Your Business is Nothing Without It: Ensuring Your Website is Trustworthy

EEAT SEO is becoming more important than ever. When it comes to businesses, we look for signs that a human is on the other side of our computer screen and cares about our wants and needs. If you’re looking for a roofer, you want someone experienced, credible, and trustworthy. However, trust is something earned, not bought. Anyone can claim they are a trustworthy service provider, but Google has created a series of checks that help weed out the pretenders from those telling the truth. 

Proving that you’re trustworthy isn’t as simple as stating it in big, bold letters on the front page of your website. It’s the details people are looking for like clear contact information, full disclosures, and positive reviews that make your business not only stand out more, but seem more reliable. Google values trustworthiness over all else in their EEAT SEO algorithm, so it’s in your best interest to have everything squared away to give the best impression. 

What is EEAT SEO and Why Does it Matter?

March 2024 marked the point when a major Google core update launched that would change the landscape of SEO for the foreseeable future. In an effort to expand the credibility of Google search engine optimization and put sites that deserved a spotlight in their rightful place, the EEAT guidelines were enacted. 

EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Experience is the user experience your site offers visitors, expertise is the credentials and methods of proving you’re an expert, and authority is how much others on the internet consider you an expert. Finally, trustworthiness is how capable your business is at delivering on your claims. Anyone can say they offer the best services in town, but it’s the details across your website that paint a picture of whether you can follow through on those claims or not. 

Google EEAT is essential for your business’ success. If you don’t follow the guidelines and create a site that sticks to Google’s requirements, you’ll never rank highly on search results. Google carefully combs through sites to discern whether you’re telling the truth about your company and can back up your claims or if you’ve made it all up and relied on keywords to carry your SEO efforts. While keywords are important to site visibility, EEAT is the new standard all sites should follow. It’s essentially the foundation of a website, while SEO makes up the pillars. 

A Business is Nothing Without Trustworthiness

Relationships are built on trust. If a client comes to your site, they are potentially entrusting themselves to you in hopes that you can fulfill their service needs. However, Google has formulated what trust looks like through a microscope, creating a set of guidelines that increase your EEAT SEO score in the shadows and elevate or lower your site’s ratings accordingly. 

Creating an SEO-based site is relatively simple, especially with the help of marketing agencies to get the ball rolling. Creating a trustworthy site requires a bit more backend work, though. Google has outlined what you need to have present and easily seen to ensure that Google and your clients can trust you at your word, making you deserving of a top search result spot. 

Clear Contact Information

The accessibility and accuracy of your contact information is paramount to the success of your site and your business. Imagine if a company like Walmart had a company website that didn’t display their local addresses. People would be rightly confused if they placed an online order or needed to pick something up and didn’t know where to go. Having a fake address or the wrong phone number are both marks against your site as well. Ensure your contact information is spotless, leads to the correct address, and is easily found on nearly any page of the website. Just as important, your business's Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) should be consistent across all platforms—your website, Google Maps, business directories, and social media profiles. Inconsistencies can lead to customer confusion, impact local SEO rankings, and undermine your credibility with both users and search engines.

Website Security

If your local grocery store was frequently robbed and had questionable people hanging around the entrance at all hours, you likely wouldn’t go there to get your groceries. The same goes for a website. Any site that doesn’t have website security or consumer protections that are both strong and up-to-date is putting visitors at risk. Google’s EEAT SEO guidelines deem this as the actions of an untrustworthy site and mark you down accordingly.

Factual Accuracy

Any information you publish on your site needs to be factually accurate instead of making unsupported claims. Use backlinks and supporting evidence to give credibility to anything you publish. Anyone can make up a statistic, but if it comes from a national survey or government agency, then it becomes a fact instead of a claim.

Shipping and Returns

Ensure your shipping and returns policies are accurate and accessible if you have any. This goes together with your contact info, as people don’t want to feel like they’ve been swindled if they purchase something and have no way of returning it. You should have a dedicated page somewhere addressing your shipping and returns policies that outlines all the details.

Sensible User Reviews

If you are highlighting user reviews on your website, especially those that can be found through Google Business or other third-party review sites, you need to display them accurately. Cherry picking the ones that look the best may make you look good, but Google knows that you’ve only chosen the best of the bunch and left out the reviews that have legitimate complaints. If you’re going to use testimonials or reviews on your site, use everything or nothing. Otherwise, your EEAT SEO score will drop accordingly.

Advertising Relationships

If you have any advertising relationships, those need to be disclosed somewhere on the site. Transparency and trustworthiness go hand-in-hand, so provide all the details necessary to assuage any doubts or questions people may have about your business. 

Limit Ads and Popups

You’ve likely experienced at least one website in your life that was full of ads and popups, to the point that you could barely read anything on the page without getting blasted with sales pitches. A few ads isn’t a bad thing, as this gives you some form of revenue to maintain your website, but an excessive amount impacts the ability to view the site. Google views a high amount of ads and popups as you milking the website for money instead of using it to provide a resource for your business, lowering your EEAT score. 

Positive Reviews for Local Businesses

If you are marketing for a local business, your earned reviews should be mostly positive, with a similar number of total reviews to similar businesses in your local market. Basically, you want your local business reviews to be organic. More reviews than the competition that are all singing your praises may be great, but could also be the sign that you botted or faked many of them. Real reviews from real people make all the difference in Google’s eyes. 

Creating a Trustworthy Site for EEAT SEO Standards

Your website needs to look and feel like a legitimate business website. This is defined in the details. Trust is something built, and you can’t build a business on lies and malpractice. It’s the quality of your testimonials and attention to detail in helping your customers that creates your overall image, and Google takes note. 

However, nobody is perfect. Not everyone is capable of creating a website that follows every EEAT SEO metric to the letter, but that’s fine. GROW Marketing Agency helps you create a site that follows EEAT guidelines and shows off your business. We can help Google not only notice you, but elevate your business through SEO best practices and website creation and maintenance that covers all of Google’s EEAT needs. If you’re ready to start GROW-ing your business and EEAT-ing up the competition, GROW Marketing Agency is only a call away.