Despite more and more people spending more and more of their time on social networks, SEO remains a key consideration in any effective digital marketing plan.

Google facilitates around 5.8 billion search queries every day, and chances are, at least some of those searches relate to your business or niche, and could help to drive more traffic to your website. When people are looking for a product or service, Google remains the first stop for most. And with more people shopping online than ever before, it’s critical that your site performs well in order to maximize your opportunities.

And if you’re looking for a way to improve your search performance, then Google’s EAT guidelines are a good place to begin.

Within the various elements that Google considers when refining its ranking system, one of them is human raters who give Google feedback on how accurate and helpful their search results are. In assessing search results, Google’s raters use the EAT criteria, which stands for:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

​EAT in itself is not a ranking factor, but it’s part of the criteria Google uses to rank its results, so it’s a good indicator of the likely elements that will help improve your search performance.

If you’re looking to get a better understanding of EAT and how it works, the team from Spiralytics have put together this overview in infographic form.

Some handy notes to keep in mind in your SEO approach.