Google’s E-E-A-T Guidelines: How to Show Experience in Content

Google is constantly updating its search algorithms . The E-A-T update made waves some years ago, majorly switching up how things worked to prioritize high-quality content written by experts. Now Google has updated E-A-T again, adding an extra letter: E-E-A-T, or Double E-A-T. The new E stands for “Experience”, as in personal, hands-on experience. While this is likely a change for the better, an algorithm update is always confusing. How can you maintain your SEO status? How do you avoid being penalized under the new rules? What does this change about the way you create content? Knowing what adjustments you need to make can save you a lot of headaches. For that reason, if you’re worried about your SEO, this guide will walk you through the updates and how to master E-E-A-T. The Evolution to E-E-A-T Image source: Pawel Czerwinski/Unsplash E-A-T was first introduced to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines back in 2014. Quality raters were instructed to rate sites on their “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness”. As Google released more updates and refined their search algorithm over time, E-A-T became more and more important impactful to SEO. Notably, in 2018, Google released a major algorithm update which made E-A-T more important than ever. As a result, sites that were credible, had experienced authors, and produced quality content received preferential treatment in the SERPs. But the Internet has faced a big change. Unless you live under a rock, you probably know all about ChatGPT and generative AI . While AI has a lot of use as an assistant and productivity tool, it’s also led to a web inundated with poor-quality, AI-generated books and articles. Noticing this, Google’s algorithm update has added the second E to E-E-A-T: “Experience”. This requires you to show first-hand, personal experience in your writing. Many people speculate that this is a direct response to AI-generated content. After all, AI is not currently capable of having subjective experiences. Yet, in the end, this new update will impact more than just AI-generated content. Even if you don’t use AI at all, it can still affect your website. How can you write high-quality content that passes the E-E-A-T test? How to Master the First “E” in E-E-A-T Assuming you don’t rely solely on ChatGPT to write your blog, your work is already human-created. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to worry about the new update. The new E in E-E-A-T is all about first-hand experience. Have you ever written a sponsored post about a product you didn’t try? A roundup of popular software or services you never actually used? Given instructions or advice off the top of your head without double-checking? These can all lead to bad user experiences – instructions that don’t work, accidental misinformation, or recommendations for products that aren’t actually any good. Google now prioritizes first-hand experiences above all else. That primarily means no AI-generated opinions, but it has a lot of other implications. Don’t Use Purely AI-Generated Content If you’re looking to buy a product,...

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