Anyone who has been following me for a while will know that I am not a fan of blanket statements, but I will allow myself to make one here anyway. I think that the topic of EAT and in particular the thematic positioning of the brand currently determines 30% to 60% of the ranking on Google, depending on whether or not the YMYL topic is present. In YMYL areas, I even see EAT as a kind of gatekeeper for the first page.
For non-YMYL topics, it is a ranking influence that is not a prerequisite for the first page, but is on a par with other factors.
entities and EAT
Since the introduction of Hummingbird, Google has been trying to identify, extract and relate entities. The relationships between companies, people and topics are important to Google because they saudi-arabia phone number data can use this method to algorithmically determine contextual relationships, the quality or strength of the relationship and, as a result, authority and expertise.
The Zalando entity is closely related to other entities such as fashion brands (e.g. Tom Tailor, Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Marco Polo ...) and product groups (shoes, dresses, bikinis ...).
Relationship of the Zalando entity to other topics
These relationships can be of varying degrees of intensity. Google can use the strength or extent of these relationships to determine an assessment of expertise and, above all, authority and incorporate this into an EAT concept.
EAT and Entities Using Zalando as an Example
Read more in the article Entities & EAT: The role of entities in authority and trust .
Factors influencing EAT
I differentiate between on-page and off-page factors that influence EAT. Off-page factors are more important because they are not so easy to influence.
Possible EAT on-page factors:
Personal entities that themselves have thematic authority and are involved in the creation of the content.
Share and number of content assets on a topic on a domain.
Content quality of the individual documents themselves. This also includes additional internal links and regular maintenance and updating of the content.
Use of https.
Website that is free from spam and hacks.
Possible EAT off-page factors:
External links from authority sites with relevant anchor text.
Removal of authoritative seed sites in the link graph.
PageRank of the linking sources.
Frequency of co-occurrences of the authors and the publisher in the relevant topic environments on external websites, in podcasts, YouTube videos ...
Frequency of co-occurrences in search queries from topic-brand combinations.
Click behavior in the SERPs for relevant keywords on your own documents.