Most E-E-A-T SEO advice (searched for as "EEAT SEO" more often than with the hyphens) is written for publishers with an editorial team, and it falls apart when you try to apply it to a three-van plumbing firm in Kettering.
The advice says "demonstrate experience". It rarely says what that looks like as an actual element on an actual page. This article does, for a plumber, an accountant and a solicitor, and it starts with what Google itself says the term means.
E-E-A-T is a rater's checklist, not a ranking factor
E-E-A-T comes from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, a document given to contractors who score search results so Google can check whether its ranking systems are working. The current edition is dated 11 September 2025 and runs to around 180 pages. Section 3.4 is where the four words are defined.
Google's own page on creating helpful content, last updated 5 October 2026, is blunt about its status: "While E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor", Google uses a mix of signals that tend to line up with it. The same page says "Rater data is not used directly in our ranking algorithms."
So nobody at Google is scoring your website for E-E-A-T and feeding that number into the rankings. What the guidelines give you is a plain description of what a careful human looks for when deciding whether a page can be trusted. If your page passes that test for a stranger, it tends to pass whatever proxies Google's systems use.
The "experience" E was added on 15 December 2022. Google's announcement described it as asking whether content "was produced with some degree of experience, such as with actual use of a product, having actually visited a place or communicating what a person experienced". For a trade or a professional firm, that is the easiest of the four to prove and the one most sites skip.
What the guidelines actually tell raters to do
Raters are told to form their E-E-A-T view from three places. The rater guidelines list them as what the site says about itself (the About page or author profile), what others say about it (independent reviews, references, news), and what is visible on the page itself, including reviews and comments.
That third one matters most for a small firm. The guidelines give the example of a hair stylist: a rater "may be able to tell that someone is an expert in hair styling by watching a video of them in action". The evidence can sit in the main content. You do not need a Wikipedia entry.
The guidelines also deal directly with firms that have no press coverage at all.
"Small websites may have little or no reputation information. This is not indicative of high or low quality." Google, Search Quality Rater Guidelines, section 3.3.5, September 2025
The sentence after that says many small local businesses "rely on word of mouth", and that when reputation information is missing, raters should "pay extra attention to other PQ considerations, especially when assessing pages on YMYL topics". In other words, if nobody has written about you, the page has to do the work on its own. In AI answers that reputation gap bites harder, because third-party mentions often count more than your own site.
Trust sits above the other three. The guidelines say untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T "no matter how Experienced, Expert, or Authoritative they may seem", and section 5.1 says a Low rating applies when a page lacks appropriate E-E-A-T for its purpose, with no other consideration able to overcome that.
Why an accountant and a solicitor are held to a higher bar than a plumber
Tax and legal advice are "Your Money or Your Life" topics in the guidelines, which means raters are told to expect expertise before they trust the page. The guidelines' own example of information "best left to Experts" is "instructions on how to fill out tax forms", against a humorous video about how annoying tax is, which anyone can make.
A plumber's pages mostly sit outside clear YMYL. A page about a boiler replacement in a semi in Corby is advice about an activity, and the guidelines treat most such topics as needing a moderate level of trust. Gas work is the exception, because the risk of harm is real, and that is where a registration number earns its place on the page.
The practical difference: a plumber can prove experience with photographs and job notes. An accountant or solicitor has to prove experience and expertise, and the expertise part needs a named, checkable person behind the content.
The page elements, one by one
Here is what we put on a page when a trade or professional firm asks us to improve E-E-A-T. Every item maps to something the rater guidelines or Google's helpful content page says to look for.
A named author with a short bio and a photograph. Google's helpful content page says "We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information, such as bylines to content where readers might expect it." A service page with no human attached is the single most common gap we see. The bio should say what the person does, how long they have done it, and where.
Dated job photographs with a sentence of context. A boiler install photo with "Worcester 8000, fitted 14 March 2026, three-bed semi in Burton Latimer" is experience evidence a rater can read in two seconds. The guidelines' Low quality examples include a product list "with reviews that are paraphrased or summarized from other sources" and no first-hand experience. Stock photos of a smiling engineer are the trade equivalent.
Short case notes. Two or three paragraphs: what the client's problem was, what you did, what it cost or how long it took, where it was. "We did this at a dental practice in Kettering" with a few specifics reads as experience. "We help businesses across Northamptonshire" reads as a brochure.
Reviews with names and dates. The guidelines list reviews and comments as part of "what is visible on the page". A pull of your Google reviews with the reviewer's first name and month, embedded on the page, does this. Anonymous "J, Northampton" quotes do not.
Professional registrations, with the number and a link to the register. Not a logo. The number, and the place a stranger can check it.
A reviewed-by line on advice content. If a junior writes your guide to the 2026 Making Tax Digital deadlines, the page should say which chartered accountant checked it and when. Google's helpful content questions ask whether content "is written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who clearly knows the topic".
A contact page with a real address and a phone number that is answered. Section 2.5.3 of the guidelines tells raters to look for contact information and to "Be a detective!" if it is hidden. Do not make them.
The registrations that count, and how a rater checks them
A registration is only trust evidence if the reader can verify it, so the page should give the number and point at the register.
For gas work, the Health and Safety Executive's check an engineer page says anyone employed to work on gas appliances in domestic premises must be Gas Safe registered, and that a customer can check by entering "the licence number from the engineers ID card" on the Gas Safe Register website, texting it to 85080, or calling 0800 408 5500. Put the seven-digit number on the page next to the engineer's name.
For a solicitor, the SRA's Solicitors Register lets anyone "Search for SRA-regulated individuals and firms in England and Wales", by name or SRA ID. The firm's SRA number in the footer is standard. The individual solicitor's SRA ID next to their byline is not, and it should be. This is the groundwork of digital marketing for solicitors.
For a chartered accountant, ICAEW runs a public Find a Chartered Accountant directory of member firms. A reviewed-by line that gives the accountant's name, ACA or FCA designation and the firm's directory listing gives a rater everything the guidelines ask for under reputation of content creators: "Educational degrees, peer validation, expert co-authors, and citations".
A letter-by-letter table for a small firm
| Letter | What a rater is told to look for | What a plumber, accountant or solicitor puts on the page |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | "First-hand or life experience for the topic." A review from someone who has used the product, against one from someone who has not. | Dated job photos with context, case notes naming the town and the job, before-and-after images, "what went wrong" notes. |
| Expertise | "Necessary knowledge or skill for the topic." The example given is rewiring advice from an electrician against an antiques enthusiast. | Named author bio with qualifications and years in practice, registration number, reviewed-by line on YMYL content, specific numbers and dates in the advice. |
| Authoritativeness | Whether the creator or site "is known as a go-to source for the topic". A local business profile can be the authoritative source for its own offers. | Consistent name, address and phone across the site and Google Business Profile, an About page that says who runs the firm, links from local bodies, trade associations or the registers themselves. |
| Trust | Whether the page is "accurate, honest, safe, and reliable". Customer service information and a clear conflict-of-interest check. | Contact page with address and phone, pricing or fee ranges stated, complaints procedure for regulated firms, named reviews, no manufacturer-style "our service is great" testimonials. |
The table is deliberately boring. None of these items is a trick. Most of them are things a firm already has and has never put on the website.
What reviews need to look like to do any work
The reviews point deserves its own numbers, because many small firms embed a star widget and stop there.
BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, a panel of 1,002 US adults, found 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses. When asked what makes a review persuasive, 35% said a named reviewer, 36% said an accompanying photo or video, 44% said it being posted in the last month, and 37% said the owner having responded.
Those four factors are the same ones the rater guidelines point at under "what is visible on the page". A named reviewer, a photo, a recent date and an owner reply together turn a review from a decoration into evidence. The same survey found 50% of consumers are put off by generic or templated replies, so the owner response needs to mention the actual job. Getting those reviews in the first place is the monthly Google Business Profile routine.
The survey is US, and we have not found a UK equivalent with the same question set, so treat the percentages as directional. The ranking of factors is the useful part.
A note on AI-written service pages
Google does not ban AI-drafted pages, but it expects a person to check them. Its guidance on using generative AI content, updated 1 October 2026, says "It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy". It also suggests "adding information on how your content was created in a way that makes sense for your audience".
This fits the reviewed-by line. If a firm drafts a guide with a tool, the fix is a named professional checking it and saying so on the page, with a date. A page that was clearly written by nobody in particular is the opposite of experience evidence, whichever tool produced it.
Where to start if you have one afternoon
Pick the three service pages that bring in the most enquiries. Add a byline with a bio and a photo to each, add two dated job photos or one short case note, and put the registration number next to the name of the person responsible. Then fix the contact page. That is most of the table in a few hours, and it is the work we do first on local SEO projects for trades and on professional services sites before anything more technical.
Where this fits in a full retainer is set out in our guide to what a UK SEO agency should cost and deliver. The rule we use is simple: a claim only counts as E-E-A-T evidence if a stranger could check it from the page in under a minute. Anything else is copy. Most small firms have more checkable claims than they think. They are in the van, the filing cabinet and the Google reviews, not yet on the site.
If you want us to go through your service pages against the table above, get in touch and we will tell you what is missing.