Posted by Cyrus-Shepard Many SEOs agree that showing expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in your site content is important to ranking well. But why is that, exactly? Is it because Google E-A-T is an actual ranking factor, or is it something else? In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus Shepard explores whether it can be considered a true ranking factor, making your E-A-T goals SMART, and how to communicate it all to curious stakeholders. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday, coming to you from my home where I am wearing a tuxedo, wearing a tuxedo in hope that it exudes a little bit of expertise, perhaps authority, maybe even trust. Yes, today we are talking about Google E-A-T, expertise, authority, trust, specifically asking the question, “Is Google E-A-T actually a ranking factor?”  Now surprisingly this is a controversial subject in the world of SEO. Very smart SEOs on both sides of the debate. Some SEOs dismiss E-A-T. Others embrace it fully. Even Googlers have different opinions about how it should be communicated. I want to talk about this today not because it’s a debate that only SEOs care about, but because it’s important how we talk to stakeholders about E-A-T and SEO recommendations. Stakeholders being clients, website owners, webmasters. Anybody that we give an SEO recommendation to, how we talk about these things is important. So I don’t want to judge. I don’t want to be the final say — that’s not what I’m attempting — about whether Google E-A-T is an actual ranking factor. But I do want to explore the different viewpoints. I talked to dozens of SEOs, listened to Googlers, read Google patents, and I found that a lot of the disagreement comes not from what Google E-A-T is — we have a pretty good understanding what Google E-A-T actually does — but how we define ranking factors. Three ways to define “ranking factors” I found that how we define ranking factors falls into roughly three different schools of thought.  1. Level 1: Directly measurably, directly impact rankings Now the first school of thought, this is the traditional view of ranking factors. People in this camp say that ranking factors are things that are directly measurable and they directly impact rankings, or they can directly impact rankings. These are signals that we’re very familiar with, such as PageRank, URLs, canonicalization, things that we can see and measure and influence and directly impact Google’s algorithm. Now, in this case, we can say Google E-A-T probably isn’t a ranking factor under this definition. There is no E-A-T score. There’s no single E-A-T algorithm. As Gary Illyes of Google says, it’s millions of little algorithms. So in this school or camp, where things are directly measurable and impactful, Google E-A-T is not a ranking factor.  2. Level 2: Modeled or rewarded, indirect effects Then there’s a second school of thought, almost equal to the first school of thought, that says Google’s algorithm is sufficiently complex that we don’t really know all the direct measurements, and in these days it’s a little more useful to think of ranking factors in terms of what is modeled or rewarded, things with effects that are possibly indirect. Now this really came about during the days of the Panda algorithm in 2012, when Google started using much more machine learning and eventual neural networks in its algorithm. To give you a brief overview and to grossly oversimplify, Panda was an algorithm designed to reduce low-quality and spammy results in Google search results. To do this, instead of using directly measurable signals, instead they used machine learning. Again, to grossly oversimplify, Britney Muller has a great post on machine learning. I’m going to link to it if you’re interested. But what they did is they took sites that they wanted to see more of in Google search results, sites like New York Times, things like that, that based on certain qualifications, like did they think the site was well-designed, would you trust it with your credit card, does it seem like it’s updated regularly and written by authors, and they put these in a bucket. Instead of giving the algorithm direct signals, they told the machine learning program, “Find us more sites like this. We want to reward these sites.” So in this bucket, ranking factors are things that are modeled or rewarded. People in this school of thought say, “Let’s just go after the same thing Googlers are going after because we know those things tend to work.” Algorithms that fall in this bucket are like Panda, site quality, and E-A-T. In this school of thought, yes, E-A-T can be considered a ranking factor.  3. Level 3: Any quality or action, direct or indirect effects Then there’s even a third school of thought that goes further than these two, and this school of thought says any quality or action that could increase rankings should be considered a ranking factor, even if Google doesn’t use it in its algorithm, direct or indirect. An example of this might be social media shares. We know that Google does not use social media shares directly in its algorithm. But getting your content out in front of a large number of people can lead to links and shares and eventually more traffic and rankings as those signals roll downhill. Now it may seem kind of crazy to think that anyone would consider something a ranking factor if Google actually didn’t consider it a ranking factor directly in its algorithms. But if you think about it, this is often the way real-world business scenarios work. If you’re the executive of a company, you don’t necessarily care if Google uses it directly or not. You just like seeing the end result.  An example might be, aside from social media, bounce rate, long clicks. TV commercials, excellent example. If you were in a Super

Have you ever noticed that some URLs start with “http://”, while others start with “https://”? Maybe you noticed that extra “s” when you were browsing websites that require giving over sensitive information, like when you were paying bills online. But where’d that extra “s” come from, and what does it mean? To put it simply, the extra “s” means your connection to that website is secure and encrypted; Any data you enter is safely shared with that website. The technology that powers that little “s” is called SSL, which stands for “Secure Sockets Layer.” As a consumer, you always want to see https:// when visiting any site you trust with your essential information. As a marketer, you’ll want to make sure you have an SSL or two for your audience. So let’s talk about why SSL is a big deal. What is an SSL Certificate? Let’s define an SSL. This definition comes straight from SSL.com: When you land on a page that has a form you filled in and hit “submit” for, the information you entered can be intercepted by a hacker on an unsecure website. This information could be anything from details on a bank transaction to what you enter to register for an offer. In hacker lingo, this “interception” is often referred to as a “man-in-the-middle attack.” One of the most common ways an attack happens is this: A hacker places a small, undetected listening program on the server hosting a website. That program waits in the background until a visitor starts typing information on the website, and it will activate to start capturing the information and then send it back to the hacker. A little scary, right? But when you visit a website that’s encrypted with SSL, your browser will form a connection with the web server, look at the SSL certificate, then bind your browser and the server. This binding connection is secure to ensure no one besides you and the website can see or access what you type. This connection happens instantly, and in fact, some suggest it’s faster than connecting to an unsecure website. You simply have to visit a website with SSL, and voila: Your connection will automatically be secured. An SSL is security technology. It’s a protocol for servers and web browsers that makes sure that data passed between the two are private. This is done using an encrypted link that connects the server and browser. Companies that request personal information from a user, such as an email address or payment information, should have SSL certificates on their website. Having one means that the details you are collecting are private and ensures the customer that when they see that padlock and “https://”, their privacy is safe. SSL certificates are categorized by the level of validation and encryption provided or the number of domains or subdomains under the certificate. There’s three types of certificates you can earn depending on the SSL you obtain. Let’s talk about them in more detail. Types Of Certificates The umbrellas that SSL certificates fall under are encryption and validation, and domain number. They each have three classifications, and can be applied for on the SSL website. Certificates are processed by a Certificate Authority (CA), which is software designed specifically for running and granting these certificates. For encryption and validation certificates, there are domain, organization, and extended validation. For certificates defined by the domain number, the types are single, multidomain, and wildcard. Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificate This certificate shows the padlock, HTTPS, business name and country in the address bar to diminish being mistaken for a spam website. Extended Validation (SV) SSL are the most expensive SSLs to obtain, but they are valuable in showing the legitimacy of your domain from the address bar. To set up an EV SSL, you must prove that you are authorized to own the domain you’re submitting. This ensures users that you are legally collecting the data needed to execute certain actions — such as a credit card number for an online transaction. An EV SSL certificate can be obtained by any business, and it should be a priority especially for those that need identity assurance. For instance, if your website processes web payments or collects data, you’d want to get this certificate. Organization Validated (OV SSL) Certificate This certificate verifies that your organization and domain validation are real. Organization Validated (OV) SSL certificates offer a medium level of encryption and are obtained in two steps. First, the CA would verify who owns the domain and if the organization is operating legally. On the browser, users would see a small green padlock with the company’s name following. Use this type of certificate if you don’t have the financial resources for an EV SSL but still want to offer a moderate level of encryption. Domain Validation (DV) Certificate The Domain Validation (DV) certificate offers a low level of encryption shown as a green padlock next to the URL in the address bar. This is the quickest validation you can receive, and you’ll only need a few company documents to apply. This verification happens when you add a DNS to the CA. For this certificate, the CA will review the right of the applicant to own the domain being submitted. (Note: DVs don’t secure subdomains, just the domain itself). Unlike the EV SSL, the CA won’t vet any identity data, so you won’t know who is receiving your encrypted information. But if you’re part of a business that can’t afford a higher-level SSL, a DV gets the job done. Wildcard SSL Certificates Wildcard SSL Certificates are in the “domain and subdomain number” category. Wildcard SSLs ensure that if you buy a certificate for one domain, you can use that same certificate for subdomains. For example, if you bought a Wildcard for example.com, it could be applied to mail.example.com and blog.example.com. An option like this is cheaper than obtaining multiple SSL certificates for a number or domain. Unified Communications (UCC) SSL Certificate Also known

The adage “patience is a virtue” doesn’t apply online. Even a one-second delay can drastically reduce pageviews, customer satisfaction and drop conversions. The speed of your site even affects your organic search rankings. So what’s the biggest factor contributing to your page speed? Size. It takes browsers time to download the code that makes up your page. It has to download your HTML, your stylesheets, your scripts and your images. It can take a while to download all that data. As web users expect more engaging site designs, the size of a site’s resource files will continue to grow. Each new feature requires a new script or stylesheet that weighs down your site just a little more. How do you make sure your site is up to speed? There are some great resources for analyzing this. Google’s PageSpeed Insights, HubSpot’s Website Grader, and GTMetrix are some of the most popular. Both services will analyze your site and tell you where you’re falling behind. A little warning: the results can be a bit daunting sometimes, but most fixes are relatively quick and easy. You might not fix everything the speed service recommends, but you should fix enough to make the site experience better for your visitors. Let’s learn how to speed up things. While a few modern content management systems like HubSpot implement speed-enhancing options out-of-the-box, more common systems, like WordPress and Joomla, require a little manual labor to get up to speed. Now let’s look at some essential speed solutions that every webmaster should consider. 1. Scale down your images. Images are one of the most common bandwidth hogs on the web. The first way to optimize your images is to scale them appropriately, so they don’t affect page loading time as much. Many webmasters use huge images and then scale them down with CSS. What they don’t realize is that your browser still loads them at the full image size. For example, if you have an image that is 1000 x 1000 pixels, but you have scaled it down to 100 x 100 pixels, your browser must load ten times more than necessary. Take a look at the size difference when we scaled down one of our images: Just by changing the dimensions of my image, from 598 x 398 to 600 x 232, the file size decreased immensely. If you optimize your images before uploading them, you won’t forget to when you put them on your page. Sometimes though, scaling images will make your photos blurry. The clarity can be lost and the image becomes distorted. If that usually happens to you, go with the second option: compressing. Compressing images will drastically reduce image size without losing out on the quality. There are several free online tools for image compression, such as tinypng.com, that can reduce your image sizes.You can see size reductions anywhere from 25% to 80%. For example, I took that first image, with 133 KB, and compressed it using a free website app called Squoosh. When the image was completed, it was 87% smaller, and didn’t lose any of its original quality. 2. Cache your browser for data storage. Why make visitors download the same things every time they load a page? Enabling browser caching lets you temporarily store some data on a visitors’ computer, so they don’t have to wait for it to load every time they visit your page. How long you store the data depends on their browser configuration and your server-side cache settings. To set up browser caching on your server, check out the resources below or contact your hosting company: Apache Caching IIS Caching Nginx Caching 3. Reduce CSS load time. Your CSS loads before people see your site. The longer it takes for them to download your CSS, the longer they wait. An optimized CSS means your files will download faster, giving your visitors quicker access to your pages. Start by asking yourself, “Do I use all of my CSS?” If not, get rid of the superfluous code in your files. Every little bit of wasted data can add up until your website’s snail-pace speed scares away your visitors. Next, you should minimize your CSS files. Extra spaces in your stylesheets increase file size. CSS minimization removes those extra spaces from your code to ensure your file is at its smallest size. See if your CMS already minimizes your CSS or if there’s an option for it. HubSpot, for example, already minimizes your CSS by default, whereas WordPress websites require an additional plugin such as WP Hummingbird to optimize those files. If your CMS does not have a minimize CSS option, you can use a free online service like CSS Minifier. Simply paste in your CSS and hit “Compress” to see your newly minimized stylesheet. Minimizing your resource files is a great way to knock some size off your files. Trust me — those little spaces add up quickly. 4. Keep scripts below the fold. Javascript files can load after the rest of your page, but if you put them all before your content — as many companies do — they will load before your content does. This means your visitors must wait until your Javascript files load before they see your page. The simplest solution is to place your external Javascript files at the bottom of your page, just before the close of your body tag. Now more of your site can load before your scripts. Another method that allows even more control is to use the defer or async attributes when placing external .js files on your site. Both defer and async are very useful, but make sure you understand the difference before you use them. Async tags load the scripts while the rest of the page loads, but scripts can be loaded out of order. Basically, lighter files load first. This might be fine for some scripts, but can be disastrous for others. For instance, let’s say one of your pages has a video above