In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve is paramount. One essential factor that often flies under the radar is Google’s E-A-T principle, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This principle, now upgraded to E-E-A-T to include Experience, plays a pivotal role in enhancing website credibility and user experience.

In this article, we’ll delve into how understanding and implementing E-E-A-T can significantly influence your search engine rankings.

Unearthing the Essence of Google E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T is an acronym that encapsulates the qualities Google values when assessing the quality of online content. While it might not be explicitly mentioned in Google’s 200 known ranking factors, it holds undeniable significance in the eyes of quality raters and SEO professionals alike.

Expertise: Mastering Your Domain

Expertise is the cornerstone of E-E-A-T. It revolves around showcasing your in-depth knowledge and proficiency in your niche. To demonstrate your expertise effectively, consider these strategies:

1. Comprehensive Subject Mastery: Your content should reflect a deep understanding of your subject matter, leaving no room for ambiguity.

2. Credentials and Qualifications: Display relevant qualifications and credentials to bolster your credibility.

3. Proven Track Record: Highlight your past accomplishments and successes, as they can instill trust in your audience.

4. Research and Data: Stay updated with the latest research and trends in your field and back your content with accurate data.

5. Niche Specialization: Focus on a specific niche to establish yourself as an expert in that area.

6. Active Contribution: Contribute to your field by publishing content, and research papers, speaking at relevant events, or joining professional organizations.

Experience: Real-World Application Matters

Experience complements expertise by emphasizing practical, real-world application. To convey your experience effectively, consider these tactics:

1. Practical Application: Apply your knowledge in real-world scenarios and showcase your problem-solving skills.

2. Case Studies: Present real-world examples and results to illustrate your expertise in action.

3. Success Stories: Share stories of achievements or satisfied clients to instill confidence in your abilities.

4. Portfolio Display: For creative fields, such as design, art, or writing, showcase your previous work to demonstrate your experience.

5. Knowledge Demonstration: Stay updated with industry best practices, trends, and new developments, and share your insights through blog posts, articles, or speaking engagements.

6. Customer Testimonials: Positive testimonials from satisfied customers provide social proof of your expertise.

Authoritativeness: Building a Trustworthy Reputation

Authoritativeness centers on establishing your website as a reliable source of information within your niche. To enhance your authoritativeness, consider the following strategies:

1. Backlinks and Citations: Earn backlinks from authoritative websites in your industry, a strong signal of your website’s trustworthiness.

2. Awards and Recognition: Credible recognition, such as awards and certifications, contributes to your reputation.

3. Thought Leadership: Demonstrate authority through original research or innovative ideas, and engage in industry discussions.

4. Collaboration with Experts: Collaborate with recognized experts in your field through co-authored articles or speaking engagements.

5. Strong Social Media Presence: Engage with your audience on social media platforms to establish yourself as an authoritative figure.

6. Consistent, Relevant Content: Create high-quality content consistently to build credibility with users and search engines.

Trustworthiness: The Bedrock of Credibility

Trustworthiness is the final piece of the E-E-A-T puzzle, focusing on the credibility of your website’s information. To foster trustworthiness, adhere to these guidelines:

1. Transparency: Be transparent about your brand, contact details, business operations, and the purpose of your content.

2. Provide Accurate Information: Ensure your content is factually correct and up-to-date, and avoid misleading practices.

3. Ethical Practices: Follow ethical guidelines, respect user privacy, handle sensitive data responsibly, and comply with relevant laws.

4. User Experience and Security: Create a positive user experience and prioritize website security with HTTPS connections.

5. Customer Testimonials and Reviews: Genuine testimonials from satisfied customers bolster your website’s trustworthiness.

6. Customer Support: Offer prompt and helpful customer support to engage with your audience effectively.

7. Disclosure of Affiliations: Clearly disclose any affiliations or sponsorships that might impact your content.

While Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines may not explicitly mention E-E-A-T, adhering to these principles can significantly improve your website’s credibility and user experience. Remember, achieving higher SERP rankings requires a holistic approach, and understanding and implementing E-E-A-T is a valuable piece of the puzzle.

If you need expert guidance, consider enlisting the support of professional SEO services to help you navigate this ever-changing landscape.

The no-code website builder Webflow released an update on the progress of its new product to localize websites for customers across multiple languages and regions.

The San Fransisco-based company announced at Webflow Conf 2022 that its team is working on a native localization solution.

Webflow has confirmed in its latest update that the product development is on track to deliver the first Localization release to all customers this fall.

Why Webflow native localization is so important

Localization is important because site owners want to tailor their digital experiences for customers in different regions. But beyond that, solving this problem will reduce the number of third-party dependencies such as Weglot and other localization third-party tools.

Third-party tools and JavaScript-based workarounds have been an option for Webflow users. These solutions have come at an expense. And what makes Webflow unique: namely the ability to design and build visually with content in the Webflow Designer.

The native solution solves this problem by letting site owners work directly with the Webflow Designer with their translated content, previewing and understanding exactly how the site will look before going live.

Why Webflow chose “localization” not “multi-language”?

Credit: Webflow

The reality is that “multi-language” is only one part of “localizing” your website for global audiences. Webflow explains that site owners want to do more than translate their website text. They also want to personalize their whole website experience for the different regions they serve — from images and what content is displayed to the styles and layout.

With all this in mind, Webflow renamed its efforts to reflect the full scope of the new product more accurately.

Localization product provides an end-to-end solution for customizing websites for visitors across multiple languages. Localization has three main pillars:

1. Designing & building. Working with your localized content in the Designer, adjusting designs and content to work for all your locales.
2. Content & translation. Translating your site’s content for all your locales or connecting to third-party specialized translation management systems.
3. Publishing & delivery. Controlling how your localized content is published and delivered to visitors on your website.

Designing & building

The most important part of this experience is how the design and building experience with your translated content will work inside the Designer. This is where the localization product truly shines, and you get to unlock the true power of Webflow when building localized websites.

Webflow Designer

When it comes to building and designing with localized content in Webflow, here’s what you can expect to be able to do for each locale at launch:

• Preview and switch between locales in the Designer. As you build and add locations, you can preview how your site looks for each — ensuring you know what your site will look like before you publish.
• Localize content. As you switch between locales, you can translate static page and CMS content directly (in addition to the other options outlined in the next section).
• Customize images and alt text. You’ll also be able to customize images per locale (e.g., swap in a picture of the Eiffel Tower for the Empire State Building) and the alt text to ensure a localized experience across what users both read and see.
• Customize element visibility. Beyond customizing text and images, you can also hide and show some aspects per locale if you want to feature or promote different content on a page based on the visitor’s region.
• Customize styles. Finally, as each region requires, you’ll also be able to tweak styles per locale to adjust for different length headlines, fonts, etc.

Content & translation

While some customers need to localize their websites for the first time, others already have existing translation management systems that they need to plug into — and the solution provides options for customers no matter where they’re starting from.

At launch, you’ll be able to translate your content in the following ways:

• Direct translation in the Designer. For granular control and edits after a first pass at translation, or for those just getting started with localization, you’ll always have the option to directly translate content in the Designer  — for both static elements and CMS content.
• Flexible API options. For those with existing translation management systems, we’ll upgrade existing APIs and develop new ones that let you programmatically connect your Webflow site to external systems for customizing static content, CMS content, images, and more.
• Machine-powered translation. Webflow has also been developing automatic translation options that streamline your first pass at localization or allow you to translate individual elements on the fly quickly.
• Partner translation apps. Lastly, Webflow plans to build direct integrations with translation management systems at launch.

Publishing & delivery

Finally, when it comes to publishing your localized website and controlling how visitors experience it, you’ll have a lot more fine-tuned control than you might be accustomed to with third-party workarounds.

Here are some of the robust controls and features for publishing:

• Toggle locale publishing on and off. As you build, you can control whether or not your different locales go live when you publish the site, allowing you to work on your new areas as a draft before launching.
• Customize URLs and subdirectories. Another critical control — especially when optimizing your site’s SEO profile — is customizing the URL structure of your localized pages. In the initial release, you’ll be able to customize your locale slug (e.g., “/es/” or “/sp/” for “español”) and serve your localized pages in a subdirectory (e.g., website.com/es/…).
• Localize SEO titles and descriptions. Taking SEO controls one step further. You’ll also be able to localize your meta titles and descriptions for each locale.
• Sitemap upgraded to contain hreflang. We’ll also automatically include the hreflang tag in your automatically generated sitemap to ensure search engines understand how your different localized pages are related.
• Fully customizable locale switcher element. At launch, we’ll also add a new component that allows you to surface (and, of course, customize the design of) a language switcher so your visitors can select the language they prefer when navigating.
• Completely integrated with publishing and staging. Finally, it’s worth reinforcing that all of these workflows — across design and translation — will be fully integrated into your existing (and future) publishing workflows to create a seamless experience that feels like the Webflow you know and love.

What’s next

Webflow said that Enterprise customers would have early access to the localization product, disappointing many non-enterprise customers “majority.”

Google has launched a new status dashboard for webmaster owners to confirm if there is an issue with crawling, indexing, or serving with Google Search. This dashboard is for Google Search at status.search.google.com.

Google Search status dashboard

The Google Search status dashboard will tell you if there is an outage or issue with Google Search operations, including crawling, indexing, or serving in Google Search.

Google wrote, “as we head into 2023, we want to introduce another tool for the public to understand the most current status of systems which impact Search—crawling, indexing, and serving.”

Issues are rare. Google said, “while system disruptions are infrequent, we want to be transparent when they happen.” And yes, we have reported many issues with Google Search over indexing, crawling, and serving over the years. But now Google has a way to say it within its Google Status Dashboard system as it does for Google Ads and many other products.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of this dashboard:

How it works

Google explained, “This dashboard reports widespread issues occurring in the last seven days, with some details and the current status of the incident. A widespread issue means there’s a systemic problem with a Search system affecting a large number of sites or Search users. Typically these kinds of issues are obvious externally, and internally the SREs’ monitoring and alerting mechanisms are working behind the scenes to flag the issues.”

“Once we confirm with SREs that there’s an ongoing, widespread issue in Search, we aim to post an incident on the dashboard within an hour and consecutive updates to the incident within 12 hours. Unlike a traditional automated dashboard, our global staff reports these updates. The start time of the incident was generally when we confirmed the issue,” Google added.

Why is it important? 

We, as webmaster owners, sometimes see issues with Google Search around indexing, crawling, and serving, but we have to reach out to Google to confirm the issue. Now, Google will post those confirmations on the dashboard, as it does for many of its other products and services.