E-E-A-T for service businesses: showing you’re the real thing
What E-E-A-T is and isn’t, and the evidence on and off your site that shows an accountancy firm, law firm, clinic, agency or trade is the real thing.
If you run an accountancy practice, a law firm, a clinic, an agency or a trade business, your website has to persuade two audiences: people deciding whether to trust you with their money, health or home, and search systems working out whether you are who you say you are. Both look for the same thing, which is evidence. Here is how to show it, on your site and off it.
What E-E-A-T is, and what it isn’t
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. It comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, the handbook human raters use to judge whether search results are any good. The first “E”, experience, was added in December 2022.
The four parts of E-E-A-T
Three things E-E-A-T isn’t:
- A single score. No tool can measure it, and anyone who sells you a number for it is guessing.
- A ranking factor in itself. Raters’ scores don’t change rankings directly; Google uses them to check that its systems work, and says E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor. Its systems use a mix of signals that line up with what raters look for.
- Four equal parts. Google describes trust as the most important. Experience, expertise and authority are ways of earning it.
Why service businesses get extra scrutiny
Many service topics are YMYL, short for “your money or your life”: subjects that could significantly affect someone’s health, finances or safety. Tax advice, legal disputes, medical treatment and gas or electrical work all qualify, and Google says its systems give even more weight to strong E-E-A-T on these topics. For an accountancy firm or a clinic, that covers most of the site.
Evidence on your site
Claims cost nothing, so they count for little. Evidence is something a sceptical visitor, or a rater, can check. If you work in a regulated profession, check each idea below against your regulator’s rules on advertising first.
- Real people. Name the people who do the work, with photos, short bios and their qualifications or professional memberships. Make them verifiable: a membership number or a link to the relevant public register lets anyone confirm it with the issuing body.
- Registered company details. UK companies must already show their registered name, company number and registered office address on their website. Put them in the footer and on the contact page, and add your VAT number while you’re there.
- A clear process and pricing. Explain what happens after someone gets in touch, how long each stage takes and what it typically costs. Fixed fees, or typical ranges for common jobs, are more convincing than “competitive prices”.
- Examples, with permission. Worked examples of real jobs, anonymised or shared with the client’s agreement, show experience better than any adjective. We follow the same rule: client references are shared on a call, with permission, which is why our About page explains who we are and how we work instead of showing a wall of logos.
- Author pages. Give every article a byline that links to an author page covering role, qualifications and experience. Google’s own guidance on helpful content asks whether it’s self-evident who wrote a page, and encourages bylines where readers expect them.
- An editorial standards note. One short page that says who writes your content, who reviews it (a qualified partner checking every tax article, say), how often it’s updated and how you correct mistakes.
Two cautions. Don’t mark up your own testimonials to try for review stars: self-serving review markup isn’t eligible. And carry the evidence into search results: a title or description that mentions fixed fees, a real location or a qualification gives people a reason to trust you before they click, as we covered in our guide to title tags and meta descriptions.
Generic claims vs evidenced copy
Generic claims
- “Industry-leading experts”
- “Trusted by hundreds of clients”
- “Competitive prices”
- “A proven process”
- “Years of experience”
Evidenced copy
- Named advisers, with qualifications you can check
- Links to your reviews on independent platforms
- Fixed fees or typical ranges for common jobs
- The steps, the timings and who does what
- Worked examples, shared with client permission
Evidence off your site
What others say about you carries more weight than anything you say about yourself, and the rater guidelines ask raters to look for exactly this kind of independent reputation information.
- Reviews on third-party platforms. Ask every customer to review you on your Google Business Profile and on at least one independent review platform. Google’s policies don’t allow incentivised reviews or review gating (asking only the customers you expect to be happy), and UK consumer law now bans fake reviews outright. Reply to reviews, critical ones included: how you handle a complaint is evidence too. Our Google Business Profile checklist covers the profile itself.
- Citations. Your business name, address and phone number should match everywhere they appear: directories, professional registers and industry associations. Keeping them consistent is a core part of our local SEO work.
- Press mentions. Coverage in trade or local publications, articles by your partners and expert comment in the press all count, because someone else chose to feature you.
Where to start
If you only do three things this quarter, add bylines and author pages to your advice content, put your registered details and pricing where people look for them, and start asking every customer for a review. Our content strategy work covers the rest: author profiles, expert review, sourcing and the trust pages that show who is behind your content.
Trust signals to check
- Named team members with photos and short bios
- Credentials and memberships that can be checked with the issuing body
- Registered company name, number, VAT number and address
- A plain description of how you work and what it costs
- Examples of past work, shared with client permission
- Author pages linked from every article
- An editorial standards note: who writes, who reviews, how errors are corrected
- Recent reviews on independent platforms, linked from your site
Wondering how your site looks to a cautious first-time visitor? Request a free SEO audit: it covers content and authority as well as technical health.