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In my career to date, these browser extensions have been an important part of my tool kit in helping me work more efficiently.

In this article, I will share the browser extensions I use on a daily basis as an SEO professional to analyse or identify problems on a website.

Extension #1: Detailed SEO Extension 

The Detailed SEO extension was created by Glen Allsopp, Glen is more commonly known in the SEO community as Viperchill for his in-depth SEO strategies and insights, hence the name of the extension and his main website detailed.com.

It’s safe to say Glen knows a thing about SEO. The extension is fantastic for quickly checking metadata on a website without having to look at the source code.

This includes on-page SEO elements such as: 

• Title tag
• Meta description
• Permalink 
• Canonical
• Header tags
• Meta directives

The extension is also available on both Chrome and Firefox and is completely free.

Extension #2: Hreflang Tag Checker

Hreflang tag checker was created by London based agency Adapt Worldwide, with international clients such as Panasonic is safe to assume they know a thing or two about the complexities of Hreflang.

The extension is fantastic for checking Hreflang return tags on alternate country or language pages.

Hreflang can be difficult to grasp, here’s what John Muller from Google had to say about Hreflang:

“Hreflang is one of the most complex aspects of SEO (if not the most complex one). Feels as easy as a meta-tag, but it gets really hard quickly.”

The extension helps with the complexities of Hreflang by displaying all the alternate pages in a user-friendly way without having to dig through the source code of every page.

The extension is free but is only available for Chrome, a great Firefox alternative for checking Hreflang tags would be the SEO minion extension.

Extension #3: Mozbar

Mozbar a popular chrome extension created by Moz.com the SEO software company behind the famous whiteboard Friday videos.

The extension is helpful for accessing and comparing SEO metrics such as page authority, domain authority and link metrics within the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The free version of Mozbar can help SEOs who don’t have the budget for expensive tools to access the difficulty of a keyword by analysing the authority of competing websites.

The extension is free but a premium version is available with their Moz Pro subscription.

Extension #4: Redirect path

Redirect path was created by digital marketing firm Ayima to identify redirects and errors that can come from URL changes.

The extension displays all the hops that have occurred during the redirect and the HTTP status code the page is serving with the goal of helping you identify the root problem.

The extension is only available on Chrome, a great Firefox alternative is Link Redirect Trace by LinkResearchTools.

Extension #5: Wappalyzer

Wappalyzer is a great reconnaissance extension for checking the technology stack of a website.

This extension is useful for revealing your competitors content management system (CMS). The extension can also give you insight into their current marketing channels by revealing their analytics tracking tags.

The extension is available on Chrome and Firefox with free and paid plans.

Extension #6: Google Tag Assistant

Tag assistant by Google helps you instantly verify that your tags are firing as intended. The purpose of the extension is to help you diagnose and troubleshoot any issues in real-time.

The extension is completely free and only available on Chrome users.

Extension #7: SEO Minion

SEO Minion is a great all-rounder that comes with many features, the extension can assist you with everything from on-page SEO to international SEO.

Features include:

• On-page analysis
• Redirect checker
• Checking broken links
• SERP preview tool
• Hreflang checker
• Simulate different search results

If I was restricted to just one SEO browser extension it would have to be SEO minion, it’s a great all in one SEO tool. My favourite feature of the tool is the ability to compare search results from different locations for a particular keyword.

SEO Minion is completely free and available for Chrome and Firefox.

Extension #8: Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on (by Google)

As the name suggests the extension tells Google to not send information to Google Analytics.

As an agency we work with a lot of websites on a regular basis, this extension prevents our visit from being recorded in their Google analytics, keeping our client’s website traffic clean and accurate.

The extension is completely free and available on Chrome and Firefox.

Extension #9: Web Developer

The web developer extension was developed by Chris Pederick and is great for temporarily disabling website features.

I and other SEO’s commonly use it for temporarily disabling Javascript when doing website audits due to the problems Javascript causes when optimising a website for search engines.

The Web developer extension is free and available on Chrome and Firefox.

If you have any suggestions let us know.

If your site is under-performing and you can’t understand why, and you need an SEO agency to help then get in touch.

The post SEO Browser Extensions to Make Your Life Easier appeared first on Codefixer.

No, most companies that offer free SEO audits just run automated software that produces a report that offers little value.

We offer comprehensive paid SEO audits, written by specialists that will study your website, your analytics, your Google Search Console reports, and deep dive into the issues that may be holding your site and business back. We’ll propose solutions, and assign priorities and tasks. This takes time and analysis and is where we add our value.

Can you guarantee SEO results?

We don’t guarantee SEO results. It’s difficult to guarantee results, there are too many variables in play including what your competitors are doing, and Google’s algorithm can sometimes be unpredictable. Indeed, Google offers advice to stay away from companies that offer guaranteed results.

What we do is offer you the opportunity to work with our team of specialists. We have a proven track record of delivering an excellent Return on Investment for our clients.

How long does it take to start seeing results from SEO?

The time period can differ depending on the site and the competitiveness of your keywords and market. If it’s a new site in a competitive market then it can take quite a long time to build authority. There are times when the site has good authority but poor targeting and simple fixes to technical or on-site issues can lead to quick wins.

Why do you not recommend cheap SEO?

Our team has the best specialists and uses the best paid software. We invest in their ongoing careers with training and personal development and send them to conferences to learn and mix with their peers.

SEO takes time and expertise, it involves analysis, implementation and reporting. We’re committed to working long term with our clients as partners, rather than being cheap providers.

Is SEO a one-time process?

No, SEO is an ongoing process of continual improvement and not a one-time event. Your competition will continue to improve, and search engines such as Google continue to evolve with new features. What worked well in the past may not work as well. The more competitive your market is, the more ongoing work that is needed.

Does my site need an SEO audit?

The SEO Audit is a starting point for your SEO strategy. It allows us to learn more about your business and do a health check on your website, your competitors and your market. We identify issues with the site and propose solutions. The recommendations are assigned and priorities set. We can project manage the recommendations of the SEO audit.

The post Important SEO Questions You’ve Asked with Answers appeared first on Codefixer.

For the vast majority of people, Google is the go-to search engine to find information online.

However, Google is not the only search engine available, the next biggest search engine online is Microsoft’s Bing.

It can be easy to dismiss Bing as not being important but by doing so you’re potentially missing out on additional website traffic and revenue for your business.

While Google controls a staggering 86.38% to 92.59% of the UK market, Bing respectfully controls between 4.82% and 9.72%.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/280269/market-share-held-by-search-engines-in-the-united-kingdom/

https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/united-kingdom

In comparison to Google, Bing’s overall market share is tiny but that doesn’t make the traffic any less important. 

If we take a moment to think about what Microsoft is famous for the first thing that comes to mind is their operating system, it’s typically the most common operating system found in households, businesses and schools. 

If we look at the average personal computer in households today it’s a windows computer, which typically comes pre-installed with Microsoft’s own web browser Edge with the default search engine being Bing. 

Google usually isn’t the default search engine on a Windows machine and will typically be configured by the user. 

However, a portion of those users won’t make any changes to the default settings and will just use the pre-configured setup which will favour Microsoft’s own product range, this crowd will typically be an older crowd that aren’t tech-savvy or just don’t care and want something that just works out of the box. 

According to this source over 70% of those who use Bing are older than 35.

What this highlights is that users of Bing are older, this statistic is important to consider because typically what comes with age is more financial resources with more disposable income to spend on products and services.

If your ideal customer is over the age of 35 and you’re not utilising Bing you’re potentially losing out on thousands of pounds in revenue, all of a sudden Bing’s 4.45% market share doesn’t look so tiny.

The good news is we have you covered, as we are going to share with you how to optimise your website to meet Bing’s webmaster guidelines. 

On the 30th of June, Bing webmaster team tweeted that their guidelines had been updated on how Bing discovers, crawls and indexes content.

To perform well in search results it’s important to first understand the guidelines laid out by the search engine. We did this previously with Google’s guidelines with a focus on E-A-T why it’s important. 

Similar to that article we are going to highlight some of the points covered in Bing webmaster guidelines to consider when optimising your website for Bing. If you would like to read the official Bing webmaster guidelines you can find them here.

How to help Bing discover your content

Similar to how Google discovers content, Bing relies on the same methods to discover, crawl and index pages, these are the following.

Submit a sitemap

To help Bing discover your website, it’s important that you submit a sitemap to Bing webmaster tools, this will allow Bing to discover and crawl all of the available URLs on your website.

Typically your website sitemap can be found by typing in your URL followed by /sitemap or /sitemap.xml if you can’t find your sitemap in this location, we advise you contact your web developer to help you create one.

See our website for example  – https://www.codefixer.com/sitemap.xml

If you have a WordPress website, you can automatically generate one with one of the many SEO plugins, we typically advise our clients to install Yoast to do this for them.

If your website is not built on WordPress, we advise that you speak to your website developer who will be able to create a sitemap for you.   

Once you have a sitemap created, login to Bing webmaster tools and submit your sitemap, under the sitemaps section on the left-hand panel, you will then see the following screen.

Robots.txt 

Don’t forget to include your sitemap in your robots.txt file, if you’re already investing in SEO for Google, you are probably already aware of the importance of a robots.txt. 

Essentially, the robots.txt file informs search engine crawlers where they can locate the sitemap and which areas of the website they can crawl and which areas they should ignore. 

Bings guidelines on content

Create content for users, not search engines

A few years it was enough to stuff your content with your target keyword and you would appear for that search query. 

Search engines have since evolved and stuffing your content with keywords isn’t going to cut it.

When creating and optimising content, it’s important to make sure that your content is the most relevant and aligns with the search intent. 

To ensure your content is relevant it’s important to carry out keyword research and analyse the search results to understand what Bing is rewarding for any given keyword.

Create high-quality content

The best way to improve rankings on Bing is to create high-quality content, before creating new or updating existing content for a target keyword, check to see the level of quality Bing is currently rewarding for that keyword.

Things to check: 

• Are the websites in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place satisfying search intent and is the content relevant? 
• How well is the content written?
• How long is the content for that keyword?
• Is the content engaging? 

By analysing the top 3 results for your keyword, you will have a better understanding of what Bing is rewarding.

Create unique content

Every piece of content on your website should be unique, do not reuse content from other websites. 

Bing is smart enough to know when content has been plagiarised and can lead to your website being penalised for duplicate content.

If you can’t write the content yourself, outsource it to a writer who can, by doing so you give your website the best possible chance of ranking for your target keywords. 

Add images or videos

Include unique high-quality images that are relevant to the topic, avoid stock photos and large images that slow the website down and include descriptive filenames that describe the image. 

Images are by far one of the most common issues we come across when doing website audits, these include large images that slow the website down and filenames that look like someone’s credit card number. 

If relevant to the page try and include video but avoid using stock or low-quality video as well as large video files that may slow down your website.

Invest in on-page SEO

On a regular basis, we review websites with poor on-page SEO, websites that are missing important HTML elements. 

These include: 

• Missing page titles
• Missing meta descriptions
• Heading tags that don’t follow a logical structure
• Missing ALT tags 
• No Internal linking

On-page SEO is often overlooked and deemed as not important but when combined with great content can make a huge difference in rankings. 

Bing has even released an on-page analyser that will check the webpage for the above elements – https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/seo-analyzer-97615e21

How Bing ranks content 

If you want to rank on Bing, their guidelines explicitly tell you everything you need to know to stand the best possible chance of succeeding in their search results. 

Their guidelines state that their search results are generated by their algorithm in the same way as Google generates their search results.

Their section on how Bing rank content starts with stating that Bing does not accept payments to manipulate rankings, instead websites can choose to use their advertising platform instead for more exposure. 

They also go on to state that they will not prioritise Bing products or services in search results and instead favour the following factors to influence search results.

Relevance

Bing’s first ranking factor is relevancy, this is based on how well content on a given landing page for a specific keyword matches the intent behind the search query.

As we discussed earlier in order to stand the best possible chance of ranking on Bing it’s important to do proper keyword research and analyse first page results to make sure content is satisfying the search intent. 

Quality and Credibility

Bing defines quality and credibility by evaluating the website’s reputation and the authors of the website, Bing also considers websites that provide citations and references to information to be of higher quality than websites that don’t and may even demote sites that use foul language to make a point. 

User engagement 

Bing determines user engagement by placing importance on click-through rate and bounce rate, the search engine favours websites with a higher clickthrough rate and a lower bounce rate, as a higher clickthrough rate would indicate the result is relevant and a lower bounce rate would indicate search intent is being satisfied. 

Content Freshness

Bing prefers fresh content, they will reward websites that are actively keeping their information up to date as this provides the best experience for their users. 

Location 

Bing places importance on the location of the user and where the website is hosted, the language of the website, or the location of other visitors to the page.

Page load time

Similar to Google, Bing places importance on the loading time of a website, there is nothing more frustrating than a slow website and Bing views this a bad user experience as this can lead to users leaving your website before the website loads.

Final thoughts

Bing’s webmaster guidelines provide clear and actionable insights to get the best possible results on Bing and what practices to avoid in order for your website to stand the best possible chance. 

To summarise, websites that load fast, provide unique high-quality content that is kept up to date and matches search intent will be rewarded.

Websites that provide low-quality content that is scraped or plagiarised and engages in cloaking, keyword stuffing, link schemes or other malicious behaviour will incur ranking penalties.

If you would like guidance on optimising your website to meet Bing webmaster guidelines, our SEO team can provide an in-depth audit and suggestions to improve your organic visibility in Bing. 

The post Bing Webmaster Guidelines – What it takes to rank on Bing appeared first on Codefixer.

A website migration occurs when a website owner decides they want to make a substantial change to the website, this could involve changing the website domain, moving to a new server or re-designing the website on a new CMS/technology stack, for instance, moving from WordPress to Shopify or from Magento to WordPress.

Website migrations can occur for a number of reasons but the one thing many website owners fear is the loss of search traffic and revenue, the internet is littered with horror stories of website migrations that have gone wrong.

One thing is for sure, migrations can be daunting and stressful. Here’s a list of things to check after you have migrated your website.

Make an annotation in Google Analytics

It’s considered best practice that if you’re going to make a sufficient change to a website that you make an annotation in Google analytics.

Adding annotations can help you monitor and compare the performance of your website after the migration. Including an annotation will allow you to measure trends, and better attribute any increases or decreases in metrics after the migration has occurred.

Ensure Google Analytics is still enabled

If you’re moving your website to a new platform it’s easy to forget to include the tracking code on the new platform. To ensure you don’t see your website traffic nose drive after the migration to the new platform double check that you have included the Google Analytics tracking code on the new platform.

The easiest way to check if your website is missing Google Analytics code is to enter your website URL into the following website:

http://www.gachecker.com/

This will scan your website for UA- or GTM- code depending on how you implemented Google analytics, it will then return every page that is being tracked.

Ensure 301 redirects are working

In most migration cases, redirects will be a part of the migration process whether that’s moving to a new domain, change in the URL structure, moving content to a new page or migrating from HTTP to HTTPS. All of these activities will involve the use of redirects.

The purpose of redirects is to inform search engines that the resource they are looking for has now moved to a different location. If not implemented properly search engines will serve a 404 page to visitors, which can lead to the loss of traffic, revenue and create a bad user experience.

If you are working with a WordPress website you’ll add your redirect rules to the .HTACCESS file on the website server. These rules will provide search engines with instructions to where they can find the updated URL.

Before launching, have your web developer double-check that all 301 redirects have been included in the .HTACCESS file. When the new site has gone live have your web developer again check the .HTACCESS file to ensure redirects are still in place.

You can also check redirects manually by simply visiting any old URLs and seeing if they redirect to the new location. You can also add a useful Google Chrome extension called Redirect Path which will show you the status code and the path of the redirection. Another option would be to have a URL mapping spreadsheet and copy all the old URLs into a program like Screaming Frog to see if they get redirected properly.

Ensure XML sitemap has been submitted to Google search console correctly

It’s important that during the migration stage you have made the old sitemap and new sitemap available to search engines, this will allow search engines to get a better understanding of the changes that have been made to the website.

Once you have successfully pushed the migration live, it’s important to go to your Google Search Console and submit the old sitemap along with the new sitemap, this will help search engines crawl and understand the redirects that have been put in place quicker.

Ensure search engines are crawling and indexing your website

If you’re redesigning your website, it’s common practice to add a disallow directive to the robots.txt file or no-index directive to the web pages of your development website to ensure search engines don’t crawl and index the website.

However, Google doesn’t always listen to the disallow directive when placed in the robots.txt file, other common practices used by web developers to prevent search engines from crawling your website is to add a password to the website or by adding X-Robots-tag headers to the .htaccess.

X-robots- tag reference > https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/804

The safest way to do this is to password protect the site and that’s what we’d recommend.

When your new website is ready to go live, make sure you double-check that the above measures on the development website have been removed, this will ensure search engines can crawl and index the website, you will find many horror stories online in which websites have forgotten to do this causing their website to disappear off search results weeks or months down the line. If you ever notice this, give the website owner a shout out.

After a website migration, you should perform a site operator search – site:example.com and regularly check that new URLs are being indexed correctly.

Performing a site: search isn’t always 100% reliable, so it’s also best practice to check the coverage tab in Google search console for a more accurate representation of what’s being indexed, this will also identify any crawl errors with guidance on how to fix them.

If you have successfully submitted the new sitemap to Google Search Console and have made sure to remove the measures to prevent your development website from being indexed, all new URLs should index without any problems. However, it can take time, so it’s important to check.

If you are facing issues with indexation, check the Index coverage status report inside Google Search Console. If there are any issues with indexation the coverage report will highlight any errors in red which you can then investigate further and fix.

Ongoing monitoring

It’s advisable that when you have carried out a migration of any type that you monitor the website daily for at least the next 2 – 4 weeks until the dust settles. By proactively monitoring the website you can quickly fix any issues that occur, this would involve monitoring keyword rankings, fluctuations in traffic, reviewing Google Search Console for any crawl errors, index errors or redirect issues.

Monitor keyword rankings

It’s important that before a migration happens that you benchmark your current keyword rankings especially for key landing pages. By doing so you will be able to see if any increases or decreases in rankings occurred after the migration.

If the worst-case happens and you see a decrease in rankings, you can then segment your organic traffic and review key landing pages to see if the drop in rankings was caused by the migration and which pages have suffered. However, it is important to note that keyword rankings do tend to fluctuate and any ranking drops may not be caused by the migration. It is a good place to start though.

Monitor Google Search Console

Check Google Search Console daily for any issues, Search Console will detect and report any crawl errors, indexation problems, manual penalties or security vulnerabilities and will include a guide on how to fix these issues. The quicker you review and fix the issues the better.

Monitor Google Analytics

We mentioned previously the importance of adding an annotation to Google Analytics on the day the migration is going to occur, we do this so we have a record of the migration date. If you begin to see massive drops in traffic after the migration then there is a good chance the drop in traffic is related to something that has gone wrong during the migration period.

It’s also important to check that any goals or events set up in Google Analytics prior to the migration are still being tracked after the migration period to ensure there are no gaps in the data.

Monitoring Google Analytics daily helps you can prevent and sort issues related to inaccurate data quickly.

Final thoughts

To ensure a migration goes smoothly it’s important to properly plan the migration, the lack of preparation is where migrations tend to go wrong.

Steps to consider before migrating:

Crawl website before migration

Crawl your existing website using Screaming Frog or Deep Crawl, this will allow you to identify any issues with the website that need to be fixed, any issues identified should be noted prior to the migration.

Benchmark key metrics

Before the migration you should make note of your current keyword rankings, traffic to key landing pages and the overall amount of traffic, this data can then be used to identify any difference in traffic after the migration.

Map out all redirects

Using a spreadsheet list out every URL that is currently listed on the website, if you’re planning on changing the URL structure of the website this is time to identify which URLs will be changing and setting up the appropriate redirect, failure to take this step into consideration will result in your website losing traffic and rankings.

Migrate website during non-business hours

If possible it’s better to do the migration during non-business hours, this will prevent any interruptions to visitors and allow any troubleshooting if things don’t go as planned.

Monitor closely

Only once you have carefully planned out the migration should you go ahead with the migration, too many problems occur when migration is rushed and not thought out.

Once the migration has been completed, it’s important to monitor the Google Analytics and Search Console daily for the next 4 weeks religiously, this will allow you to identify issues quickly and resolve them quickly.

Need assistance?

If you would like assistance in migrating your website, then our SEO services can provide the right guidance to ensure the migration goes as smoothly as possible.

The post Important Post Website Migration Checks & Considerations appeared first on Codefixer.

E-A-T was mentioned by Google in 2015 when it officially released its Search Quality Guidelines and stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T). The purpose of E-A-T is to regulate the quality of the content being produced by websites.

Websites are manually reviewed by Google quality raters whose job it is to assess the quality of the search results on Google, the 168-page document produced by Google gives you an extensive insight into what the Google algorithm deems as important.

It’s understood that if a Google quality rater marks a website with a low score, it doesn’t directly impact the website rankings on live search results, instead, the data is used to improve Google algorithms over time and to help deliver better search results.

Google defines E-A-T as follows:

Expertise

Expertise is defined by having a high level of knowledge or skill in a particular field. Google is looking to make sure that websites are producing content by industry experts on topics that are related to the niche in which the website is targeting.

Authoritativeness

Authority is when a person or the website is seen as the authority in a given space. Authority can be defined with credentials, reviews, testimonials, and even a personal brand. Content written by an authority figure in a given field is going to carry more credibility in the eyes of Google.

Google can assess the authority of a given website author by searching for their name in Google and excluding their website from the search. This will return other websites where the author has been featured or mentioned and can help Google’s human search evaluators to evaluate if the author is considered authoritative within that field.

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness is evaluated by the accuracy and credibility of the information being shared by the website and its author, this ensures that content being produced is factual and not misleading to potential readers. All content that has been written should be based on research or statistics to back-up the accuracy of the content, trustworthiness is also measured by the reputation of your business or website.

Overall, Google wants to ensure that websites are creating high-quality pages with content that is informative, accurate, and has been written by an expert with some sort of credibility.

This is especially true for topics that Google refers to as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) topics. These are topics which could potentially impact a person’s future, health, wealth, or safety.

What is considered YMYL?

YMYL is an acronym that stands for “your money or your life” and was referenced by Google in their quality raters guidelines as to content that could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.

It could be speculated that there is a relationship between the E.A.T and the Google medic update in 2018 which impacted many websites in the health and wellness niche, topics that would be considered as your money or life (YMYL) topics.

So what topics do Google consider YMYL?

The following are examples of YMYL topics mentioned in Google’s search quality guidelines:

Google states that websites covering these topics must have the highest level of E-A-T, meaning the content must be written by an expert in the given field. The writer must be credible on the given topic and the content must be factual which is based on research and not assumptions.

Content related to YMYL is treated with the highest standards because these topics could negatively impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability or safety.

Why E-A-T is important?

The reason E-A-T is so important and why Google is enforcing these guidelines more and more is due to consequences a potentially wrong answer could have on a person’s life and wellbeing.

For example, a solicitor’s website is more qualified to give legal advice regarding personal injury claims than someone sharing legal advice on their personal website based on their personal experience.

To prevent the wrong information being given to someone searching “How to make a personal injury claim?” Google quality raters evaluate the search results for that query and check if the websites being listed for that query are qualified to answer that question or give advice on that subject.

When it comes to YMYL topics, Google’s human search evaluators check for formal expertise in the given topic to ensure that the information being shared is from a reputable source.

However, Google does state that for non-YMYL topics, it’s more about demonstrating relevant experience and “everyday expertise.”

Examples of Non-YMYL topics can range from sports, entertainment and everyday lifestyle topics.

How to be E-A-T compliant?

Now that we know what E-A-T and YMYL are and their importance, the next step is to ensure that you stay compliant with Google E-A-T guidelines.

Visible author box

All content should have a visible author box that displays an image of the author with proof of their expertise on the topic being discussed. This allows Google’s human search evaluators to quickly assess if the author is qualified to write about the given topic.

Make sure content is up to date and factual

To demonstrate expertise, authority and trustworthiness ensure that all content is up to date and factual, especially for topics related to YMYL.

If the information is not accurate and does not display E-A-T characteristics your website rankings could be impacted.

Manage your reputation

Testimonials are a great way to show authority and trust in the eyes of Google. In the search quality guidelines, quality raters are advised to check review websites to evaluate if a website or business has a good reputation.

This should be enough of a reason as to why testimonials are an important ranking factor. If you don’t currently have testimonials, this is the time to put a strategy in place to start collecting and displaying testimonials from customers.

Make sure your website is secure

If your website regularly collects personal information, payment details, or other sensitive information you will need to make sure that the website has a working SSL certificate. This plays a huge part in the trust aspect of the Google E-A-T guidelines, as an unsecured website could put a visitor’s sensitive information at risk.

Contact details should be visible

Google states that contact information should be easy to locate, such as your phone number, email address, address for exchange and returns, etc. This is very important for websites that handle money and transactions and is less relevant to personal websites.

Final thoughts

It’s clear by now that E-A-T is important, and Google quality raters will continue to use these guidelines when manually reviewing websites.

To ensure your website is compliant with Google’s guidelines it’s worth reading over the search quality guidelines to better understand what Google deems important.

The key takeaways are as follows:

Make sure content being published on your website is unique, factual and has a visible author box that provides proof of expertise, especially if the topic falls under YMYL.

It’s important to understand that you don’t need to build a personal brand or to be an authority figure within your industry, a simple link to your LinkedIn profile should be sufficient enough to show your expertise.

We would also suggest that you implement author schema to your website to further indicate to Google you are actively trying to follow their guidelines.

We would also suggest that now is the time to start focusing on reputation management and start actively asking customers to leave positive reviews on business directories like Yell, Google My Business, and your website. This shows Google your business is trustworthy.

In a recent Google update they released a “Find results on” feature which showcases business directories at the top of search results. This is why reputation management and showcasing positive reviews from customers should be a priority, Google deems it important, especially if you’re a local business.

If you still aren’t sure if your website is compliant with Google E-A-T or YMYL guidelines get in touch and our SEO team can audit your website and provide further guidance.

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