E-E-A-T & Quality Standards
Use E-E-A-T as a quality lens
E-E-A-T—experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness—is a concept in Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines. It is useful for thinking about trust and content quality, but it is not a direct ranking score or a checklist that guarantees rankings.
Risk-based review for high-stakes topics
For finance, health, legal, and other high-stakes topics, set review and evidence requirements according to the potential harm if information is wrong. Consider:
- Assign a reviewer with relevant expertise when the content requires it; record the review scope and unresolved risks.
- Verify consequential claims against appropriate primary or authoritative sources, and make the source support for each claim clear.
- Add disclosures or disclaimers when legally, professionally, or contextually appropriate. They do not replace accurate content or review.
- Show authorship, qualifications, and update information where they help readers assess accountability and freshness. Do not add credentials or dates that cannot be substantiated.
Make the page worth publishing
The brief should explain what useful contribution the site can credibly make. That contribution may be:
- Unique worked example or scenario
- Original data table or comparison
- Step-by-step process with screenshots
- Real-world case study or benchmark
- Template, calculator, or checklist that solves a specific reader problem
- Practitioner perspective or process notes
A format alone is not differentiation. A generic checklist or example does not make a page original if it merely repeats common advice. If the brief cannot identify a useful contribution supported by evidence or experience, reconsider whether to create the page, improve an existing page, or gather more evidence.
Competitor and optimization tools can help identify common coverage. Use them as research inputs, not as an outline to copy or a promise of ranking performance. Prioritize the reader's task, reliable evidence, and the site's credible contribution.
AI Content Standards
AI-assisted content must pass these checks:
- Natural language — no keyword stuffing, robotic phrasing, or repetitive structures
- Factual accuracy — verify consequential claims; remove invented or unsupported details
- Distinctive value — fulfill the brief's contribution; do not simply rephrase ranking pages
- Proper citation — named sources, not "studies show" without attribution
- Reader value — answer the intended task clearly, within the page's scope
- Risk-aware review — obtain subject-matter or specialist review when the topic warrants it
Where quality is enforced
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
| Research evidence and competitor URLs | scs research --check |
| Brief completeness, outline, sources | scs brief --check |
| Front matter, references, status gates | scs check |
| Human review, YMYL scope, checklist | WordPress review gate — see QA Gate |
Automated checks verify structural completeness and workflow state. They do not prove source accuracy, research quality, originality, or reader usefulness. Human reviewers evaluate those qualities and record material risks and decisions.