One of how you can keep on top of your SEO game as a dental practice owner is to learn about the latest updates to Google’s algorithm. Here we discuss one of their most important updates: E-A-T.
E-A-T is part of Google’s objective to encourage websites to create useful, high-quality content. Websites, businesses, and creators of content are all considered in the guidelines.
The aim is to improve the web experience for human users. E-A-T strongly emphasizes three things:
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trust
In turn, Google is also rightly trying to discourage low-quality spam content. Rewarding people for creating expertise, authority, and confidence-building content means a win for the entire internet for the following three reasons:
- Site owners will more likely demonstrate their expertise, authority, and trust.
- Google can rank the best pages.
- Human users are provided with high-quality content that answers their questions.
Why is EAT relevant to your Dental website?
For all queries, E‐A-T is essential, but it is especially crucial for your dental practice.
If you are only looking for photos of cute dogs, then probably E‐A-T doesn’t matter that much. The subject is subjective, and if you see a dog you don’t think is as cute, it’s not a huge deal.
On the other hand, if you are searching for ways to prevent gum disease, then E‐A-T is undoubtedly essential. If Google were to surface content written by a clueless writer on this topic, published on an untrustworthy website lacking authority, then the likelihood of that content being inaccurate or misleading is high.
That’s not just mildly inconvenient given the nature of the information being sought here — it can affect a person’s health.
Google refers to topics of this kind as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life). These are defined as certain types of topics that could potentially affect a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.
As dentistry is considered a YMYL subject (under the banner of ‘ health’), your dental practice must take E‐A-T very seriously. Think about it; if you were to offer the wrong information on dental crowns, it could lead to somebody making a decision that could impair dental health.
Let’s look at the three factors that make up E‐A-T and talk about how to put it into practice on your dental website.
E for Expertise
To be an expert, you need to understand how that knowledge can be communicated in a way that engages people. It’s not just about having the information; it’s about knowing what your audience wants and how to deliver it best.
Find out what your audience is looking for and build your website pages to communicate that content efficiently.
Think about the follow-up questions that you may have concerning the content and deal with those in future posts.
A for Authority
“Authority” means having influence, which is generally recognized. People know you, know your background and look to you as an industry leader in your local area. They consider you a good knowledge source.
Here’s how you can convey that authority on your website:
- When it comes to ranking websites, getting yourself backlinks from relevant and authoritative sites is a huge factor. We can’t discuss any SEO success framework without stressing that.
- It’s also essential to get your content widely shared on social media.
- Have authors visible on your blogs. The individual authors should be named for each piece of content. Additional author information such as a short overview, curriculum vitae, and links to specific online profiles also helps lift the expert status of an author (and the website).
- Other ways of increasing trust are contact options, a detailed imprint on the site, and an “About Us” page. If you can also see a writer on other high-quality content on other authoritative pages or your platforms for social media services, mentions or direct links will improve the E-A-T scoring of your website.
T for Trust
Being a trusted expert and source means people can trust you and your site to deliver reliable, credible, factual information. They can also trust your website to provide them a safe browsing experience.
- Show your contact info so that you are easily contacted should your customers need to.
- Use an SSL certificate to secure your website. This can help customers trust that your website is what it says it is, and it is useful even if you aren’t selling anything on your dental website.
- Have a privacy policy/conditions tab. Check that this is accessible from the footer.
Doctor Websites
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