🎥 EEAT or Be Eaten: Google SEO Hacks

Transcript:

EEAT or Be Eaten

Nat: Hello! We recently included an article on E-E-A-T in our What’s Hot Wednesday newsletter. For further insights on what this means for optimization, I’m here with our Head of SEO, Marc Engelsman. Hi Marc.

ME: Hi Nat.

Nat:  So what’s up with E-E-A-T?

ME:  First off, E-A-T has been around for quite a while now as an acronym for Expertise, Authority, and Trust.  The EAT template helped guide optimizers on the importance, and the rankings rewards, for providing relevant, quality content to searchers. Now, as Google has evolved its rankings algorithm more towards “helpful content”, an extra E has been added to the template – Experience.  Google now calls it “Double-EAT” and I view this extra emphasis as Google’s way of saying Double-EAT or be eaten in the rankings by others who are Double-EAT-ing better than you.

Nat: Isn’t Experience redundant with Expertise?  Why the need to add the extra E?

ME:  Good question. Many SEOs have noted the timing of Google’s additional E for Experience came shortly after Microsoft’s launch of ChatGPT.  It’s perhaps their way of saying E does not equal AI. Of course, it’s a little ironic because Google is also pushing its Bard AI, but the concept of demonstrating human experience seems appropriate to the idea of ensuring the content is relevant and helpful.

Nat:  So how do you demonstrate experience on your website?

ME:  Some SEOs say experience can easily be demonstrated using guidelines from the Stanford Web Credibility Research. Things like showing the people and organization behind the website via your About Us page or updating your website regularly or making your website more user-friendly. Others are suggesting experience can be demonstrated through content that literally includes human experiences or points of view with a product or service.  Think about adding things like POVs, reviews, or blogs to your website that demonstrate real people’s experiences. This validates the expertise, authority, and trust factors that make up the rest of Double EAT.

Nat:  Oh, you mean doing things like this video blog?!

ME:  Exactly! Think my work here is done for now.

Nat:  Not so fast, Marc!  You haven’t talked yet about how the concept of Double-EAT is changing DBE’s approach to SEO.

ME:  I wouldn’t say “changing our approach to SEO”, Nat, just looking for ways to evolve our best practices.  As you know, we’ve been exploring more ways to leverage video for our clients.  Not just to demonstrate the experience of our clients’ products or programs in action but also to capture the experience of our clients’ customers in the form of video testimonials.  Leveraging Google reviews in social posts as well as Google Business listings is another way to pump up the Experience factor of Double-EAT.

Nat: Thanks Marc for the taking the time to do this with me today.  To our viewers, we welcome your comments and questions regarding Double-EAT or any other SEO questions you may have.  ‘Til next time.