Google’s August 2024 update intensifies its focus on SEO EEAT by highlighting content creators as pivotal in search results. Explore how this emphasis can refine your Google SEO strategy and align with the latest EEAT guidelines to boost authority and visibility

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and is a set of criteria Google uses to evaluate the quality of content and its creators. This concept is particularly important for content related to specific topics. “Experience” assesses the firsthand knowledge a creator brings to the topic, while “Expertise” evaluates the depth of knowledge on the subject. “Authoritativeness” refers to the creator’s or website’s reputation in the field, and “Trustworthiness” gauges the reliability and credibility of the information presented. Together, these factors influence how Google ranks content, aiming to provide users with the most accurate and trustworthy information available

Google recognizes content creators: A breakthrough for E-E-A-T and SEO

Google now highlights content creators as trusted sources in search results. Here’s why this matters for E-E-A-T and how SEOs can benefit.

Google is explicitly identifying people it understands to be content creators.

This article by Jason Barnard published on September 25, 2024  explains how we know that Google is recognizing content creators, why it’s important and what SEO professionals need to do in response.

Google’s growing recognition of content creator entities

I recently discovered Knowledge Panel subtitles like “Content Creator (Medicine)” and “Content Creator (Travel)” in the SERPs.

This shows Google’s explicit identification of individuals as authoritative content creators within specific fields.

This is a significant E-E-A-T development for content creators as it gives visible and meaningful proof that Google has recognized them as credible sources of information on a specific topic.

It’s also a huge advantage in modern SEO, since the person’s content is more likely to appear in today’s search results and tomorrow’s AI-powered assistants.

Here are some examples from the Kalicube Pro dataset (tracking over 17 million person entities) for content creator topics:

• Agriculture, Animals, Art, Automobiles.
• Baking, Baseball, Beauty, Bodybuilding, Boxing.
• Camping, Cats, Coaching, Cooking, Cosmetics, Cricket, Cryptocurrency.
• Dancing, Dogs.
• Fashion, Fashion, Finances, Fishing, Food.
• Gambling, Games, Geography, Gymnastics.
• Health, Hiking, History, Humor.
• Interior design, Investing, Jazz, Law.
• Magic, Markets, Martial arts, Medicine, Mental health, Music.
• Nutrition, Painting, Parenting, Physical fitness, Politics, Psychology.
• Racing, Real Estate, Religion.
• Science, Shopping, Skincare, Soccer, Stand-up comedy, Surfing.
• Technology, Toys, Travel, Vegetarianism, Video games, Volleyball.
• Weather, Weight loss, Wildlife, Wrestling.

Why this is important to E-E-A-T in SEO

E-E-A-T takes on real (measurable) meaning when Google identifies people it considers authoritative on a topic and can confidently link them to the content they create.

This places us firmly in the era of what I call modern SEO, where, in addition to optimizing the content (traditional SEO), optimizing the content creator and website publisher entities is necessary.

The logic is simple and irrefutable, given the data and the Google leak.

In order for Google’s algorithms to apply any E-E-A-T credibility signals, they need to understand the entity and the relationship between that entity and the web pages it creates or that provide information about it.

This is a zero-sum game. Without explicit understanding, the entity’s E-E-A-T credibility signals (links, awards, qualifications, reviews, testimonials, media coverage, etc.) will have no effect.