Words are cheap, but expertise and experience are invaluable.

As the early tests for SGE, Google’s generative AI search expand, my content friends and I are talking about what SEO will look like in this new world and how we’re going to respond to these updates.

While it’s easier than ever to produce a massive amount of ‘words’; it’s just as tough as ever to produce high-quality, expert-led content.

I want to be in the quality lane when Google does finally roll out SGE to everyone because I believe that quality content is still what’s going to rise to the top.

While there are some who are going to keep trying to ‘fake’ authority and quality signals, I think it’s actually a lot easier to actually just do the things you say you are going to do in content creation from the start. I mean it beats having to go back and ‘fix’ an entire site full of bland, thin content or watching your once valuable rankings fade away.

If you are in it for the long haul, you just can’t fake it anymore. But, how do you spot the ‘fake’ authority and quality signals from the ‘real’?

It starts with understanding and embracing E-E-A-T and delivering these attributes in every piece of content you publish.

For the past couple of years, our north star has been E-E-A-T in our content creation. We’ve done a lot. Here are just a few things we’ve implemented across the 150+ websites we’ve built:

• Hired better, more experienced subject matter experts.

• Created a more exhaustive, developmental editorial layer to evaluate E-E-A-T and quality signals in our work.

• Updated and expanded author profiles and About Us pages to highlight our SMEs.

• Created clear “Content Mission” statements for every publication with details on what we want to promise our readers.

• Added a ton more video and visual elements to really show that we’re doing the things we say we’re doing.

Just to name a few things… E-E-A-T has become more than just a ‘nicety’ for us; it’s the north star for every piece of content we produce and every publication we build.

So, last week, when someone reached out to me and asked “What are the E-E-A-T signals we look for in the content we publish?” - I thought that would be a great question to answer this week!

But first, just a reminder, what is E-E-A-T?

Google has been discussing E-E-A-T for quite some time now and while many SEOs will remind you that technically it’s not a ranking factor, the principles behind this help make your content better, which does affect your ranking. So, it’s important.

Experience: Google added the second ‘E’ in December of 2022, which stands for experience and I think it’s an important distinction outside of expertise, specifically when it comes to first-hand experience.

Expertise: This refers to the level of knowledge or skill in a particular area that the creator of the content has and if that expertise is clearly demonstrated in the publication.

Authoritativeness: This is the credibility or reliability of the content, as well as its source. It's about the recognition that the content creator or the website has in its field. Authoritativeness is often judged by the credentials of the author, the quality of the content itself, and how well it's recognized or cited by other authoritative figures or sites in the field.

Trustworthiness: This relates to how trustworthy the source of the content is. It involves aspects such as the transparency of the website (providing clear information about the website's authors, the organization behind it, its mission, etc.), the security of the website (whether it uses HTTPS, for instance), and the accuracy and honesty of the content.

If you want to produce quality content, you are going to have to embrace all the E-E-A-T factors you can!

But you can’t do this alone. To produce best-in-class, quality content, you are going to have to have a decent layer of editorial that actually looks for and evaluates the quality of these E-E-A-T signals in a writer’s work.

But how do you do that?

The Ultimate E-E-A-T Checklist for Editorial

Our editors are trained to look for E-E-A-T signals in writers’ work. They are all subject matter experts in their own right, so it’s easier for them to tell when someone is ‘faking’ it, but they do have some help.

To make sure that every piece of content we produce has solid E-E-A-T signals, we created our own quality checklist to support our editors.

We started with this fabulous resource from Aleyda Solis, who has gifted us with this amazing list of questions to ask when evaluating E-E-A-T: Google's Content Quality [E-EAT], Helpfulness and Page Experience Questions. From this list of questions, you can create a checklist that'll make spotting E-E-A-T signals for your publications.

We took this checklist and our extensive writers’ guidelines and decided to focus on the key things we want to see in every article. We focus on things such as User Intent, Content Quality, Content Presentation, and Expert-led content signals. So, here are some questions we ask to suss out those E-E-A-T signals:

• Does the writer stick to the topic and avoid fluff? (User Intent)

• Does the writer answer the query and offer comprehensive information? (User Intent)

• Does the writer include first-hand accounts and anecdotes to support their claims? (Expert-led Content)

• Does the writer use quality citations to back up their research? (Expert-led Content)

• Are the citations just generic wikis, or are they targeted, quality articles? (Expert-led Content)

We also look for Star Writer Signals (the above and beyond things that really help make the content better as well):

• Does the writer include their own personal media?

• Does the writer use creative headings and subheadings?

• Does the writer put a lot of themselves into the work and make you want to really engage with this topic?

• Is this a piece of content you can imagine the writer sharing with their friends?

• Is this something that someone would bookmark, to reference later, or share with their friends?

Our writers should all be experts, but we've also learned the hard way that you've got to dig a little deeper. There's nothing quite like the sting of finding out a writer has been borrowing E-E-A-T signals from other publications (yeah, that's plagiarism, folks).

That's why it's so crucial to really get to know your writers. It's all in the details, and the better you understand their work, and get to know them as real people, the easier it is to spot those genuine E-E-A-T signals.

For example, if they are sharing an anecdote about how they took the kids to the beach in their Jeep Wrangler, but you know that this writer doesn’t have kids (or a Jeep Wrangler), you can spot when the writer is ‘faking it’. We’ve seen this happen and our editors are quite good at spotting the real-deal experiences from the generic ones.

One of the biggest signals we look for? Experience! And no, we're not just talking about a writer's years in the field. The best way to prove to our readers that we’re actually doing the things we say we’re doing is — visuals!

A picture is worth more than 1000 words in the world of E-E-A-T.

We're talking about sharing screenshots, authentic images, or videos of them doing the things they're writing about. It's like a behind-the-scenes look that adds a layer of authenticity that's hard to fake (even with those fancy AI image-creation tools).

Remember, we can’t just get by with ‘good writing’ these days. We need to create content that is dripping with experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

Use these resources to create your own E-E-A-T checklist for your articles and let me know how it goes!

Some Things to Read and Ponder

Here are some dig-in resources that I hope you’ll love!

Case Studies are a great way to show your buyers that you can actually do the things that you say you can do. Here are three tips on how to make your case studies stand out!

Mia Comic has created the ultimate SaaS content marketing guide. Consider this your starting point. Get the ICP template that will help you define your ideal customer as well.

Google is reminding publishers to create content for humans this week. Funny timing considering this article just came out. An interesting counter-point.

My Favorite Tweets of the Week

Let’s have another great week in the exciting world of content creation!

Please share if you find this helpful and follow me on Twitter! Would love to hear from you, who knows, your questions might even inspire an entire newsletter topic!

Amy

Some Bonus Newsletters You’ll Love

If you really want to get into the weeds on these topics, here are a couple of newsletters to subscribe to.