Why should you want to E-A-T your way to top rank of your website? Because the E-A-T of your site determines two things:
- It will establish your Reputation.
- It will Generate Clients because your site ranks high enough for clients to easily find it.
Your website is a major building block of online marketing. The E-A-T factor of your content plays a central role getting your site ranked in the top 3 pages of searches.
What Is E-A-T?
In the world of SEO (search engine optimizing) and website ranking, E-A-T is an acronym for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. The more the content of your site demonstrates these three qualities, the more likely your site will rank well.
Search engines must present the user with a diverse set of search results that are informative, high-quality and presented in the order they are most helpful.
Results should be trustworthy, offer authoritative information and not mislead users. For this reason, Google uses page quality rating to evaluate the quality of the information in the online world and understand the purpose of the page.
A high level of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) is one of the most important characteristics of high-quality, credible content. Google and other search engines are hungry for it and reward those who feed them well.
This is not to discount the importance of other ranking factors such as keywords, reviews or business citations and up to another 150 ranking factors. But most of these other ranking ingredients depend on the E-A-T of your content to begin with.
How Do Search Engines Determine Whose Site Ranks High?
Search engines rank websites by utilizing crawlers or bots to establish what the content on a given website is about (think keywords). E-A-T ratings of content carries big influence in ranking algorithms used to determine if the website should be trusted as credible and knowledgeable about the topic that got the internet search started in the first place.
The search engines want their customers to be happy with what they serve up in response to an online query. That means no scam or spammy sites. Good E-A-T filters out the low-quality websites from search results and filters in the sites that best match what the searcher wanted.
Why Does E-A-T Based Content Matter?
- Expertise is established by the credentials and popularity of the author(s) producing the content.
- Authority derives from the use others are making of your site, such as links and references to your content. It is also a measure of the substance and quality of the writing or articles on the site.
- Trustworthiness is a bit more difficult to convey but there is no doubt it is the absence of anything which might suggest spam or the use of black hat SEO practices. It is the most critical factor of E-A-T for people in the mental health business.
Here are the five ways you will
E-A-T your way to top rank in your niche:
- Drive Traffic to Your Site
As mentioned earlier, 75% of Google searchers find what they want by the end of the first page of search results. If your website does not show up in the first three pages, you’ll be in big trouble. New clients will have little to no chance of reaching you, and existing clients will not be happy that they had to scour the web to find you. Often, if the search is too slow or otherwise difficult, a person will click on what shows up first.
Every client is important for business success. The more clients you have, the better off you’ll be (up to a point of course).
Having a steady stream of new client referrals is a game changer when it comes to keeping your practice afloat. Increasingly, potential clients evaluate and choose a counselor based on what they find online. You need to be prepared. In 2021, E-A-T content is one of the best ways to be sure your website ranks where it should be, and that people can find you with ease.
E-A-T content is now one of the top considerations for page rankings according to Google, which means that good content is still king. Plus, this becomes even more important since you’re technically in the medical profession.
- Be “E-A-T” Certified as a Trustworthy Health-Care Worker
As a therapist you are a health care worker. Search engines pay particularly close attention to medical and health care-based websites when it comes to this ranking system. For example, when looking at a humor-based website, E-A-T might not be as important because expertise, trust, and authority are not necessary to get a good laugh. On the flip side, when a person is searching for advice or guidance from a health care professional, Google will do its due diligence to ensure that its users are being brought to the most credible places.
At the end of the day, for people using your site it is a matter of credibility. If your website is going to rank high online, you must convince the search engines you belong at the top of search results as a competent and trustworthy professional. Search engines don’t want any random therapist on their top page; they want the most qualified mental health professional on top. It is mutually advantageous for both your business and a prospective client to avoid fraudulent sites.
If you want to drive traffic to your practice, the E-A-T of your content needs to be top notch. This allows Google and other crawlers to properly rank you where you should be as a trusted, expert authority in your field of practice.
- Brand Yourself
Branding is a marketing process that creates a memorable impression of you or your product on consumers. It also enables your clients to know what to expect from you. You want both of those, the impression and the expectations to be positive and attractive. In the mental health business, you are your brand.
Think about it. If you were looking for your therapist and they appeared on the 10th page of Google, how would you perceive their branding? Sure, it might sound silly, but not being on the first three pages of a Google search can harm your brand. Low rank can have a negative reflection on your practice. The trend is to judge the product or person by the packaging.
Your website’s ranking in SERPs (search engine page results) may not be a fair evaluation of your competence as a therapist. However, in this digital age, people can draw decision making conclusions without thinking. What we see online has branding power.
When it comes to therapy, having your clients trust you is extremely important. People are spilling their lives out to you, which means the stakes are a bit higher when they decide about counseling versus picking a site to give them a few laughs. Ranking has a strong influence on the perception of you as a qualified option (brand) for consumers to choose from.
- Optimize Your Website Content
This is a crucial piece of SEO as well and is a bit more complicated to achieve. You want to make sure that your website has appropriate reviews, back links, and outside activities. This helps your brand build authority and will lead you to a much higher ranking on Google.
Aside from the technical aspects of SEO, you need to make sure a new prospect is engaged the once they click on your site. Content can’t just be good; it needs to be great and captivating.
Your website has less than 2 minutes to engage your prospect, answer all their questions, and build trust. Online searchers want quick answers and have a low tolerance for delays or murky answers.
If you want to satisfy your prospect, and get a good rate of conversion, you need to ensure that your content can accomplish this. Having well written and efficient E-A-T content is a must.
What do I mean by Conversion?
Conversion refers to converting a prospect who is shopping or looking into a buyer. In a broad sense, it means your website has been successful getting a site viewer to take some kind of action on your site, such as clicking to sign up for your newsletter, calling you for an appointment or contacting you for more information.
Having E-A-T optimized content will not only drive traffic, but it also increases your conversion rates. As mentioned previously, this is due to satisfying all your prospects needs quickly and efficiently.
If you want your prospects to act, you need to impress them. A lot of things go into this, but in 2021, quality E-A-T content can move prospects off the dime when you give them a CTA (call to action).
Conversion doesn’t only happen based on your webpage content. A big factor in conversion is the perceived authority level reflected in your content.
Reviews of you and your work can also have a big influence on conversion rates and impact online ranking and visibility.
In the end, it is a matter of Trust.
Most Americans, especially men, do not easily open up and show their vulnerabilities to anyone, let alone strangers. Potential clients need an extra dose of trust with you to take that first step and ask for an appointment with you. The trustworthiness conveyed by your website is the most important part of E-A-T you must craft into you content.
As we’ve mentioned numerous times, getting your prospects to your page is simply not enough anymore. Not only do you face online ranking competition, but you also need to make sure you provide your prospect with more reasons to trust you than the competition. Your content must establish why your prospect can trust you more than other therapists.
Remember branding: the impression of you and what clients can expect from you.
What impression do you construct with your content that makes it easy for people to trust you? Answer: among other things, it’s the tone of your writing, the openness and non-judgmental things you say, the way you approach therapy and the character of yourself as a counselor people can pick up on between the lines of your content. Be honest about yourself as a person.
What can clients expect from you? Answer: your content shows what people will get from working with you. You describe your niche(s), what you are qualified to work with and what you are not. Testimonials can help. Be generous. Provide some freebies such as list of tools dealing with issues in your niche or checklist of what a certain condition looks like. Links to other pertinent resources help to set the stage of expectations once people get started with you.
The online world is not like the in-person world. You simply don’t have the time to have a lackluster page without great E-A-T content. If you can get prospects to like, trust, and respect you in 2 minutes or less, conversion rates will improve.
Recap
Everyone needs SEO content, and while your website might be up to date with pretty images, Google’s new algorithm might be working against you. It’s not your fault, but Google tries to update their SEO tactics to ensure only the best websites land on the first page.
Here is my conversion invitation to you, a CTA (call to action). Dial 913-991-2302 and let’s get you and your website ready to E-A-T your way to top rank with the 2021 online branding of you.