E-E-A-T for local business websites

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust: the framework Google’s quality raters use to judge whether a site deserves its rankings. For a local trade, every one of the four is something you already have – the job is showing it.

What E-E-A-T is, and is not

E-E-A-T comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines and its helpful content guidance. It is not a single ranking factor with a score; it is the lens Google trains human raters to look through, and the signals its systems try to approximate. Google’s own wording puts trust at the centre: the other three exist to support it.

Experience: proof you have done the work

The first E was added for exactly the kind of business this site serves. A page written by someone who has rewired the loft shows it: photographs of your own jobs, the awkward details (what the access was like, what surprised you), and the forty words only you could write about working in that town. Stock photos and adjectives demonstrate nothing.

Expertise: knowing why, not just that

Certifications belong on the page – Gas Safe, NICEIC, TrustMark, whatever your trade carries – but expertise shows most in the writing. A how-to that names the failure modes, a pricing explanation that says what drives the price up, an honest “when not to do this” section: these read as a practitioner because only a practitioner writes them.

Authoritativeness: being the known answer

For a local firm this is consistency and reference: the same business name, address and phone everywhere it appears, reviews accumulating on your Google Business Profile, local mentions that point at you. You cannot shortcut it, but you can stop undermining it with mismatched details.

Trust: the one that decides

A visible address and phone number, a named human behind the work, a working https site, a privacy page, honest pricing signals, and an about page that says who you are. Google’s self-assessment asks whether bylines lead to information about the author; on a small business site, the about page does that job for the whole company.

The who, how and why test

Google asks publishers to make three things evident: who created the content, how it was produced (including whether automation helped, and why that was useful), and why it exists. A local site passes by being straightforwardly itself: the owner’s name, plain disclosure if a tool helped, and pages that exist because customers ask those questions.

Where Townsmith fits

Townsmith leaves the experience on the page: generated pages keep a deliberately empty slot for the part only you can write, and the quality score withholds its largest local credit until that slot holds real substance. The structure is automated; the evidence stays human.