
Words matter. In this guest post, we look at how to implement E-E-A-T Principles for Australian Finance brands.
It’s not just a numbers game, improving your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has a lot to do with the words you use.
SEO aims to boost your page’s ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for a given search term or keyword. For the online finance sector in Australia, this may be searching for “credit cards best” or “lowest interest rate home loan.”
Exactly how Google ranks pages is a trade secret, like Coca Cola’s formula or what’s in Big Mac sauce. However, Google does publish quality guidelines to give content creators an idea of how they rank content and by what criteria. This criterion is known as E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T Explained
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This is stated in Google’s “bible” for human search quality raters – 168 pages worth of tests to evaluate whether a piece of content is rich in E-E-A-T and therefore meets the needs of searchers best.
Expertise asks whether the author’s content is accurate, high quality, comprehensive, and well-written.
Experience asks whether the author has hands-on education or meaningful interaction with the subject at hand and has published similar content in the past. A machine cannot have this attribute, which is why Google added it to its Quality Ratings in the post-Generative AI era. Experience is a tricky one – but it definitely favours lawyers and judges as experienced with legal matters instead of bailiffs or stenographers.
Authoritativeness seeks to address whether the author is looked upon as an expert or authority in the subject matter, looking at peer recognition or user engagement as a key metric.
Trustworthiness examines whether the source or author is a safe and reliable source of information, covering the “whole truth” instead of catering to special interests.
At the end of the day, the content must be rich in information catering to the needs of the searcher they can almost quite literally, take it “all the way to the bank.”
Australian financial services brands also need to factor in another quality into their SEO content – YMYL; Your Money or Your Life content. This content needs to have exceptional E-E-A-T, as it’s guiding people to information integral to their financial and/or physical wellbeing.

Your Money Or Your Life
Financial services as an industry is regulated as stringently as a “your money or your life” service. Financial services professionals need to undertake rigorous training, abide by the National Consumer Credit Code, and have relevant licences issued by ASIC or APRA. Google’s reputation as an authoritative and trustworthy search engine depends on the quality of its results, and as such will scrutinise financial services and health or wellbeing sites even more closely.
Why Experience is Important
Experience is an integral ingredient in SEO, as demonstrated by the consistently high E-E-A-T success of Savvy and their content offering. Their in-depth article about petrol prices around Australia ranked for 1,100 keywords, of which 21 were top ranked, without having any reciprocal backlinks. Backlinks are a builder of authority and trust – the more you have, the better those metrics perform. Their consistency, high levels of research, fact checking, and positive online feedback has helped them transform their brand from a small car loan broking firm into a fast-growing national financial services company.

A Brief E-E-A-T checklist for SEO
To enhance your financial firm’s E-E-A-T, there are things you can do straight away to enhance your offering. To establish trust, you should be as transparent as possible. That means publishing information such as:
- Your physical address
- Phone number.
- Domain name-based contacts
- Meet the team/about us.
- Contact information.
This not only highlights a human connection but one that Google also prizes. They are, deep down, one and the same.
You should also establish authoritativeness by having links to verified author accounts such as personal websites, vetted LinkedIn profiles, verified X or Meta profiles, or even links to biographies or articles they’ve written for other authoritative sources. Linking and proving they’ve won that award, attained that qualification, and actually got that testimonial they’re touting (such as proof through a video) all helps build trust and social proof.
Your site should also adhere to trust and security guidelines. It should have a comprehensive Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Terms and Conditions, Code of Ethics, Legal Disclaimers, an Editorial or Fact Checking Policy, and Complaints or Intellectual Property Policy. Other off-page security measures such as SSL Certificates or forcing HTTPS (HTTP Secure) connections are also looked upon favourably by Google’s quality raters.
Though it does take a bit of work to achieve ‘elite’ level E-E-A-T on your site, it can be done with diligent application of the above principles and with good content. Like any overnight success – it takes time and perseverance to climb the rankings with superior, sought-after content.
This is a guest from Savvy.