A recent study from Neil Patel has revealed that 94.12% of the time, human-written content has outranked AI-generated content. This is because Google prefers readable, informative, and human-style content, but AI sometimes misses these fundamentals.
Generative AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude AI have definitely made the content creation easier and simpler. But the risk is that such content might not follow Google’s quality standards. This is where E-E-A-T comes into play!
These are the qualities that can help your website rank on a content basis.
Let’s explore E-E-A-T and how you can meet these Google qualities to rank higher on the SERPs.
What is E-E-A-T?
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It’s a critical standard developed by Google regarding content quality. These factors help Google understand whether the content is written by a human who has full knowledge regarding their niche. Here’s the breakdown:
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Experience: This shows that the person has first-hand experience with what they are talking about. For instance, a senior surgeon would have massive experience in tonsil surgery. If they create an article regarding it, it will hold more value than any other inexperienced writer.
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Expertise: Does the person have in-depth knowledge and qualifications relevant to that topic? Take a civil engineer as an example. If they create a website regarding construction and home improvement, Google will consider it more authentic and reliable than others. It is because the civil engineer holds certain qualifications and pure knowledge.
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Authoritativeness: From Google’s perspective, authoritativeness is fulfilled when a certain person holds high value in their field. For example, if a person is talking about search engine optimization, do people know about it? Does that person have a good following and interactions on social media? Such things help Google understand the authority of a person or website.
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Trustworthiness: Google checks the content accuracy and reliability to ensure it provides a solution to the reader’s problem. To show trustworthiness, you can do in-depth research on the topic, link to other websites, complete the author’s bio, use an SSL certificate, and include pages like privacy policy, terms & conditions, etc.
Following all these factors can enhance your content quality, that have a great chance to acquire a high ranking position.
AI Content and E-E-A-T: What’s Missing?
No doubt that the use of AI in content creation seems pretty easy and useful, but it also comes with the risk of low-quality content. Take the example of ChatGPT – one of the most progressive AI models built so far. If you simply ask it to write a full blog post on any topic, like “reasons for choosing an e-bike over a traditional one,” then it will instantly start writing content based on the data it was trained on.
That copied information might be rephrased, which means you won’t get something new from it. But E-E-A-T is what makes you different from others. Because it is what you experienced, learned, and practiced. Since tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are AI-trained models, they don’t have such qualities. You either have to include the whole experience in your prompt or go the other way around and write the whole content on your own.
A humorous example of this is that doctors can’t trust artificial intelligence to help them in the operating room, because one tiny mistake or cut can lead to severe damage.
Additionally, in 2023, one of Google’s core updates clarified that it is not against AI content unless it is following its content guidelines and E-E-A-T fundamentals. If the content is only published to manipulate search engines and not people-first content, it won’t hold any value to Google.
Therefore, the absence of such factors in your content might not rank it high on the search engine results page (SERP). At that point, you can manually edit the AI-generated content to improve its quality and ensure it aligns with E-E-A-T guidelines.
Google’s Quality Standards: How to Meet E-E-A-T?
Following Google’s E-E-A-T is a mixture of multiple things. Explore the following to learn about these Google quality standards and how to meet them:
Include personal life experiences & anecdotes
E-E-A-T is all about your personal experiences and practices. That helps you personalize your content and build curiosity in your audience to read it whole. For instance, suppose you are an SEO expert who has 10 years of hands-on experience and knows how to rank a website. Now, you write content like “How I boosted e-bike website traffic to 230% with this secret hack?”
In such content, you can talk about everything, from scratch to final steps, including relevant images to build trustworthiness, and tactics you followed. That way, your content will not only provide detailed information but also increase authority among readers.
Additionally, discuss common problems that you have faced and think other SEO specialists might encounter. It will give you more personalized content, exploring the pain points of a reader and the hurdles they are facing.
Cite the reputable sources
Include relevant yet authoritative external sources in your content. This will signal Google that you have done proper research on your topic and linked the sources in your content. That way, if readers want to read more about that certain thing, they can simply navigate to it.
A citation showcases that you didn’t copy the information from another source, but learned from it and linked it.
Link with sources like academic journals, databases, books, and newspapers to build authority among your readers, as well as Google.
Include your author bio
Yes, that’s true! If you want to follow Google quality standards and ensure your content follows E-E-A-T fundamentals, add a bio profile of the author. In that bio, you can address that person, their expertise, their work, and the purpose of writing.
This signals Google that the published content is written by an author relevant to the niche and knows everything. In another case, if you have developed a multiniche website, then a reliable choice is to hire a niche-specific author and include their author bios. For instance, if there’s the “fashion” category, then you must keep a certain writer for that who knows everything about the fashion industry. Compared to a random author, that person would know much more about the fashion industry.
Include relevant visuals (if you have any)
When you include visuals in your content, it not only makes the content easier to read but also helps your readers comprehend the topic. Infographics, screenshots, charts, and original photos will help to improve the credibility and reader involvement. As an example, if you are writing on how to rectify an error in WordPress, it is easier to understand and assist by showing a person a screenshot of every step to be taken.
Google values such endeavors since they demonstrate that the author of the material indeed did the work and is not writing about it. Visuals would also render the piece more professional-looking; custom-made rather than stock images would render such an effect.
Add related graphics or photos as often as you can; this is possible on a phone camera or a more elaborate graphic with a program such as Canva or Photoshop.
Fix your grammar and stylistic issues
It could be the most brilliant idea to paste in your head, but all that could go down the hill with your grammar being all whack. Google gives grammar and spelling serious consideration when factoring the quality of content. The use of poor grammar not only lowers trust but is also likely to disorient your readers, thus causing them to bounce.
Ensure that you read your article carefully before publishing. You can apply such tools as Grammarly or Hemingway to identify stylistic concerns, very long sentences, passive voice, and readability. And above all, simple and precise is always favored over the elaborate diction that has your readers pulling their hair.
Harmonious tone, structure, punctuation, and formatting of your article are indicative of high-quality, well-thought-out text.
Ask for an expert to review the content
To enhance the credibility and accuracy of your content, you might want to have it checked by someone who is already an expert in the same field. By way of example, say you are writing about heart health, having a cardiologist read and confirm your material can make a huge difference in how readers and Google see your text.
Even a fan who has lived with a topic for years may notice gaps or outdated information that you would overlook. Not only will these approvals and ideas intensify your content, but they can also give you the chance to cooperate or to have a guest post.
You could even reference them by name or quote them in the piece (with their consent) to bring in this other element of authority.
Always maintain a readable content tone
AI tends to follow its own certain level of content tone that a specific audience finds difficult to read and understand. Besides, their pattern, transition words, and many other things lead to unreadable content that bounces readers.
In scenarios like that, you must ensure that your content follows a human-written tone and style. For that, consider manually humanizing the content or getting some help from an online AI text humanizer to save time. Manual humanization would require you to do everything on your own, which could take a lot of time. But in an online text humanizing tool, AI can do all of this instantly while maintaining the original meaning. You can humanize any AI-generated content using an AI humanizing tool.
By humanizing your content, you not only make it readable but also personalize it according to your writing style.
Do not copy/paste someone else’s content
This may appear to be a ‘no-brainer, but it is one of the largest problems in the day and age of AI-made content. This is unethical, and it is against Google’s quality guidelines to copy and paste the work of other writers without contributing any creativity whatsoever. Your material is subject to punishment, or, worse still, not listed at all in the search.
To prevent this, never copy-paste the information but paraphrase it completely; add something new, personal findings, takeaways, and value that other sources do not provide. Consider your content to be a new discussion instead of a monotonous script.
Such tools as plagiarism checkers may assist you in keeping your content original and safe to publish.
Benefits of Following E-E-A-T Fundamentals
Doing E-E-A-T is not just about impressing Google, but about earning the actual trust of the audience. These are some of the noticeable advantages:
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Better Search Listings: Google gives priority to content with good quality that is people-focused and meets all E-E-A-T requirements. It will increase visibility and traffic.
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Better Credibility: Information supported with actual experience, knowledge, and concrete sources gets credibility and will draw higher readership and repeat visits.
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More Conversions: Faithful and authoritative content can influence the decisions of the readers and whether they subscribe to a newsletter or make purchases.
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Improved Bounce Rate: With well-structured and relevant content, you will reduce the rate of bounce, as they will find a clear explanation with the right tone.
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Long-Term SEO Success: Google has an ever-changing SEO algorithm, but quality content that is more helpful and E-E-A-T friendly is more likely to succeed.
Conclusion
With more instances of content being created by AI, the deciding factor could be the extent to which your content can match the E-E-A-T by Google. It is not about preventing AI at all; it is about using it. With the best AI assistants, you can couple your personal experiences, expert knowledge, and skilful editing to generate the highest quality, high-ranking content.
It is important to keep in mind that E-E-A-T is not a set of checklist items; it is an attitude. Any content you put out must show your credibility, your authority on the content, and must actually benefit the reader. It is the type of content that Google will adore, and more to the point, your audience will love it.