In the world of SEO, the concept of E-A-T (Experience, Authority, Trust), now expanded to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust), plays a crucial role in determining website rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
In this article, we will delve into the significance of E-E-A-T, how Google evaluates websites based on these factors, and practical strategies to improve your website’s E-E-A-T for better SEO performance.
Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.
Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.
Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.
Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
Make it easy to contact you.
Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
Make your site easy to use — and useful.
Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).
Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.
The ultimate goal of these 10 actions can have an enormous effect in demonstrating your experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
First E in E-E-A-T: Demonstrating Real-World Knowledge
Google introduced the “E” for Experience in E-A-T to emphasize the importance of content creators who have firsthand experience and expertise related to the topic they cover. For example, content about hiking in Scotland should ideally come from someone with actual experience in hiking in that region.
Sharing Personal Experiences
Content creators can boost the “Experience” aspect of EEAT by incorporating personal experiences, anecdotes, tips, and observations related to the subject matter. This adds authenticity and credibility to the content.
Utilizing Technical Language and Keywords
Using technical language and industry-specific keywords relevant to your content further demonstrates expertise and firsthand knowledge in the field.
Second E in E-E-A-T: Establishing Credibility
The Importance of Expertise
Google evaluates the credibility of content creators when assessing expertise. Established professionals or recognized authorities in their respective fields are more likely to rank higher.
Supporting Claims with Credible Sources
Content should be backed by credible sources, such as research papers, studies, and authoritative websites, to support claims and provide valuable information. This always helps in creating an expert image.
Meeting User Intent
Understanding user intent through keyword research and providing valuable content that addresses users’ needs can further strengthen your website’s expertise.
A in E-E-A-T: Building Site Authority
The Significance of Authority
Building site authority is crucial for EEAT. It is determined, in part, by the number of relevant and authoritative websites that link back to your content, signaling to search engines that your website is a trusted resource.
The Power of Backlinks
Acquiring quality backlinks from reputable sources can significantly impact your website’s authority and, in turn, its search engine rankings.
Leveraging Social Media
Audience engagement on social media platforms and sharing valuable content can enhance your brand’s authority and attract more traffic to your site.
T in E-E-A-T: Gaining User Confidence
The Role of Trustworthiness
A secure and trustworthy website is vital for user confidence. Websites with HTTPS protocol and positive customer reviews are considered more trustworthy by search engines.
Encouraging Customer Reviews
Providing encouragement for satisfied customers to leave positive reviews can contribute to building trustworthiness and validating your EEAT.
Addressing Negative Reviews
Formulating and implementing a response policy for negative reviews promptly and resolving customer issues is a positive step toward displaying a commitment to customer service and can mitigate the impact of negative feedback on trustworthiness.
Understanding and optimizing your website’s EEAT is essential for SEO success. By incorporating
real-world experiences
establishing expertise through credible sources
building site authority with backlinks
gaining user trust through positive reviews and secure practices
You can enhance your website’s overall performance and visibility on search engine results pages. Investing in your EEAT will not only improve your website’s rankings but also build user confidence and credibility in your brand.
The quest for visibility and relevance is a continuous journey in the digital world. One of the most critical tools in this journey is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). However, a common question arises: “How long does SEO take to work?”
Based on insights from SEMrush, this article aims to shed light on this question and more. Many use the comparison between the tai-chi movement and a fast-paced world to describe the pace of SEO versus other forms of promotion. It’s not an instant solution but a strategic process that requires patience and persistence. The timeframe for SEO results can vary, but generally, it takes several months up to a year to see measurable outcomes. Both research and industry consensus support this timeframe.
Understanding SEO Results
Before diving into the timeframe, it’s essential to understand what SEO ‘results’ mean. The primary metric for measuring Optimization success is relevant organic traffic. A significant uptick in organic traffic is often the first indicator of a successful Optimization program. If a substantial increase in bounce rate accompanies this, the success is far less credible. The best ways to compare the increase in organic traffic are:
Increase in engaged traffic = (Traffic after SEO campaign x (1-Bounce Rate))- (Traffic before SEO campaign x (1-Bounce Rate))
Increase in goal Completion = Goals completion after SEO Campaign – Goal Completion before SEO Campaign
The ratio of Converted Engagements = Increase in goal Completion / Increase in engaged traffic
A great SEO campaign will give you improved overall traffic, improved increase in engaged traffic, improved increase in goal completion, and improvement in the ratio of converted engagements.
If you only see your traffic increase without a lift in other areas, it may be time to question the quality of key phrases used for your site optimization.
Traffic increases from Search Engine Optimization – Real World Exampales
To provide a clearer picture, let’s look at some real-world examples. An e-commerce toy business that lost significant search rankings and traffic after launching a redesigned website managed to rank 37 priority key phrases back onto Page 1 within five months. Within six months, they saw a return to previous traffic levels. It took an additional year to ensure that the additional 25 keywords aimed at mid funnel were in the first page thus improving all the results.
A niche ad agency’s website that suffered from lost rankings in relevant keywords despite the increase in organic search traffic started to see an increase in relevant traffic results after seven months of implementing recommended improvements. Within nine months, they received record levels of relevant organic traffic, and within two years, they saw a 200% increase in goal completion (phone calls and form completions for purchase of their products and services).
Factors Impacting SEO Timeframes
Several factors can influence the timeframe for SEO results. Three of the most important are your actions, the website’s condition, and the competition. The “SEO results” clock starts ticking once you implement the program, not when you hire someone or when strategies are being formulated.
If your website has a lot of technical issues, received a manual action from Google, or was negatively impacted by a Google core update, it might take longer to see results. On the other hand, quick fixes like resolving a robots.txt file blocking search engines can produce fast SEO results.
Competition also plays a significant role. The competition can be challenging depending on the industry and the resources your competitors have. However, it’s possible to beat the competition with a nimble and creative approach.
Accelerating SEO Results
While you can’t drastically speed up SEO results, there are ways to streamline the process. An in-depth, technical SEO audit can pinpoint how to fix your site and beat the competition. Enlisting the help of an expert SEO consultant or agency can also make a significant difference.
In conclusion, SEO is a long-term investment. The results you see within several months to a year are just the beginning. With a solid SEO strategy, you can expect better results as time goes on. Remember, in the world of SEO, patience and persistence are key.
On Monday, June 26th, Google made a significant announcement regarding the Sitemaps Protocol, a tool that has been assisting search engines in discovering new URLs and scheduling crawls of already known URLs since 2005. The announcement revealed that the sitemaps “ping” endpoint, a feature of this widely utilized protocol, will be deprecated within the next six months.
What are Sitemaps
To repeat some of our previous posts, Google defines a sitemap as “a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, as well as the relationships between them.” (Google: Find out more about sitemaps.)
When you submit a sitemap, search engines may crawl your site more efficiently.
A sitemap will offer search engines crucial information such as:
When was a URL last updated?
How frequently are modifications made to a page?
The importance of a page in relation to other pages on your website.
This data assists search engines in finding, crawling, and indexing the web pages on your site. Sitemaps can be generated in an XML file, the most often used method. Some content management systems have capabilities that make it simple to create sitemaps.
Below is an example of a simple sitemap with all possible elements sourced from Dream Warrior Group‘s site.
The sitemap protocol provides an unauthenticated REST method for sending sitemaps to search engines. However, subsequent internal Google and other search engine research have revealed that these unauthenticated sitemap submissions are no longer helpful. In the instance of Google Search, most of these submissions have been detected as spam. As a result, Google has chosen to remove sitemaps ping support. The deprecated REST API will stop working in six months, and any pings to it will result in a 404 error, and using the endpoint will no longer be useful.
The end of the sitemap pinging doesn’t mean that your sitemaps are useless; if you are utilizing robots.txt or regularly pushing your sitemap to the Google search console, you should experience no issues.
The Role of the Lastmod Element
The utility of the last mod feature, which indicates the latest modification date of a webpage, has fluctuated throughout time. However, it has recently become more impactful in a variety of situations, and Google now uses it as a signal for scheduling crawls to previously identified URLs.
To serve its purpose, the last mod element must be in a supported date format, as stated on sitemaps.org. Once you upload your sitemap, Google’s Search Console will alert you if it is not. Furthermore, it should accurately reflect the actual modification dates: if a page was last amended seven years ago, but the last mod element indicates that it was modified yesterday, Google will eventually discard the last mod dates provided.
You can apply the last mod element to all or just a subset of the pages in your sitemap. Because these sites frequently aggregate content from other pages on the site, some site software may need help to detect the last modification date of the homepage or a category page. In such circumstances, omitting the last model for these pages is appropriate.
It is critical to understand that “last modification” refers to “last significant modification.” Minor changes, such as changing the text in the sidebar or footer, do not warrant an update to the last mod value. Only if there are significant modifications to the primary text, structured data, or links you should change the last mod value.
Changefreq and Priority Elements
Google does not utilize the change freq or priority elements. The change freq element overlaps conceptually with last mod, while the priority element, a highly subjective field, often fails to accurately represent the actual priority of a page relative to other pages on a site based on Google’s internal studies. For further information on sitemaps, please review SITEMAP.ORG.
Creating custom and remarketing audiences in Google Analytics 4 is one of the strategies to progress your analytics setup, per the GA4 checklist. You may need clarification on GA4’s comparable audiences, segments, filters, and comparative options.
Who are the GA4 audiences?
Let’s begin by defining the target audience. Users can be grouped or segmented into audiences based on one or more demographic, geographic, or user behavior characteristics.
This segmentation of users means you can use the whole amount of data in Google Analytics 4 to build audiences. For instance, you can create the following audience:
Facebook Ads Traffic from the USA
Google Organic Search Mobile Traffic
Google Ads Desktop Traffic Paris, France
Users who started their first session visiting the specific landing page and scrolled more than 50% of the page
Users that arrived at the targeted landing page for the first time during their first session and scrolled more than halfway down the page
These are all illustrations of audiences in GA4. So the question “What’s the difference between them” is excellent if you use segments in GA4 Explore.
How To Create Audiences in GA4
The audience creation process in Google Analytics 4 is comparable to that in Universal Analytics. Therefore, you should launch GA4 and take the next step to do that: Click the “New Audience” button under GA4 -> Admin -> Audiences.
Creating audiences in GA4
Let’s review the interface at this point. For this article, I decided to split the audiences into two types:
Predefined audiences – the ones we can create using GA4 Templates
Custom audiences – any audience we create using GA4 “Create a custom audience” button
GA4 – Building new audiences
We can create the first type of audience using Google’s templates. Then, selecting the appropriate selection and entering the value are the only things we need to change. Next, Google offers us some ideas on how we may create them.
For instance, choosing “US” as the “country id” in the demographics template makes it simple to establish an audience that includes all users from the USA.
Audiences including US citizens
We can create remarketing audiences for Google Ads using customized or suggested audiences.
Predictive audiences is another intriguing Google Analytics 4 feature that allows you to run paid advertising campaigns, for example, for users more likely to churn. Send by ecommerce_purchase or in_app_purchase events to activate these audiences.
Audiences – Metric
Definition
Purchase Probability The probability that a user who was active in the last 28 days will complete a specific conversion event within the next seven days.
Churn probability The probability that a user who was active on your app or site within the last seven days will not be active within the next seven days.
Predicted revenue The revenue expected from all purchase conversions in the next 28 days from an active user in the last 28 days.
Unfortunately, you will see a “Not eligible to use” label if you don’t send these events.
GA4 Audiences – Not eligible to use
Let’s create a custom audience and enable it in Google Ads. This way, it will become a remarketing audience.
Creating a custom audience in GA4
We want to target users who landed on the Show page during the last 30 days. We want to show them an ad detailing purchase ticket options and deals.
As I previously stated, Google Analytics 4 allows you to build up to 100 audiences. So, you may find yourself in a position where you must remove, alter, or archive one.
Once more, editing an existing audience does not need resetting any users. This audience has no users before you provide and save modifications, but it immediately begins to get new traffic.
The audience can be archived in Google Analytics 4. The same as delete, it is. Go to the GA4 Audiences page, click the three dots next to the audience you want to delete, and then select “archive.”
Audiences – Editing
In the next and final installment you will read about Reporting with GA4.
Part 4 of many about GA4 and what is coming after UA
We will pick up this installment of the Analytics after UA here at the end of the last article GA4 Configuration by digging into segments and audiences.
With its robust audience builder and advanced generation tools, GA4 stands head and shoulders above Universal Analytics (UA). However, GA4 uses a unique approach to track screen views, unlike UA. Instead of treating mobile and web views separately, it combines data from both channels into one property. As a result, GA4 gives you a complete picture of a user’s journey across different devices, allowing for more comprehensive user profiles.
Think of audiences as specific groups of users (‘user segments”) that you can use for analysis and advertising.
Groups are formed based on a range of criteria, such as dimensions, page visits, user attributes, and events (or their sequences) relevant to your company.
For instance, you could compare the behavior of US users against all users or users originating from your app against mobile users and desktop users.
It’s worth noting that audiences are re-evaluated as new user data is collected in GA4 automatically.
Segments and audiences may seem similar, but they have some key differences. Segments are data sections that meet particular requirements and can be analyzed independently.
For example, you can compare the purchase behavior of your local users to the conduct of all users or mobile users to desktop users to gain deeper insights.
Segments allow you to segregate certain groups of people and compare their behavior to the rest of the data rather than analyzing data from all visitors.
GA4 Segments and Audiences
You can opt to develop an audience based on a segment while creating a segment, but these two capabilities are distinct. Segments cannot be used in regular reports, although audiences may.
Exploration reports in GA4 include segments but do not incorporate audiences. However, despite being present in these reports, audiences, as opposed to segments, can be utilized for remarketing campaigns. Audiences are created based on segments and are shared across Google’s advertising products, which makes them suitable for targeted ad campaigns. Conversely, while they can be created and applied within the Explore section of GA4, segments are not used directly in Google’s advertising products like Google Ads.
Most significantly, segments are retroactive, whereas audiences are not because they begin gathering information only from the moment they are created.
How To Create Segments
In GA4, navigate to Explorations > Create a New Exploration.
Choose a segment type
There are three types of segments you can create:
User segment: Includes all events associated with users who satisfy a specific set of criteria.
Sessions segment: Includes all events associated with those sessions that match the set of criteria.
Event segment: Includes only specific events that meet a set of criteria.
Let’s dive into how each segment type works with a simplified model.
Let’s say the user who visited the website performed the following actions during the first session:
Page view.
Submitted form.
Made a purchase.
On the second session the next day, the same user performed these actions:
App click through.
Page view.
Made a purchase.
Made a purchase.
If we create a user segment with the condition that the user submitted a form, it will contain data from all sessions because we tell GA4 to include all data that belongs to that user.
If we build the sessions segment with the condition that the user submitted a form during the session, it will contain only data from the first session because we told GA4 to retain data only from sessions where one has submitted a form.
Building a session segment of when someone watched a video will have data from both sessions because the user made a purchase during both sessions.
And finally, if we create an event segment for times when the user clicks a link, it will contain only click event data from the second session.
Segment Builder UI In GA4
Condition ScopeUser segment builder with time constraints
Here are some of the features to know about within segment builder:
Sequence is available only in user segments and isn’t configured for session or event segments. You can use it to know how many users subscribe after visiting your home page.
You can apply time constraints to your segments. An example use case would be to know how many users visit your subscribe page and sign up within five minutes or how many users visit your product page and add it to the cart within five minutes.
Group level scoping: applies to all conditions within the group and is either across all sessions or within the same session within the same event. Please note that you can use specific sequence level scoping “across all sessions” and “within the same session.” Note that “across all sessions” scoping is available only in user segments.
“Exclusion group” is a valuable tool that allows you to refine your segment or audience by excluding specific users. For instance, you can create an audience comprising individuals who clicked the ‘Add to cart’ button but exclude those who have already purchased. An exclusion group enables you to develop a targeted audience for your remarketing campaign in Google Ads, specifically catering to those who expressed interest in your product but still need to complete the purchase.
OR/AND conditional logic operators can apply multiple criteria simultaneously in the groups.
By checking the “Build Audience” checkbox, you can also create an audience from that segment.
Example Of An Event Segment
Event segments are subsets of events triggered on your website or app.
Why would you need event segments if you already have users and session segments? Event segments, on the other hand, enable a more targeted and specific analysis than session-based or user-based segments.
They enable you to investigate people’s actions on your website and optimize the user experience.
As an example, let’s make a scroll-depth event segment. You may identify interesting sites by analyzing users that achieve specific scroll depth criteria, optimize content layout, and enhance overall user engagement.
Event Segment – Scroll depth greater than 50%
In our case, we want to view data from people who went 50% of the way down the page and noted that only “within the same event” remained.
Granular scroll depth monitoring necessitates a specialized configuration, which we will discuss in the following steps. If you don’t have it configured, you may use the “scroll” event without the special parameter “percent_scrolled.”
Here are some examples of when you might want to use event segments instead of users or session segments.
Clicks Events: Make a segment from click events like “Add to Cart” or “Submit Form.” A click event enables you to analyze sessions or users who actively engage with your call-to-action buttons and quantify the effectiveness of individual call-to-action buttons.
Show Page Engagement:
Interaction with Dynamic Content. Analyze interactions with dynamically loaded or personalized content pieces, such as image carousels, actor bios, or press releases.
Video Engagement: A segment can be created depending on events such as “video_start,” “video_progress,” or “video_complete.” This segment lets you examine sessions or users interacting with video content on your website or app.
Buy Tickets: Set up custom event monitoring to generate segments based on unique interactions important to your business, such as buy ticket button clicks (to your event ticketing site), to assist you in identifying and analyzing problematic sessions or individuals.
Error Tracking: Form validation errors, broken links, and server-side problems can all be used to create a segment. The benefit: error-focused event segments allow you to discover and analyze sessions or users that faced issues, enabling you to improve error handling, fix broken elements, and improve the overall website or app operation.
Example Of A User Segment
At DWG, we have sign-ups, and we are interested in how long it takes a user to sign up for our newsletter after landing on our article pages.
For that, we should build a segment of users who visited the homepage for our shows, followed by a “buy_tickets” event within 5 minutes.
For that, we choose “first_visit” as an event.
Add / Edit / Delete GroupsCreate / Edit an EventAdd subsequent events & time constraints
If you want to apply a time constraint to a specific step, you can utilize the time constraint option within the sequence. However, in our case, we have chosen a sequence global time constraint, which applies to all steps within the sequence.
We’ve found from this segment that 7.5K out of 12K subscribers (50%) subscribe within 5 minutes when they visit the homepage.
If you run a shop, you can create a segment of customers who buy within a day of browsing a product page.
There are unlimited ways to use this, and I’d like to emphasize that GA4’s new segment or audience builder is far more flexible and powerful than Universal Analytics.
Here are a few ideas of segments you may need to use for a users segment:
User Acquisition: Understand user behavior from different acquisition channels (organic search, paid ads, social media, email marketing, DSP). Tracking the user across to the event ticketing site across sessions with event tracking across all sessions. Get a full ROI of all your marketing efforts, based on revenue, order value, and purchase frequency.
Demographic Analysis: Segment users by age, gender, location, or interests to personalize marketing strategies.
Churn Analysis: Identify and re-engage users who have churned via remarketing campaigns.
Cohort Analysis: Compare new and returning users’ engagement, retention, and conversion rates.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Identify high-value users based on revenue, order value, and purchase frequency.
Example Of A Session Segment
While user segments help analyze long-term behavior and user attributes, session segments help analyze user interactions within a single session.
For content engagement analysis reports, session segments are the best option. For example, you can use session segments to analyze how visitors interact with various types of content on your website or to study user behavior based on referral sources.
Session Segment
In the sessions segment, everything is the same, but it no longer has the following:
“Across all sessions” scope.
Sequences.
Time constraints.
Let’s build a segment of users who arrived at our website from social.
Here are a few ideas for how you can use session segments vs. users:
Content Engagement: Analyze sessions where users interacted with specific content types.
Campaign Performance: Evaluate sessions originating from specific marketing campaigns or channels to understand your marketing efforts’ effectiveness.
Conversion Funnels: Analyze sessions that progress through crucial steps of your conversion funnel, from initial engagement to goal completion, helping you optimize the user journey.
As we learned how to use segment builder in UI, we can create an audience quickly. In the next part we will focus on the Audiences and get to the bottom of how to create audiences and multiple examples.
