What does E-E-A-T cover?
E-E-A-T comes from the guidelines Google gives its human quality raters. Four letters, four questions:
- Experience. Has the author actually done what they are writing about? A contractor describing a real job site, a business owner recounting their software migration: lived experience shows, and it can be verified.
- Expertise. Does the author master the subject? Training, years in the trade, track record: whatever makes you a legitimate person to write this page.
- Authoritativeness. Do third parties recognize you? Reviews, mentions in local or trade press, links from websites in your industry.
- Trustworthiness. Can you be trusted? Complete contact details, a legal notice, HTTPS, a privacy policy, consistent information everywhere your name appears. This is the foundation: without trust, the other three do not count.
Why does it count double in 2026?
First reason: Google increases the weight of these signals with every algorithm update, especially for topics that touch money and health, where anonymous, generic content is clearly losing ground.
Second reason, more recent: AI engines make the same cut. When ChatGPT or Perplexity choose which sources to cite, they favor content that is signed, dated, factual and backed by identifiable entities. A website with no author and no proof is exactly the kind of source a model avoids recommending. Working on your E-E-A-T is working on your AI visibility at the same time.
The concrete proof to display
- Sign your content. Name, real photo, role, and two lines of verifiable background. A link to the LinkedIn profile reinforces it all.
- Put numbers on your experience. "25 years in industry", "340 projects delivered", "since 2009": dated, quantified facts are exactly what Google highlights and what AI models cite.
- Show real cases. A case study with the context, what was done and the measured result is worth ten pages of generalities. It is the ultimate proof of Experience.
- Collect and display reviews. On your Google Business Profile first, and as excerpts on your website with a name and context.
- Declare who you are in structured data. Person and Organization JSON-LD connects your content to its authors in a machine-readable way.
The 3 pages that carry everything
The about page. Not mood copy: who you are, since when, where, with what references. It is one of the first pages Google's raters and AI models check to place a business.
The author pages. If several people write, each one gets a page: background, areas of expertise, list of their articles. Every article links back to it.
The case studies. One per type of service, with numbers. They serve SEO, conversion and AI citability at the same time: no other content has that triple return.
What does not work
- Inflated or invented biographies. A background that cannot be verified, or that contradicts itself between your website and LinkedIn, destroys trust instead of building it.
- Decorative badges. "Money-back guarantee", self-awarded stars, trust logos with no link behind them: visual noise with zero proof value.
- Generated content with no review and no signature. AI can help you write, but a website full of anonymous, interchangeable pages checks every box of the content Google demotes. The value comes from what only you can say: your experience, your numbers, your cases.