How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m too tired to eat?” I was probably said that a lot of times when I was growing up. It’s usually when I’ve eaten an entire meal, no matter how good I ate.
Eating should be a pleasurable experience. If you eat something, you will feel better. Eat an apple, feel better. Eat ice cream, feel better. But if you eat something like a donut, don’t expect the same level of comfort or enjoyment.
The reason why that happens is that the user experience has to be good for you to have any lasting success. This is the exact same principle that applies to the online marketing industry. In this case, it’s called Expert Authority and it’s actually a core principle of E-A-T. E-A-T stands for “expert authority,” which means “experts in the form of content.” We all know that it’s a good thing to trust experts on the Internet. John Muller and Jane Sherwin jointly developed the concept of expert authority.
John Muller and Jane Sherwin define it as, “an expertise, whether professional or not, resulting from sustained practice, research, analysis and compilation.” So, when somebody asks, “what is expert authority,” the person is looking at the quality of the content, the amount of research and the developer of the content. If the content developer doesn’t have expert status, the person asking probably doesn’t trust the developer and won’t go through with reading the content. That’s the essence of expert status. John Muller and Jane Sherwin call it “authoritativeness” and explain it as, “the ability to judge or verify the reliability, trustworthiness, and accuracy of information or data.”
The algorithm that Google uses is designed to detect and mark websites according to their content, not based on the authors of those pages. However, Google still uses the keywords and the beneficial purpose associated with those keywords to rank websites. So, while it may not be the algorithm that Google uses, it still has a significant impact on how high a site ranks, how many visitors it receives, and how many of those visitors are likely to buy from the site.
The good news for all webmasters is that the beneficial purpose associated with my content isn’t something that Google is looking to take away. That’s why the ranking factors still apply. So, don’t focus on the negative. Instead focus on the positive. If the goal is to create quality content that gets a lot of attention from a wide variety of people, then you’re going to need to put a lot of time and energy into improving your my expertise. But this can certainly be done.