Chapter 5 Exercises — E-E-A-T

Work these with the chapter open. Items marked † have worked solutions in the answers appendix. No answers appear here — struggle first; that is where the learning is. Free tools only.

Recall and comprehension

5.1 In your own words, where does E-E-A-T come from, and what does each of the four letters stand for?

5.2 † Explain, in two or three sentences, why a Google quality rater cannot "penalize" your site.

5.3 What does the extra "E" (Experience) add that the old E-A-T framework did not capture? Give an example.

5.4 Which member of E-E-A-T sits at the center of the framework, and what is the relationship of the other three to it?

5.5 † Define YMYL and give three topics that clearly fall inside it and two that clearly fall outside.

5.6 Distinguish expertise from experience using a single subject (e.g., diabetes, roofing, or mortgages) to show how the two differ.

5.7 Why is authoritativeness described as "off-page and social"? What is the strongest machine-readable proxy for it?

Applied reasoning

5.8 † A colleague says, "Let's raise our E-E-A-T score before the next core update." Rewrite this sentence into something accurate, and explain what is wrong with the original.

5.9 A site has a licensed, credentialed author, is widely cited, and has years of first-hand experience — yet you would still rate its overall E-E-A-T as low. Invent a plausible scenario in which that is true and name which component fails.

5.10 Explain why "add an author box to the page" is not, by itself, an E-E-A-T strategy. What has to be true for an author box to help?

5.11 Two pages give the same correct answer to "how much does a new furnace cost." One is anonymous; one names a licensed HVAC contractor with a real business address. Give two distinct reasons a searcher — and Google's trust signals — might favor the second.

5.12 Explain the difference between building an author entity and the old Google Authorship program, and why conflating them is a costly mistake.

Diagnose why this page isn't ranking

5.13 † A YMYL health page has accurate content, fast load times, and good internal links, but has quietly slid down the results over two core updates. List four E-E-A-T-related questions you would investigate before concluding the content itself is the problem.

5.14 A local plumber's service page is technically flawless (indexed, mobile-friendly, quick) but invisible for "emergency plumber [city]." Using this chapter only, name the three most likely trust/authority gaps and what you would look for on the page to confirm each.

5.15 A page ranked well for years, then a competitor with the same information overtook it. The competitor added named credentialed authors, citations, and a visible review process. What does E-E-A-T say may have happened — and what does it not let you conclude about causation?

Audit your own site (use a named free tool)

5.16 † Open your most important page and read it as a suspicious stranger. Write down, verbatim, every one of these you cannot answer from the page itself: Who wrote this? Why are they qualified or experienced? Who owns this site? Where are they? If a claim here is wrong, can I tell? Turn the unanswered questions into a to-do list.

5.17 Run a search for your brand or site name plus the word "reviews," and separately plus "complaints." Summarize what an outside rater doing reputation research would learn about you. Is it consistent with the story your own site tells?

5.18 Find your site's About and Contact pages. Time how long it takes a first-time visitor to answer "who are these people and can I trust them?" If it takes more than ten seconds, list what is missing.

5.19 Using Google's publicly available Search Quality Rater Guidelines (search "Search Quality Rater Guidelines PDF"), find the section describing the Page Quality scale and paraphrase what puts a page in the Lowest band.

Research task

5.20 Pick three competitors that outrank you (or a business like yours) for an important query. For each, catalog the trust signals present on the ranking page: named author, credentials, address, phone, reviews, citations, HTTPS, About/Contact. Produce a comparison table and mark where you are behind.

5.21 Identify one YMYL-adjacent query in your field (something touching health, money, safety, or legal). Study the top five results and note who is publishing them and what makes them credible. What would you need to publish something a rater would trust as much?

Rewrite / optimize

5.22 † Here is a thin author bio: "John is a writer who loves helping people with their finances." Rewrite it into a bio that demonstrates real expertise and/or experience — inventing plausible, honest-looking specifics — and annotate which E-E-A-T signal each addition supplies. (Note in your answer why inventing false specifics would be a serious mistake, especially for YMYL.)

5.23 Draft the skeleton of an About page for a fictional local service business that would clear the trust bar: list the sections and one sentence describing what each must contain and which E-E-A-T component it serves.

Read the report

5.24 A "trust audit" of a competitor's page shows: no named author, a stock hero photo, the copy "voted #1 in the area" with no source, no physical address, and a contact form only. Interpret this the way FIGURE 5.1 does: what does it show, what does it not prove, and what is the move for your own page?

5.25 A tool reports your site has an "E-E-A-T score" of 62/100 and a competitor's is 85/100. Explain, to a client, exactly how much weight to put on those numbers and why.

Spot the myth

5.26 For each statement, say whether it is a myth and correct it: (a) "E-E-A-T is a ranking factor with a fixed weight." (b) "You can buy authoritativeness with a few high-quality links." (c) "Adding citations makes any page more trustworthy." (d) "HTTPS proves your content is accurate."

5.27 "Our agency guarantees we'll raise your E-E-A-T and get you to page one." Identify every problem in this sentence a careful buyer should catch.

Ethics and risk

5.28 † A client in a YMYL field asks you to write authoritative-sounding medical content under the name of a doctor who will not actually review it. Explain what is wrong with this, the risk it creates, and what you would propose instead.

5.29 A restaurant owner offers customers a discount in exchange for five-star reviews. Explain why this is a trust liability, not a trust asset, and connect it to the idea that trust cannot be bought. (Point forward to where review policy and manual actions are covered.)

Strategy File (Rivertown)

5.30 † Extend Rivertown's E-E-A-T pass. For each of the five branches (Rivertown, Cedar Hills, Northgate, Westbrook, Millhaven), list the concrete, genuine trust facts that should appear on that branch's page — and mark which ones Rivertown almost certainly already has in the real world but is failing to show. State clearly which items you are deliberately deferring to the local-SEO and schema chapters, and why deferring them is correct rather than lazy.