How To Improve EAT Information Like HealthLine

Table of Contents

After Reading This Guide, You’ll Understand 🡭

Tips to improve EAT of your site
How to get the most out of author pages
Importance of using structured data
How to turn visitors into newsletter subscribers

Quick Concepts To Know Before Reading This Guide 🡭

It is recommended to learn the above concepts first and then come back here.

Let’s get started →

About The Business 🡭

Healthline was first launched back in 1999 as YourDoctor.com and then relaunched as healthine.com in 2006, according to Wikipedia. All of the content pieces are published by the

Healthline is a content-heavy website that provides medical information and health advice you can trust.

However, in the past, Healthline received a lot of criticism due to:

Exaggerated headlines
Inadequate journalistic
Lack of citation for medical claims, ehttps://www.webmd.com/tc.

This is why the company has redesigned its content and editorial strategies that, helped them to build trust and keep generating millions of clicks from search engines.

Competitors of Healthline are:

Results Achieved 🡭

Currently, Healthline is one of the most trustworthy sites in the medical industry that dominates the SERP for millions of keywords.

As of January 2022, here are some of the stats about Healthline:

Getting over 222 million+ organic visits per month
19.8 million+ backlinks from almost 543k different domains
Ranking on the first page (0-10th position) for more than 15 million+ keywords in the US alone.

Healthline is a great example for any website dealing in the YMYL (your-money-your-life) topics.

Let’s dive right into the tactics and strategies.

Here’s a breakdown of the EAT information of Healthline that helps to build trust and credibility.

1/ Clear and Satisfying Website Information

When it comes to YMYL websites (health, finance, etc.), Google demands a lot of information that will justify the trustworthiness of the content and information published by the website.

Here’s what Quality Raters Guideline says on this:

“We expect most websites to have some information about who (e.g., what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) is responsible for the website and who created the Main content.”

In response, HealthLine made the content editorial process transparent, showing how each piece of content is published on the website and who’s responsible for the main content.

This editorial process highlights:

Journalistic standards
Review and fact check policy to provide accurate information
Continually updating old content to make it fresh and relevant for the end-users

This isn’t just another webpage published to satisfy Google’s algorithm. Instead, making the editorial process live will help the users to know and trust the content.

2/ About The Business Information

Like the content guidelines, ‘information about the website’ is very important for sites dealing with the YMYL categories.

“Understanding who is responsible for a website is critical for assessing E-A-T for most types of websites… For example, YMYL websites demand a high degree of trust, so they generally need satisfying information about who is responsible for the content of the site.”- Quality Raters Guideline.

This is why having an ‘About Page‘ that just talks about the mission, vision, and goals isn’t enough to earn the trust from the users and Google as well.

Now, let’s discuss the about page of Healthline:

The most important thing Healthline has done is linking to the list of editorial members that showcase the expertise of each content contributor and the review process before publishing any content.

In addition, you’ll find information about:

Privacy policy
About the business team
Contact details
Ad & Sponsorship Policy
Healthline Editorial, and more.

3/ Micro-Site For Individual Authors

We’ve all heard of using ‘Author Bio’ to show the real expertise and authority of the content creator.

In fact, Google also rates the quality of pages based on the expertise of the author:

Here’s a screenshot shared in the QRG where there is no evidence of the expertise of the author in health-related topics:

Regarding the above screenshot, Google has shared some low-quality characteristics:

“Inadequate information about the website or creator of the MC for the purpose of the page
It is clear from the content that the author does not have medical expertise.”

Therefore author’s bio helps to improve the page quality by displaying the creator’s expertise in the topic.

Healthline took this to the next level by creating microsites for individual authors and reviewers.

Here’s an example:

Healthline has created a separate author bio page for all the authors and reviewers. These author pages are not just filled with the text and author image.

Instead, it includes details about their academic qualifications, education, background, etc.

Most of all, the author’s page includes links to their social media profiles and personal websites, which Google recommends.

Another example of a detailed page for the creator/author:

“Author bio pages can and should include more than just text and a picture. Are there videos of the author speaking?

PDFs?
Podcast interviews?
Links to published works?
A photo gallery?

These pages often rank for the author’s name; treat them as a personal microsite.” – by Lily Ray (SEO & EAT expert).

The SEO benefit of creating separate author pages?

Chances of ranking for the individual author name.

In fact, Healthline is generating 9k+ monthly traffic and 28k+ total backlinks only from the author and reviewer pages.

Here are the statistics comparisons:

This is how Healthline is driving traffic from individual author pages, whereas most websites only have an author bio at the bottom of the page.

4/ Content UX & Trustworthiness

User experience is also an important aspect of SEO. At HealthLine, the above-the-fold section is designed in such a way that it builds the credibility and trustworthiness of the content.

Here’s an example:

1/ The most important factor that will help readers to trust the content is by knowing whether an expert writes the article or not.

Also, in the QRG, it says that:

“Highest quality pages and websites have a very high level of expertise or are highly authoritative or highly trustworthy.

Formal expertise is important for YMYL topics such as medical, financial, or legal advice.”

Therefore adding the academic qualification is important in YMYL sites.

2/ The badge of ‘Evidence Based’ shows that the content is fully checked and reviewed by the experts and medical professionals.

When you click on the ‘Evidence Based’ badge, readers will see a pop-up that shows the list of experts and the process followed to make the content accurate.

This is also helpful in building EAT, as mentioned in the quality raters guideline (QRG).

3/ The Table of Contents is a great way of improving the user experience, especially for the long-form content.

Benefits of adding TOC?

It helps the reader to quickly navigate the article
Earns you site links in the SERP

An example:

4/ Another important aspect of quality content is adding citations and proof to the medical claims. Healthline has now focused more on the sources and citations.

In most cases, you won’t see any article or medical claims without adding authoritative sources to verify.

Here’s an article showing the trustworthiness of each external source or link.

5/ Structured Data

Structured data is a way of sharing additional information about the content, website, or author with search engines.

Other than common types of structured data (author, type of page, date, title, etc.), HealthLine has added reviewedBy schema.

Benefits?

Sometimes creating content by the experts isn’t possible for sites even in the YMYL category. In that case, you can use this schema type to tell the search engine that:

The content is written by a writer who’s passionate about the topic, but the content is reviewed and checked by an expert.

This is helpful for the EAT, and the users can also trust the content.

7/ Turning Visitors Into Subscribers

Last but not least is the strategy that helps HealthLine to build a huge email list.

The traditional approach of building an email list is adding lead magnets that could be a checklist, resources list, whitepaper, ebook, etc.

The problem with this approach is that the majority of the users join the email list just to get the rewards. As a result, they either unsubscribe from the mailing list or don’t engage with future emails over time.

Better approach?

Creating health challenges that encourage the readers to stay healthy and build a habit of engaging with Healthline email content.

Here’s one of the challenges from Healthline:

As you can see, you’ll receive 12 expert guidance and ideas in the next 12 email series.

Not only that, HealthLine has created multiple health challenges to grow the email list effectively.

Another strategy of Healthline is to provide customized meal plans in a quiz form.

It works like this:

You share some basic details about your preference → Healthline shows you the meal plan based on your preference → you share the email address to receive the results/ meal plans to your inbox.

Do This Now 🡭

Follow these steps to improve your EAT on YMYL (health, medical, finance, etc.) sites.

Step 1. Disclose The Business Information

Make it easy for the readers to see the individuals or teams behind the website. The About Us page is a great place to show your expertise in the topic.

Step 2. Be Transparent About The Content Editorial Process

This might not be needed for sites other than YMYL categories. But for a YMYL site, creating an editorial page highlighting the process and policies is a good practice to build credibility and trust.

STEP 3. Use Structured Data

Don’t create each landing page from scratch. Instead, develop a template and use it for all other pages.

List of possible schema tags you can add on your homepage (only if it is a personal blog) or about-me page:

givenName
familyName
image
jobTitle
gender
birthDate
worksFor
alumniOf
memberOf
knowsAbout
Url
alternateName
hasCredential

Adding these schema tags will help search engines to get more information about the expertise of the content creator.

Step 4. Include Sources/ External Links Only To The Authoritative Sites

One of the characteristics of a high-quality page is adding authoritative sources within the article.

Try to add proof of evidence for every claim that you make. Also, avoid linking to spammy or irrelevant sites as this might affect the site’s overall quality over a long time.

Step 5. Build Your Email List

Focus on building an email list from day 1. Over time, it will help you drive sales, repeat visitors to the site, and many more.

There are many ways to grow your email list. However, the strategy used by Healthline is one of the effective ways to build an engaging audience.

Some options you may try:

Create an email series to help your users solve an important problem
Have multiple user personas? If so, create multiple email series targeting different user personas.

Optional Assignment 🡭

Consider this blog of Groww and study the EAT information. Next, make a list of at least three suggestions that will help their website improve its EAT information.

How To Improve EAT Information Like HealthLine

After Reading This Guide, You’ll Understand 🡭

Quick Concepts To Know Before Reading This Guide 🡭

About The Business 🡭

Results Achieved 🡭

SEO, Content Strategy, & EAT Breakdown 🡭