E-A-T is changing the state of SEO, and the world events of 2020 have only added to this trend. Learn why E-A-T is so important and what you can do to optimize for it.

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Factoring E-A-T
into Your SEO
Strategy
Lily Ray | Path Interactive

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About Lily Ray
SEO Director | Path Interactive

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LILY RAY
About Lily:
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Lily Ray is the SEO Director at Path Interactive,
where she provides strategic leadership for the
agency’s SEO client programs.
Lily has worked across a variety of verticals with a
focus on retail, e-commerce, b2b and CPG sites.
She loves diving into algorithm updates, assessing
quality issues and solving technical SEO mysteries.

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Today, we’ll
be discussing
E-A-T.

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VIRTUAL ROADSHOW
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
A refresher…

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What’s E-A-T?
@lilyraynyc#C3NY

7. is mentioned
135 times
in Google’s
Search Quality
Rater Guidelines

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VIRTUAL ROADSHOW
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Your Money
Your Life

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Google employs
10,000+ search
quality raters
each year to
measure the
quality of its
search results.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
VIRTUAL ROADSHOW
QUERY 1:
VERSION A
ORIGINAL
PAGE
WHAT
RATERS
DO
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QUERY 1:
VERSION B
ORIGINAL
PAGE
+
GOOGLE’S
PROPOSED
CHAGE

11. The raters use the
Search Quality Rater
Guidelines to
determine what
Google considers
high vs. low-quality
content.
(PS: you should read them).

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VIRTUAL ROADSHOW
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Search quality
evaluators measure
& assess website
quality & E-A-T in
live user tests
Feedback is
benchmarked and used
to inform future
algorithm updates
Algorithms identify signals
that correlate with E-A-T
(i.e. PageRank & links)

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Does that mean human
raters directly rank pages in
Google’s search results?

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
NO

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
While we’re on that
topic, let’s clarify a
few things…

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
There is no
score.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
There is no
algorithm.

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VIRTUAL ROADSHOW
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
There is no
algorithm update.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
is not a direct
ranking factor.

22. So, how does Google use ?

23. Let’s paraphrase the
E-A-T section of
Google’s Search
Quality Guidelines...

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High E-A-T news
articles should be
written with journalistic
professionalism,
factually accurate
content, published
editorial policies and
robust review
processes.

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High E-A-T medical
advice should be
written by people
with appropriate
medical expertise
or accreditation, in
a professional
style and reviewed
regularly.

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High E-A-T pages
on “home
remodeling” or
“parenting” also
require expertise,
given they are
Your Money, Your
Life (YMYL) topics.

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Financial advice,
legal advice, tax
advice, etc. should
come from
trustworthy
sources and be
updated regularly.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Ok, enough
theoretical stuff.
How is Google
actively using ?

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Perhaps you’ve
experienced the SEO
roller coaster ride of the
past 2 years…

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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E-A-T seems to play a
disproportionate role in recent
core algorithm updates.
#C3NY @lilyraynyc

32. For each core
update since
August of 2019,
Google has
shared this same
article.

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Signals that
align with

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- Munich Security Conference, 2019

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We have an important
responsibility to our
users and to the
societies in which we
operate to curb the
efforts of those who aim
to propagate false
information on our
platforms.
- How Google Fights Disinformation

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Ranking
algorithms are an
important tool in
our fight against
disinformation.
- How Google Fights Disinformation

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Across the world,
search engines &
social media
companies are facing
government scrutiny.

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Perhaps that’s one reason why organic
visibility looks like this for many sites?*
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
*speculation

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
As you can
probably tell,
I talk about
a lot.

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In fact, I was even ready to
embark on a 2020 E-A-T
world tour…

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I had plans to talk about
how all these things
might be connected…
FAKE NEWS
GOVERNMENT
SCRUTINY
MISINFORMATION PROJECT
NIGHTINGALE
FITBIT
PSEUDOSCIENCE
YOUR MONEY
YOUR LIFE
DANGEROUS
HEALTH ADVICE
#C3NY | @lilyraynyc
ELECTION
SECURITY

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
…and then
2020 happened.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
The
E-A-T
World Tour
was cancelled.

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…Due to a sudden
global pandemic
that rocked the
entire world, lead
to nearly 1 million
deaths, caused
economic turmoil,
impacted
elections, and
spawned rampant
misinformation
campaigns.
@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Wait a
minute…

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
…isn’t this
exactly why
Google
created ?

47. - How Google Fights Disinformation, 2019

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
COVID MISINFORMATION

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
CORONAVIRUS
PUT TO THE
ULTIMATE TEST.

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Timeline
of Google
updates
related to
COVID-19:
Date Article
3/4/2020 Google I/O Cancelled Over Coronavirus Concerns
3/9/2020 Google Asking Businesses To Update Business Hours & Details For COVID-19
3/10/2020 Google Search Relations Team Grounded During Coronavirus
3/13/2020 Googlers Taking Work Stations Home During Coronavirus
3/13/2020 Google My Business Asking Is The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Affecting Your Business?
3/16/2020 Should Google Halt Search Algorithm Updates During COVID-19 Outbreak
3/17/2020 60% Of SEOs Would Like To Pause Google Algorithm Updates During COVID-19 Outbreak
3/23/2020 Google Stops Accepting Local Reviews & Q&A During Coronavirus Outbreak
3/25/2020 Google Advice On E-Commerce Sites Closing Due To COVID-19
3/25/2020 Google My Business Not Functioning Properly During Coronavirus Outbreak
3/26/2020 Most SEOs Claiming Organic Search Traffic Declines Due To COVID-19
3/26/2020 Google Ads Offers Advertising Advice During COVID-19
4/1/2020 Google Ads New Policy Prevents Profiting Off Sensitive Events, Like COVID-19
4/1/2020 Google COVID-19 Announcements Beta Structured Data
4/2/2020 Google Posts With COVID-19 Updates
4/2/2020 April 2020 Google Webmaster Report: COVID-19, Algorithm Updates, Mobile First Indexing & More
4/3/2020 Google Search Console COVID-19 Announcement Feature
4/3/2020 Google Doodle - Stay Home. Save Lives. Leads To Coronavirus Tips Results
4/3/2020 Google Says They Are Not Filtering Out Sites For Coronavirus Searches
4/6/2020 Google Logo Says Thank You Coronavirus Helpers
4/7/2020 Google Summarizes Its Search Changes For COVID-19 In Tweets
4/7/2020 Google Search COVID Announcements Feature To Be Live Soon
4/14/2020 Google Throttling Crawling Of Sites During The Coronavirus Outbreak?
4/17/2020 Google Now Supports Government Benefits Schema For COVID-19 Announcements
4/21/2020 Google Local Services Ads Enables COVID-19 Highlights
4/22/2020 Google Testing Questions Box In Search Results In US For COVID-19 Queries
4/23/2020 Google Offers Free COVID-19 Posters For Your Business
5/1/2020 Google Question Hub - What Is Your Question Is Wider Than COVID-19 Searches
5/4/2020 Google Has Not Slowed Crawling Your Site Because Of COVID-19
5/5/2020 Nooglers First Day As A Google Employee During COVID-19
5/5/2020 AMP Not Required For COVID-19 Related News In Google Top Stories Carousel
5/7/2020 Google My Business Adds COVID-19 Responder Policy For Hotels
5/7/2020 May 2020 Google Webmaster Report: Core Update, Google Shopping, LinkedIn & COVID-19
5/7/2020 Google Adds COVID Testing Center Details To Local Panel
5/12/2020 Google Posts Prioritizing COVID-19 Posts Over Other Google Posts
5/18/2020 Google AdSense Unable To Review Some Sites Due To COVID-19
5/26/2020 Google Asks SEOs How COVID-19 Changed SEO Work
6/19/2020 Google Ads Begins Issuing COVID-19 Credits
6/22/2020 Google Internship During COVID-10 Pandemic
7/20/2020 Google Ads To Ban Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dangerous Ads
7/24/2020 Google Search Showing Flight & Hotel COVID-19 Impact

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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Biggest winners
in health &
science during
COVID-19.
Jan 1 – June 1, Sistrix U.S. Visibility Index

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*my unofficial name for it
The June 22
“Wear a Mask”
Update*

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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CDC and FDA outrank the controversial Henry Ford
article, which supports hydroxychloroquine for COVID

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FDA articles containing safety information replaced
transactional results.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
What about
COVID-19
conspiracies?

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• Analyzed SEO visibility of 150
of the top COVID conspiracy
and pseudoscience sites
• Sistrix U.S. visibility index
• Date range: January 1 – June
1, 2020
COVID Conspiracy & Pseudoscience Sites:
Methodology
@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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FINDINGS
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
• Average SEO visibility*
score for the 150 conspiracy
& pseudoscience sites:
Site Visibility Score (June 2020)
150 conspiracy sites .03 (avg)
286
220
156
141
*Sistrix U.S. Visibility Score
.03 (avg)

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In other words,
conspiracy sites
are virtually invisible in
Google’s organic search
results.

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Visibility Changes During Recent Core Updates
6 Major Conspiracy / Pseudoscience Websites
@lilyraync#C3NY
COVID-19

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What does all of this
mean for SEO?
How can you optimize
for ?

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This creates a ripple effect throughout the organic
search ecosystem.
Google’s search results
changed drastically during
COVID-19.
@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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and the focus on high-
quality health content have
only become increasingly
important in 2020.
@lilyraynyc#C3NY

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
The rise in misinformation
related to coronavirus, plus
the 2020 election, have only
elevated the importance of
E-A-T.

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E-A-T TIP #1: EXPERTISE
@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Name your authors, editors, and
expert reviewers.
Provide context about them and
their credentials.
Include links to their social
profiles, online mentions, and/or
personal websites.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Invest in the individual experts at your
company and expand their online
presence.
Earn personal and organizational
placement in Google’s Knowledge
Graph. Use structured data.
Obtain backlinks from trusted sites
within your category.
Link to authoritative sources.
E-A-T TIP #2: AUTHORITATIVENESS

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Disclose information about your
business, such as:
The company mission, its
editorial and advertising policies,
its founders and leadership team.
Be transparent about how it
makes money (including affiliate
disclosures).
E-A-T TIP #3: TRUSTWORTHINESS

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Give your
users reasons
to believe your
information
and advice can
be trusted.

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Ensure content
is updated and
accurate,
especially given
the unique
circumstances
of 2020.

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@lilyraynyc#C3NY
Remove low-
quality,
underperforming,
or questionable
content.

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Perhaps I’ll see
you at the
2021
World Tour?

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THANK YOU
About Lily Ray:
Click to Edit Footer#C3NY@lilyraynyc
lilyraynyc
www.pathinteractive.com
lilyray.nyc
soundcloud.com/lilyray