Google's quality guidelines describe experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, often shortened to E-E-A-T. It is not a single ranking factor or a score. It is a description of what makes content worth trusting, and readers apply the same test instinctively.
SaaS companies have an advantage here that most publishers lack: they build the product and talk to its users every day. Most just do not show it.
Short on time? Comppound does this work for SaaS companies. AI-native, and a person reviews every page.
Have us do itShow who wrote it and who checked it
Put a named author on every guide, with a short bio linking to a profile page that says what they do and why they know the subject. Where a specialist reviewed the page, name them too. A page signed by “the team” gives a reader nothing to judge.
Show the product doing the work
First-hand experience is easiest to show with your own product: real screenshots, real settings, the steps your support team gives customers. A guide to tracking billable hours that shows the actual timesheet is more credible than one with stock images.
Comppound can do this for you
Want the content produced for you?
Comppound writes the briefs, drafts with AI, adds the proof only your team has and has a person review every page before it goes live. You approve; we publish and keep it current.
- Briefs built from real searches
- Human review on every page
- A steady publishing rhythm, every month
Show what customers see
Patterns from support tickets, quotes from customers (with permission), and examples of how different kinds of customers set things up are information nobody outside the company has. They make a page more useful and harder to copy.
Show the limits
Say what your product does not do and who it does not suit. Honest limits are one of the strongest trust signals a commercial page can carry, because readers expect them to be hidden.
Worked example · an illustration, not a client result
Tallyroom's guide, before and after
The content of the guide hardly changed. What changed is that a reader could now see who knew what.
| Signal | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Tallyroom Team | Named support lead, with bio |
| Images | Stock photo of a clock | Screenshots of a real retainer setup |
| Experience | General advice | The three mistakes support sees most |
| Limits | None stated | “Tallyroom doesn't handle expenses; here is what to use” |
Do it yourself
Add trust signals to three pages
- 1Create author pages for the two or three people who write or review content.
- 2Add named authors and reviewers to your three most important guides.
- 3Replace stock images with product screenshots.
- 4Add one insight from support or customers to each.
- 5State one honest limit on each commercial page.
Free tool for this: Draft quality check
Common mistakes
Fake authors
Invented personas with stock headshots break trust when spotted and offer no real expertise.
Bios without substance
“Passionate about growth” says nothing. Say what the person does and has done.
Treating E-E-A-T as markup
Author schema helps describe who wrote a page. It does not create expertise that the page does not show.
Rather not do it yourself?
Want the content produced for you?
Comppound writes the briefs, drafts with AI, adds the proof only your team has and has a person review every page before it goes live. You approve; we publish and keep it current.
- Briefs built from real searches
- Human review on every page
- A steady publishing rhythm, every month
Questions
Google describes it as a concept its systems aim to reward through many signals, not as a single factor or score.
No. The people who build and support the product have real first-hand experience. Show it.
Key terms
- E-E-A-TE-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google's quality raters use to judge content and its creators.
- First-Hand ExperienceFirst-hand experience is content based on actually using, doing or testing the thing described, the first E in Google's E-E-A-T framework.
- Author BioAn author bio is a short description of who wrote a page and why they are qualified, usually linked to a fuller author page.
- BylineA byline is the line near a page's title that names the author, often with a date, telling readers who wrote the content.
- Trust SignalsTrust signals are page elements that reassure visitors a company is legitimate and safe to buy from, such as security badges, policies and contact details.
- Search Quality Rater GuidelinesThe Search Quality Rater Guidelines are Google's public handbook for human raters who evaluate search results to help test ranking changes.
- Subject Matter Expert InterviewsSME interviews are structured conversations with experts, inside or outside a company, used to gather the experience and detail that make content credible.
