What does good E-E-A-T even mean?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast and putting on some grouping insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by our always hungry for more SEO knowledge, our head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

I'm also always hungry. I'm big into snacks and things. We have a lot of good snacks. We recently found these biscuits that have rosemary in them. They're incredibly what in England, people refer to as Moreish. As in if they say Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop. Similar thing with these particular snacks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Are they Triscuits? Those are amazing.

Crystal Carter:

They're not Triscuits, but I love Triscuits. I love me a Triscuit. That is the quality. You get a little cheese on there, oh.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the best cracker. I don't know what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world for not being into Triscuits. It's ridiculous.

Crystal Carter:

Although, to be fair, sometimes Ritz does it. Sometimes it's a Ritz and I'm like, "Oh yeah."

Mordy Oberstein:

Ritz is fine. It's good with Herring. I know it's an old Jewish thing. Totally lost the audience with that one, but Triscuits are far superior.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Okay. People who are listening, hit us with your favorite cheese accompanying snack tray.

Mordy Oberstein:

And it'll all makes sense why we're talking about food in a few moments. But first, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also showcase your years of experience to your clients with the advanced design and clients tools found in Wix Studio. Look for it over at wix.com/studio. Experience? You ask. What can that mean for today's topic? Well, I hope you're as hungry as we have something to eat today. That's right. We're taking off the oddly controversial, though lately less so, topic of experience, expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness also known as EEAT. Was EAT, but now it's EEAT. That's a mouthful, whatever. We'll explore what does good EEAT actually look like? What does EEAT mean for the Google algorithm and your ability to rank? And why did Google add the extra E after all?

To help us get two full scoops of EEAT, the world's best, Lily Ray of Amsive Digital will join us as we make our way to the proverbial salad bar in the sky, known as the SERP. Plus, we'll look at how Google goes all in on experience with its own features on the results page. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social. So head over to the buffet and load up on free food like it's a famine. As episode number 63 of the SERP's UP podcast helps you stuff your faces with the lowdown on EEAT. That's EEAT.

Crystal Carter:

I hooked up a lot to chew on there, Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, nice, nice., Nice. I'm really going to digest that for a while.

Lily Ray:

That was quite an intro and you guys make me laugh so much that I was like, "Should I go on mute? Should I not go on mute?" Because I'm just sitting here cracking up and it's amazing. So thanks for having me. This is-

Mordy Oberstein:

Lily, thanks for being here.

Crystal Carter:

So happy to have you here.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's right. You're a second time guest. You're our second, second time guest.

Lily Ray:

Isn't that right? Yeah, it was fun the first time, so that's why I said yes again.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

I also noticed during our bit of banter in the front, I mentioned Ritz and you were shaking your head no. You were like …

Lily Ray:

Well, it's more like I love Ritz, but I'm just like, that's such a snack from childhood. So much butter. You know what I mean? But you're right, it's still a guilty pleasure for sure.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it's true. It's a little basic, but it does the job. I enjoy it. I enjoy it. But there we go.

Lily Ray:

Absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

They used to have a guy who's a kid, like Kosher knockoffs. This wasn't technically Kosher at one point, whatever. Now that I've experienced real Ritz, they were crumbly and not nearly as good. The level of expertise and trustworthiness around the cracker making of the knockoff was not nearly as good as the original. Which brings us to our topic, and I want to give a little bit of background... Pat in the back for that pivot. A little bit of background on what the heck EEAT is. So we're going to go on a little magical SEO history tour, cue up The Beatles, I guess. Because in March of 2018, Google released a medic update. It was I guess the August, 2018 core update, but they weren't calling it that then, which we call it now but it was called a medic update. And it was one of those, I don't know, moments in SEO history where something just started to be different.

And one of the things that was different was the conversation around Your Money, Your Life websites, YMYL, and the impact that we saw on health websites and finance sites getting hit really hard during the medic update and the emphasis on site quality, meaning it became apparent that Google was able to assess and profile quality in brand new ways. And back then, literally a few weeks after the update rolled out, yours truly wrote a I'll call a prophetic blog post, which has been since deleted by the place that hosted it, salty point, around Google profiling site identity, a topic you hear a lot more about, and the website's really building upside identity and that sort of thing. And that really started emerging during or after, rather, the medic update and the subsequent core updates that followed and EAT... Well, at the time it was EAT because there was only expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, experience came later, really started becoming a focal point of the SEO dialogue. And eventually EAT became EEAT.

But there's always the question of what was Google doing? What were they able to do? EEAT came from Google's quality radar guidelines, which are not part of the algorithm, but we were seeing things that look similar to what Google was talking about and the guidelines happen in the algorithm and EAT at the time and now EEAT really became part of the SEO equation and a little bit controversial because of that. So maybe let's take it from there. The algorithm and EEAT, is EEAT part of the algorithm?

Lily Ray:

Softball. Softball question. The way that Google talks about this, so they talk about there's many different signals that go into their evaluations, their EEAT evaluations. And those can be many, many different, let's say on page, off page direct, indirect signals about a brand, about a website, about content. And those signals factor into their evaluations of the EEAT, which of course then can impact rankings. So they're not going to tell you that EEAT is a direct ranking factor. In fact, they've said many times it's indirect. But if you think about it as a whole, as a concept, it is essentially a big, huge part of Google's algorithms and it depends on the query itself, how much it matters. So they've been very clear that for certain queries, it's extremely important. For other queries, maybe it's less important. But there's other statements from Google saying this matters for every query.

So people like to get into these silly debates about whether or not it's important. But if you read pretty much all of Google's documentation from the last several years, it's by far the most common theme about how SEO works. But they have to keep it really vague for the same reasons they have to keep all of their information about ranking very vague. Because people think that it's something that can be faked and exploited and just like all these spammy approaches are trying to fake EEAT, which people are doing now and with some success in some cases. But yeah, Google's not going to tell us directly how it works. So in my perspective, yes, it's probably the single most important thing you should be thinking about for SEO, but it's not as simple as saying putting a keyword in your title tag is a ranking factor. Right?

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that part of this comes from... They had that piece of content that they said, "What site owners should know about Google's August, 2019 core update." And they talk loads about the EEAT and they link to your content there as well, and they talk about how important it is. And I think that, as you say, it's not a one pill sort of thing. It's not like you do one thing and then it's completely fixed. It's a holistic approach. And I think that that's certainly something that you've talked about for many years. I've been on your website, you have a section that says, "I talk about EEAT lot, and the reason why is because it's very complex."

Lily Ray:

Yeah, it's complex. And it's very hard for a lot of SEOs to wrap their heads around because a lot of SEO in years past has been more like you do one thing and you can see a result of that thing pretty clearly. So you can draw a conclusion, oh, I added this keyword to my title, or I changed my H1, or I improved page speed, and I'm pretty sure it led to these outcomes. With EAT and EEAT, it's hardly ever like that. So a lot of people made the mistake early on of saying, "Oh, I added an author name and I tested adding an author name and nothing happened." Because it's not how it works. Google has all the data in the entire world and they're using it in ways we probably cannot even wrap our heads around. So that in and of itself is probably not going to change how Google evaluates the EEAT of your site and your brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's always been my major hangup with the EEAT. I call it a matter of factor. Yeah, you have all these ranking signals like your keyword and your title tag and blah blah blah blah blah…. But looking at the quality of the website, its ability to transmit information in a expert led manner that results in it being trustworthy, it's very holistic, and it's very meta. It's like, okay, before we even get to a keyword in a title tag, what's the nature of this content? Is it applicable and is it quality? And that's before a ranking factor. It's prior to a ranking factor, and I think that confuses the heck out of SEOs.

Lily Ray:

Yeah, yeah. It's because they can't understand how Google's doing it, and they also can't imagine what's possible and what's not possible. So a lot of the times it's like Google can't possibly know who these authors are. Meanwhile, literally today, Glenn Gabe just posted, in Google Discover, they're putting author names in the thumbnail, and now you can click on the author name and it takes you to their knowledge graph. And Glenn found it for Barry Barry Schwartz, the author in the SEO community. So I'm like, "Okay, if they can't do it, why are they literally continuing to push products that show that they're trying to do it."

Crystal Carter:

Right. And they rolled out lots and lots more knowledge panels for people of all different levels of notoriety and the knowledge panels that they have for people who are big names, for instance, are much more robust these days. How have you seen that evolve?

Lily Ray:

Yeah, I think you're right. I think I've seen a lot more people this year saying, especially SEO people, like, "Hey, I put structured data around my name and now I have a knowledge panel." It's like, okay, well, that's a much easier barrier to entry than it was before. But you're right, Crystal, if you Google prominent people's names, it's like Google's gone so far into making it a beautiful search result with connecting all the different dots. Sometimes when I Google my own name, I'm like, "You chose that YouTube video to display at the very top of the page." It's like curating almost these personal websites for people, and they're absolutely building that out more over time.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, they're really smart about it. In mine, they show a picture of me when I was a kid that I once posted, I went, "Wow."

Lily Ray:

You're like, "Take that down."

Mordy Oberstein:

Really. To be honest to you, I look way better back then than I do now, so I'm going to leave it there.

Lily Ray:

You're going to keep it?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, keep it. So to piggyback off of that, what does good... Because we mentioned, okay, throw the author in there, have an author bio, but I feel like EEAT has... We've SEOed it, it became a checklist. We need to do this, I need to do that and I need to do that. But what does developing good EEAT actually look like?

Lily Ray:

Yeah, it's doing the hard work that nobody wants to do. Everybody wants a shortcut. A lot of people these days are saying, you'll see these people, "Oh, I created this fake mid-journey person and a fake author bio and got all these fake mentions and all these publications did it, did all these fake things and it's ranking." I'm like, "Yeah, it's ranking for now until Google sees enough of these patterns to the point where they launch another helpful content update and it doesn't work anymore." If you're willing to have something work for a month or three months or whatever, great, good for you. But sustainable long-term marketing and EEAT means all the things that have always contributed to building a trustworthy brand. So we work with our clients to say, who are the legitimate experts at your company? The people that actually know these things, are they looped into the content creation process? And the more that these people go and make themselves public speaking at events, doing interviews, making YouTube videos, doing TikTok, all this stuff, it all gets factored back into EEAT. Google loves those signals.

Crystal Carter:

So I've worked with clients on this who were in the medical space on one of the things you do a EEAT audit, and I presume that that's something that you do and many think that you do. And when I've done that sort of thing, it's sometimes very difficult to explain to clients what you're actually looking for because they're like, "But I thought you were going to look at the website." And you're like, "Yeah, kind of. Yes, but also your whole digital footprint." How do you talk to clients about that? Because one of the things I think people struggle with, they'll say, "Oh, well, we are qualified. Oh, well, we do have that certification." But they don't necessarily demonstrate it. So do you find it tricky for clients to get their head around that?

Lily Ray:

It's a great question. I mean, personally, I think it's one of the most fun and exciting areas of SEO when you start to believe in it and understand how it works. Because like you said, if they are truly qualified, then it's just a matter of connecting the dots and making that super easy for search engines to understand and users. All of this is mutually beneficial for search engines and users. That's one of the nice things about it. It's not like, "Oh, let's go buy a million shady links and spam the internet." Because it's good for SEO, but it's terrible for users. No, we're actually doing something that's good for the internet and brands as a whole. But to your question, Crystal, it's like if you go in the search quality rater guidelines, which have finally become trendy, Marie Haynes made this trendy and Olaf Kopp maybe and three other people five years ago, seven years ago. Now, suddenly the SEO industry's like, "Check out this nugget from page 18 of the search quality guidelines." I'm like, "It's no secret. It's been there the whole time."

Mordy Oberstein:

The main content should be clearly accessible on the page.

Lily Ray:

Yeah, guys. Found this great hack. Oh my God.

Crystal Carter:

I'm not going to lie. If you're new to SEO and you're interested in it, look up Google search quality rater guidelines. And honestly, Lily, you hit me to this and you were like, "Oh yeah." This and this. And I was like, "Okay, let me have a look myself." Literally printed it out and was going through that with the highlighter with all of this stuff that I used to carry it around dogeared, but it's a great read and it's super, super useful. It's also worth bookmarking because they just update the link. I was trying to compare one year to the other and it will go. There's a couple of people that do really good line by line what's changed. But yeah, it's a great document. We should link that in the share notes.

Lily Ray:

Yeah, it's hard to find. And one last thing about that, if you read the guidelines, the whole point of why I brought that up is because the first thing it says for quality raters to do is, which the document is intended for, is to research the reputation of websites outside of what the website says about itself, including a search operator that they can add to Google that literally looks at the website reputation without looking at the website, subtract the website's domain. So they're actually looking directly outside of the website to understand what other people are saying about the website, not the website itself.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and that's why I feel like there's so much of what goes into EEAT and branding and content marketing, right? You can do very mundane tasks like I mentioned before, but though the real work is really developing the brand. I think the point you made before about getting the people who work at your company involved in the content creation and promoting that content is, first off just leaving SEO aside, is a great brand marketing tactic. You want to show you as the expert and in order to do that, your people need to be out there talking about what makes them an expert. How many times is a random content marketing agency in Wichita, Kansas writing about whatever it is that you actually do and the actual experts are not actually involved in the content? If you're like, "What's the biggest thing you can do to build up your EEAT?" But make sure the content's really actually good.

Crystal Carter:

And accurate and factual.

Lily Ray:

Yeah, and beyond good. I think we'll talk about this soon, but now it's just true experience. So another thing the SEO community is trying to do with the onset of the new E, which I think we'll talk about is faking experience. And the amazing thing that Google's done and cornered people into doing, which I think is a great thing, is now you need that to rank. I mean, the data just shows it over and over with different types of algorithm updates or ranking systems. We had the review system, now we have the helpful content system. It's always saying the same thing now, which is, do you have true experience? So people are going into ChatGPT and saying, "Pretend I'm an SEO expert with real SEO experience and say this and this thing." And the answers, I'm like, "If you're a real SEO person with experience, you'll know the answers are not good." So people can tell the difference, right?

Crystal Carter:

And I think also you talked about being good for users and being good for the algorithm or whatever as well. I heard a radio advert the other day and it was like, "Here are real customers talking about their customer experience with our energy company." And it was literally slightly grainy phone calls of people going, "Oh, I had a great, thank you so much for your help. That was really helpful." And that sort of stuff. And I think TikTok is a classic venue for this. There's a lot of ugly videos on TikTok that are like, "Here's how I fixed the bicycle." Or "Here's how I did this thing." And I think people are really looking for something real that they can quantify as real because there's so much content everywhere. So I think that that experience level, I think that's a response to that. Do you agree? Or you're seeing something else?

Lily Ray:

Yeah, no, I think it's really clear. It's interesting in the past couple of weeks and months how so many people are so blindsided by what Google's doing because Google's been warning us for years about this. The feedback that Google's been getting about its algorithms and the quality of its results have been in mainstream media for a couple of years now. We think that Google provides a lot of very inauthentic results, a lot of results from brands that don't know what they're talking about. Too many brands are doing affiliate content. This is not authentic but we want to hear from real people. TikTok is the biggest threat to Google search. It has been clear for months and years the challenges that Google's facing. Now they're probably maybe over indexing on real experience with some of their ranking updates, but it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Google searchers in general want that classic old feeling of how Google used to be when you would get Joe Schmoe's website about fixing his bike. They're trying to go back there while still honoring many of the other signals that are important for search.

Mordy Oberstein:

That to me, by the way, is a mistake that I think people in the SEO industry make. Okay, so Google added an extra E to EEAT where it was originally expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and then they added an E for experience. And SEO's like, "Oh, okay, now we've to optimize for experience." They're out thinking, where did the E come from? They didn't pull it out of a hat. Google realized that there's a new content trend. People are preferring content from actual people with actual experience. And in order for them to stay relevant, they need to figure out a way to include that in the algorithm. So it's not like, oh, I need to optimize for Google. No, you need to give people what they actually want, which is what Google's trying to do. So we've talked about this on Twitter a while back when they started doing the product review updates and now they're called the review updates.

And Google said, "Okay, we want you to have actual experience with the toaster oven that you're using." How do they do that? And to me, it's not crazy complicated. The language structure you're going to use if you use the stupid toaster oven is going to be so different than if you didn't. So for example, you would write, great toaster oven, was really good on bread, if you didn't use it. But if you actually used it, you would be like, "I tried to put a steak in there and it did not work. Do not use this on steak."

Lily Ray:

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I've been looking at sites that got hit by the recent helpful content update. And I'm not the most advanced set of algorithms on the planet. I'm just a person looking at sites one by one. So obviously, whatever Google's capable of doing is going to be a million times more sophisticated than what I'm doing. Okay, first of all, so many of the sites that were impacted have absolutely no experience. That's just obvious. Okay, we get it. You wrote a million pieces of content about all the great places to travel in the world. You've obviously never been there. There's no evidence, there's no author, there's nothing. That's obviously the most extreme example. But then you get these mid-range like, "Oh, I really enjoyed going to the restaurant. The breakfast was excellent. Highly recommend it. Try the pancakes." Okay, did you really go there?

Mordy Oberstein:

No, you did add the word I and we in a thousand times. I told Crystal this, I took that product review page and I went to the way back machine and it was clear. They try to mimic experience and it was not actual experience. And I went back and they used the word I and we eight times. Fast-forward to now, and they use it 150 times.

Lily Ray:

It's real experience. If I just put that word there a million times, people will never know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. So note to the audience, and I feel like if you're listening to this podcast and you're a smaller website, this is for you. You have actual experience, you have the ability to really give that experience over to your audience and create something different and valuable. But if you're listening to this and you're on an SEO, stuffing in we and our and I is not optimizing for the experience of EEAT.

Lily Ray:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

I think that's a great segue. I have a question. So the way I always describe for our Wix audience, and I know not everybody here is Wix user yet. But the way I like to describe it is Wix folks are doers, we like to do stuff, make websites, do stuff, et cetera. So if somebody was looking for something to do, I don't know if you'd be interested in this, going through each acronym. So a quick tip, is that ridiculous? Or something you could do to demonstrate experience on a website that almost anyone could do, what would be something you could recommend for someone?

Lily Ray:

Yeah, I mean, this is where it gets fun because presumably if you are making a website and marketing the website, presumably and hopefully it's because you actually like what you're doing, you know about what you're doing, you care about what you're doing. Of course, that's definitely not true for many people that are doing marketing on the internet. But if those things are true, assuming those things are true, share what you know. You know what I mean? What are the unique insights and experiences that you have? Me personally, I think you both as well. I can talk about SEO all day, every day. I have very strong opinions as everybody knows and I like to share them and people like to hear them. So do that. If you're a biker or a bike mechanic, what have you experienced? What frustrates you? What's the cool new bike? What's going on?

And then of course you can map that to the different SEO tools that we use to say, okay, how should I write this headline? What keywords should I include on this page? How should I set up my content structure? But when you start from what you know, this is a very different way of thinking about SEO because most people start from the keywords themselves and then try to pretend that they know these things or research what other people have said. But I almost only write SEO content or content about SEO when there's something that I need to say and that's a lot. It's very frequent, but it doesn't happen not because my company's like, "Lily, we haven't heard from you in a while." I'm like, "Guys, it's Sunday night and something really big happened and I have an idea and I'm writing a blog." So think about it that way.

Crystal Carter:

So this is reminding me. So on Wix SEO hub, I have an article about user first SEO content ideas and I'm sure you must get this a lot as in your experience, you talk to SEOs all over the world. If anyone doesn't know, it's not really a conference if Lily's not there. No, I'm kidding. But every SEO conference is made better by Lily Ray. But yeah, there we go. Anyway, at conferences, you speak to SEOs all over the world and you must have lots of people asking you questions all the time about different things. So again, rather than keywords, if you're hearing people regularly asking you those questions, those are potentially users. That's potentially a place where you can validate your experience or the experiences of other people in order to create the content. So I think that that's something that folks can do as well. Listen to people who are talking to you.

Lily Ray:

Yeah, or your customers or your calls or your chats, right?

Crystal Carter:

Right. So we did experience. And expertise, what is a good win for expertise in terms of something that someone could work on, sort of a thing?

Lily Ray:

Yeah, I think this is when we start to get into things like author bios and building out a personal brand. Every place that one would expect you to be mentioned or recognized in your industry, make sure that you're there or make sure that it's clear that you're there. Here's a random example for me. I'm in Google Scholar. I was included in an academic journal where I've talked about SEO. That's extreme, but that's all the different places that you might expect somebody who's saying they're an expert in something to have expertise. So I just spoke at a recipe blogger conference last week. It's like, where are all the publications where you've been mentioned? Where did you go to culinary school? Right? Just connecting all those dots and making sure that they're all easy for people and search engines to see.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, and I think one thing that I've seen is that, and I think you've mentioned this as well on Twitter, is LinkedIn for instance, even if you're not posting every single day on LinkedIn, if you have your LinkedIn, if you spent an hour going through your LinkedIn profile and making sure that's got your relevant qualifications and has the skill sets and all of that sort of stuff, Google pulls those results into the SERP, for instance. So that can be a good source of that as well. And then with regards to authority, is that one trickier?

Lily Ray:

Yeah, probably. I mean, the SEO industry will tell you because Gary-ish from Google-

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, the link thing.

Lily Ray:

One time said that it's links. Yeah. So Gary in maybe 2018 or 2019 said that page rank and links are the only things we really look at for EAT or something along those lines, and authority is largely driven by links. So of course, the SEO industry likes to misconstrue this into links are the only thing that matters, nothing else matters. Which is not true. But of course, similar to having the right credentials and experience listed in your online profiles, you do want to back up your legitimacy with links and also social media mentions. I can't say enough about when I share an article that I wrote on Twitter, it shows up in Google Discover the next day. So it's like Google's looking at these signals, even if they don't tell you the social media signals are ranking factors, they're looking at them, for sure.

Crystal Carter:

And what about trust? What's a good opportunity in terms of demonstrating trust online?

Lily Ray:

Yeah, this is where the trust pilots and the G2s and testimonials and online ratings and online reviews come in. There's so many different sites where you should be listed, building out a knowledge panel using Crunchbase, all these things. Just making sure that your brand is a legitimate brand. Other sites that were impacted by the recent algorithm updates, including the helpful content update, one of the first things that I noticed is a lot of these sites are obviously just blogs that someone bought because of the name. It's just obvious, right? So if you're bestpizzaslices.com, okay, great, you're going to write about the best pizza slices. I'm sure the content is fine, but that's not a brand. There's no evidence that you started a business. Who are you? Why should we trust you? So that's a silly example because I'm sure you can do fine with pizza slices, but you know what I mean? People are just buying domains and not investing any energy into making this a real brand because that's the whole point, they're churn and burn sites. So you have to show that you're a real brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

And all that bleeds over, right? Even the Google's graphic, the whole diagram, they have a Venn diagram and the E, and the A, and the T they overlap a little bit to make a one overall picture. So one of these things, again, that makes it hard is that it's not very linear. As Lily mentioned before, I just want to harbor on that point for a real quick second. It is a mindset. It is a way of thinking about producing content and websites and working with sites and content. And I think we're done. I think we've exhausted the topic for this particular episode. Lily, if people wanted to experience your expertise and experience in SEO, where could they find you?

Lily Ray:

Well, my new answer to this question is that Google me and pick wherever you want to follow me because there's a lot of different options. So it's Lily Ray, L-I-L-Y R-A-Y.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the best answer I've heard. I know it's...

Lily Ray:

It's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's such a good answer in this whole mumble-jumbled world of social media. That is the best answer I've heard in a long time.

Lily Ray:

Pick your favorite.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, we'll link to Lily's various social media profiles and perhaps just the SERP.

Lily Ray:

Just the SERP.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, in the show notes. So look for the link to Lily's SERP in the show notes.

Crystal Carter:

Such an honor to have you with us. Thank you so much.

Lily Ray:

Thanks for having me. You guys are the best.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thanks, Lily. Bye.

Thanks again, Lily. Experience is not just fodder for the algorithm. Google didn't pull it out of a magic hat and say, "Hey, let's focus on experience and expertise." Content trends impact search engines and Google saw experience and expertise are actual content trends that people want. Hence, you all are going to TikTok for information. Thus Google knows it itself needs to show experience and expertise in its own SERP features. So like that, with that, let's dive into what it all looks like on the SERP as we take a directional look at what Google is doing with a little segment we call going, going Google.

Speaker 4:

And it's going, going Google. It's out of here.

Mordy Oberstein:

Google does a lot of things to help give results within its own SERP feature the little boxes and doohickeys it offers that are not the actual results that pull in expertise and experience. In fact, Crystal, you found one of these and shared it with the great Barry Schwartz. Care to share that with us?

Crystal Carter:

Yes. So I found a mentioned in drop down, and I found this on the couple of top level searches, so broad search keywords. And essentially, I entered in something and then further down there was a brand and underneath the brand it would say mentioned in, and it mentioned a few different places where people have mentioned this particular topic. These are really useful for providing context. They also provide a little bit of a point of panic potentially if you might have something there where you're mentioned, did he not? So flattering way. So I think it's important for people to think about how their reputation is being managed across the web and to make sure that they're creating some great content that is actually about them. So people talking about them. This is essentially the authority piece. So I tend to say that when we think about authority, it's what other people are saying about you.

So if you were applying for a job, you get references. You might say great things about yourself on your resume, but then you have your references. And if your references are your mom or your best friend, that'll give your employer one kind of impression. If your references are somebody that you worked with who also has a good reputation, for instance, that's going to give another impression. And it's the same with some of these online recommendations that Google's trying to get more people more comfortable for.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and it really helps Google showcase the result that they're giving is expert driven, right? Other people are mentioning that website, then that website has some sort of expertise on whatever topic is that you're searching for. So it's Google saying, "Hey, let's make sure that you, the searcher, understand that this website is an expert because other people are saying that they are."

Crystal Carter:

Right. And that when you're looking at the SERP, I mean, it takes up a lot of real estate. So the one that I saw had a couple of different options. And I think that what's interesting is that it takes up probably double the space of a normal plain blue link, which is great because that's saying not only is this somebody who's got content on this, but they've got content and other people think that content is good. So I think that that is an absolute plus for people who have good brand knowledge or good topic knowledge on a particular topic. And I think that it's worth investing time in making yourself be seen as a very clear authority.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and on the flip side of that, from the experience angle, Google has a whole set of results where you can get a perspective from actual people, meaning you search for something like, are The Beatles good? It was the example we used in the previous episode. And you get a set of results of people sharing their opinions about The Beatles. It's really results based on experience. A lot of it coming from social media because that's a great place to see where people have their experiences and their thoughts on that from actual people.

Crystal Carter:

So one of the examples that I found was Coco Gauff. So after she won the US Open with plastic finish there. Well done Coco. So after she won that, there were people who also had opinions on that as well. So there was something that was specifically an opinion piece, for instance from CNN that was mentioned in The Perspective. But I think it's great to have the content earmarked so that essentially you're saying this is content that's objective or that's a news piece, core news and this is the opinion column area. In a newspaper, you'll have current events, you'll have some people who are making think pieces about what they think it might mean or what context they see in a particular news event, and then you'll have people who are just reporting what happened on that particular occasion.

And both ideas are useful for you to get context of what's going on, but they're not exactly the same. So I think it's good that Google's saying, "Okay, these are opinions, they're interesting and things, but they're opinions." And I think that it provides context and provides a great way to get more information on the SERP.

Mordy Oberstein:

The point is, if you look at what Google's doing in their own SERP features, you can get a sense of what they're trying to focus on and what they're trying to do and what direction they're going, and it's the name of the segment going, going Google. So take a look at what Google's doing and take a look at what's changing on the results page and take a look at the change in testing that they're doing because that'll show you what they're looking for and what they're trying to do, what they think is valuable.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And one of the other ones that Glenn Gabe identified recently was within the Discover tab there, for instance, he found something that was talking about Google, Google search results, and it was an article written by Barry Schwartz and underneath the article it said, "Get the latest on Barry Schwartz." And when you click on it goes to Barry's knowledge graph.

Mordy Oberstein:

There you go.

Crystal Carter:

So that is a good way that you're connecting the dots, and it's something I've talked about in terms of thinking about mobile optimization. I did a course recently for Semrush and I talked about how actually spending some time making sure the people on your team have good knowledge graphs, have good biographical entities, have good information across the web, is actually really useful for mobile, for EEAT, for all of those sorts of things. So Google wants to add citations essentially to the kind of content that they're giving. So they want to add context to the authors. They want to add context to the information the publishers that they're pointing people to. They want to give people more context for the kind of information that they're getting.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, speaking of Barry, of course, it is the perfect time for us to dive into this week's snappy news.

Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Google SGE expands through 120 countries per Barry Schwartz override Search Engine Land. Basically, it's what I just said. Google's SGE, it's Search Generative Experience expands to 120 new countries. Which means that if you are in Angola, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil. Just reading off the list. Cambodia. Let's go to E, Ethiopia. G for, I don't know, Guam. In all of these countries, you can, in theory, access the SGE Google Search Generative Experience, which is super interesting. Google has stated that yes, this is still on beta, still being tested, but the expansion obviously indicates that Google is far more comfortable with what it's been doing in the US with its SGE. So look forward at a country or in a country near you. Also in a country near you, per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, it's two berries from two different publications this week as it is with pretty much every week.

Google November 2023 reviews update rolls out. So Google said, if you listened to our news last week, Google said they're going to roll out a new review update and that the review update, this one, will be the last of the official announced review updates. What you're basically going to have is a continuously updating ranking system, which means that the review update is essentially real time. I hate using that word because it's not exactly what it means, but it will be out live and changing rankings on a consistent and ongoing basis without specific roll-outs as we have now. So that's super interesting.

As I believe I mentioned last time, I think this is the way of the algorithm. This is where I think the Google updates in general are going. We actually cover this in our BrightonSEO session, our live recording of SERP's Up over at BrightonSEO in San Diego. So look for that episode. I believe that one comes out next week. So we get into that there and then. So listen then for that there. Wow, that's so many pronouns. Just so you know, the reviews update is live, at least the beginning of it is live at the same time as the November 2023 core update, which makes picking out ranking movements perhaps a little bit more complex than it usually is, and there's multiple layers of Google updates going on, so that's always fun, right? And with that, that's this week's snappy news.

Thank you as always to the great writers of all the great news articles that are out there, and of course, in particular, the great Barry Schwartz. With that, let's dive into who you should be following this week for more SEO awesomeness. And since we're focused so much on experience and expertise and EEAT, we thought this week's follow of the week should be Olaf Kopp. He is on X, but he's more on LinkedIn. So look for Olaf Kopp. However on LinkedIn, we'll link to that in the show notes. Olaf is a EEAT aficionado. He's written many, many articles around it for Search Engine Land. He's got a really, what I like, a really conceptual understanding of EEAT. And it's the kind of content that when you go and look at it, you're learning how to fish and you're not just getting the fish.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, what fish are we talking about?

Mordy Oberstein:

Mackerel.

Crystal Carter:

Mackerel. Mackerel's so pretty. They're such pretty little fish. They're very shiny and cute. I think they're adorable.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Okay. What's an ugly fish? I know, a fluke. Flounder.

Crystal Carter:

Have you ever seen salmon?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I've seen salmon.

Crystal Carter:

Salmon are ugly fish.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wow, we're really crapping on the fish here.

Crystal Carter:

Say it to it's face. But salmon are ugly fish.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I would say salmon cannot hurt you. I would say it to it. I wouldn't say it to a shark though.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, they jump pretty high. If you ever watch people talk about bears eating salmon. But if you watch a bear eating salmon, I've not seen this personally, but on nature documentaries, they're literally just hanging their mouths open trying to catch the salmon who are jumping upstream. It's not very graceful, but I mean, that's what... You got to do what you got to do if you're a bear and you need a snack.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hey, bears have to eat too.

Crystal Carter:

It's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

Bears have to eat too. Well, I'm that happy note, thank you for joining us on the SERP's UP Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into a very special live episode from BrightonSEO in San Diego live from the conference. So look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at, you got it, wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO.