustworthiness, you must ensure the content marketing is well-written and detailed.