Invest time and money into the EEAT of your website

Taylor says: “Invest your time and resources into building your website’s EEAT: Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust. If you can only invest time in one thing, that would be it. Things like backlinks are very important but, at the end of the day, if you’re not providing quality information and value to the user, you’re not going to rank.”

Why is EEAT so important?

“Google has always put out their search guidelines. In September of 2022, they released the helpful content update essentially saying that experience, expertise, authority, and trust are exactly what they’re rewarding. They want to reward people who have first-hand knowledge of whatever they’re talking about.

Google’s search generative experience and Bing’s AI chatbot being integrated into the search results will probably lower the click-through rate for a lot of search results. Similar to a featured snippet, people will get the info they need right at the top.

At the same time, that info has to come from somewhere and, within its answer, Bing cites where they sourced that information. I want my material, or my client’s, to be part of the information that’s being cited.”

Is AI content able to deliver the same authoritativeness as human-written content?

“It’s capable of being an incredible ally, but it’s not a one-stop shop. I’ve had numerous clients who are writing specifically about something they are an expert in. I can ask questions about that to an AI tool. I’m not going to defer to its answer, particularly when I have access to someone with firsthand knowledge, but it can give prompts, ideas, and questions that weren’t in the original content piece. It’s a gap filler, and it can go in a different direction to open up your thinking.

Using law as an example, AI can’t necessarily cite proper legal cases or statutes. That’s where you want an expert. You’re just getting the background information, on a surface level, that can supplement what you are doing.

When AI first came out, a lot of people felt very threatened. We felt unsure about what the future landscape might look like. However, technology has always changed. When the car came around, the people who drove wagons panicked. AI can open up so many opportunities if you’re able to view it as an ally that can aid your efforts, but it’s not something to be relied upon as an expert.”

How can a content writer differentiate themselves from their competitors and look like the key authority to Google?

“It comes down to first-hand experience. Recently, Google released their August core update. A common theme I’ve seen with this update is that a lot of the websites that are being rewarded have clear, obvious, firsthand experience. They aren’t writing broad overviews of a topic. They are able to put their personal experience into it and show their expertise.

It’s not easy. Most clients are busy trying to do their jobs and they’re not focused on helping us with our content. However, getting that firsthand experience is great, especially through video. If you have an article where the client isn’t involved in the writing, other than reviewing it for accuracy, get them to summarise it in a video, or tell a personal story on the topic. That’s a very digestible and user-friendly form of content, and it’s an easy win.

Say you have a client who’s a dentist and wants to be the foremost authority on root canals. You can certainly write about root canals but there isn’t much evolution in the root canal business so there’ll be a lot of overlap and redundancy with your competitors. Get the dentist to commit a minute of their time to talk about how they’ve been doing it for X years, their 10 top tips, or whatever else might add that personal touch. That makes it very clear that an actual expert has their hands on the content.

It’s not that every piece needs video, but supplementing your content with video is an easy win. My motto is, ‘No stone unturned.’ Look at your top ten competitors. Any topic they address on their page, you want to address as well. Don’t leave any stone unturned, where the user may have to go to another site to find the information they’re looking for.”

Why is UX important to SEO and how can you measure the impact of it?

“As users, we all endure plenty of poor user experiences. Let’s say I’m interested in a restaurant, and I want to see the menu. I open the website and it’s loading slowly. I see the ‘View Menu’ button, try to click it, and the next thing you know the whole thing loads, and I’ve clicked on something else inadvertently. That drives me crazy. That’s why user experience should be a focus.

From a search engine perspective, Google will tell us that things like user experience and web speed matter but they rarely tell us exactly what they want to see. When we are actually given a benchmark metric, we know it must be really important. For example, mobile speed needs to be two seconds or less or the Largest Contentful Paint in Core Web Vitals needs to be 1.5 seconds or less. They’re taking the time to tell us to clean up those areas. Once you exceed those benchmarks, you can focus on portraying yourself as an expert, creating content, and building a beautiful house without worrying about the walls crumbling down.

Core Web Vitals are the main way to measure your UX, whether it’s the Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, First Input Delay, or Cumulative Layout Shift.

Audit your website, make sure that you’re able to exceed the known benchmarks for Core Web Vitals, test them in PageSpeed Insights or your tool of choice, and then you’re starting with a clean slate. You can invest time, effort, and resources into creating authoritative, quality content, knowing that its performance won’t be hindered by the technical components that Google has plainly stated are important.”

You’ve coined the term Virtual Environment Optimization. What does that mean?

“In the last couple of years, nearly the last decade, virtual reality of some form has become more accessible to the everyday person. Mobile introduced augmented reality and everyone was chasing Pokémon in Pokémon Go, Meta has their Oculus platform, and there are all sorts of new implementations. It’s not going to slow down.

What might search or marketing look like in 10 years? In 2005, you could go on the internet on your flip phone, but you had to click the button and scroll very slowly. It was a nonsense experience. At that time, nobody would have envisioned that, 10 years later, the majority of web traffic would be on cell phones thanks to the introduction of the iPhone and the smartphone. Nobody would have expected that Google would come out and say that you need to have a mobile-friendly website. That was inconceivable. Now, they’re working on implementing a mobile-only index.

I’ve tried the Oculus and it’s very just rudimentary. It’s not that technologically impressive, but it’s in users’ hands and in their homes. Soon, Apple is going to release their Vision Pro. Potentially, Oculus will be to Blackberry as Vision Pro will be to iPhone. It has the potential to change our everyday lives, even if that sounds wild right now. With the Vision Pro, you will have the opportunity to go shopping, have the storefront in front of you, and test the products in your living room. Eventually, we will have clients utilising this technology, and we’re going to have to figure it out.

If we’re in a virtual environment and multiple products are available, how do we get ours to the forefront and make ours the most visible and compelling? While that’s not necessarily integrated at the moment, neither was mobile web speed back in 2005. It’s going to keep evolving and, as it becomes less intrusive, less bulky, and easier to incorporate into your life, it’s likely to become more widely used.

Brand loyalty does not necessarily exist for the younger generation in the way that it does for older generations. I could see the younger generation being able to embrace a more virtual commerce experience. How is your client’s product going to be the one that they see?

Imagine, one day, you don’t go to the grocery store anymore. Instead, you go to a virtual grocery store that’s a hundred times the size of any store that’s ever been built. It has every product, and you can pick them up and inspect them. You can look at the labels, nutrition panels, etc. The possibilities are endless and there’s no way that it doesn’t creep into our digital marketing/SEO spectrum, at some point.”

Is it possible that SEO will become Digital Experience Optimization, Customer Experience Optimization, or something else in the future?

“I like the term Virtual Environment Optimization (VEO), but it’s all on a TBD basis. We don’t know what this new world will look like. In 1989, no one imagined that 7-year-old me would be learning how to use Napster 10 years later. It all evolved so quickly.

I can’t imagine consumers aren’t going to try to be more in front of your face. The movie theatre is a prime example. I am very hesitant to go to a movie theatre because I can watch from the comfort of my couch. With a younger generation that has an even smaller attention span and less patience, why would they want to go to a store and deal with crowds when they could do it in their own, personalised environment?

With the metaverse, Zuckerberg wanted to create a space where you could interact with your friends. While that might not have taken off, I could very much see a world where everyone puts on glasses or a headset and enters a virtual space that’s catered specifically to them. In that environment, an algorithm would show you the content that you might be interested in. That’s where we would have to optimize what we are offering; to target people that fall within those demographics and their algorithm.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Stop focusing on backlinks altogether. If you write good content and show your expertise, experience, authority, and trust, the backlinks will come. People writing on the same topic as you will cite your article and you will get organic, valuable backlinks. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take opportunities for valuable links, but it’s not worth a significant amount of time anymore.

If you’re a brand-new website, you need to get some sort of reputation, being the new kid on the block. If you have a website that’s been around and is starting to perform, though, find a better way to spend your time rather than wasting an hour or two pursuing backlinks. Use that time to bolster your experience, authority, and trust.

To some extent, backlinks play a role in trust. If you’re a doctor, a link from WebMD builds trust. At the same time, unless you’re getting on a directory on one of those websites, the way you get those natural links is by being the expert on your topic – by people reaching out to you for quotes, your thoughts, or citing your specific content. With backlinks, it’s about quality over quantity. Focus on doing things right, making your content visible because it’s high quality, and getting organic backlinks that way.”

Taylor Kurtz is Owner at Crush the Rankings, and you can find him over at CrushtheRankings.com.