Slides from a talk delivered at Sheffield DM in February 2024 - titles Case Studies in EEAT - Going the Extra Miles to Leverage Businesses' Real-life Expertise. Covering a recap of E-E-A-T fundamentals, why E-E-A-T isn't just an SEO's problem, and why agency marketers need to lean more heavily on in-house expertise to really set apart the whole digital marketing strategy.

1. CASE STUDIES IN E-E-A-T :
Going the Extra Mile to
Leverage Businesses'
Real-life Expertise
Olivia Day
SEO Lead

2. A QUICK INTRO.
● Digitaloft’s SEO Lead, with 1.5 years at the
agency.
● Previously ran a small SEO & Digital PR agency
providing services for start-up businesses.
● Background in content and strategy - have
written copy for a number of household names,
both agency-side and in-house at Twinkl
Educational Publishing.
@oliviaday__

3. CONTENTS:
🧐 A quick E-E-A-T
recap
🗣🧐 What does Google
have to say?
🤝 Why you need your
clients
⛏️ How to mine for
internal expertise
🧐 How to use internal
expertise

4. BUT FIRST, A QUICK RECAP…
@oliviaday__

5. RECAP: WHAT IS E-E-A-T?
● E-E-A-T is a core principle of SEO.
● It is a quality signal - not a part Google’s ranking algorithm, but used by Google’s human
quality raters to determine whether Google’s search ranking systems are providing helpful
and relevant information to users.
● Google then uses this feedback from raters to train machine learning (i.e. their ranking
systems, like the Helpful Content System).
● Multiple recent Google algorithm updates have focused on sifting through unreliable or
unhelpful content, making E-E-A-T increasingly important.
In an age where fake news, clickbait and AI are becoming more and more prevalent, E-E-A-T
is Google’s way of ensuring that it is somewhere that people can continue to come for
reliable information.
@oliviaday__

6. EXPERIENCE EXPERTISE
AUTHORITATIVENESS TRUSTWORTHINESS
The extent to which the author has first-hand
experience in the topic being discussed.
The reputation of the author or website as a
reliable source of truth on a specific topic.
The author’s level of expertise, skill or
knowledge on the subject matter.
The accuracy, honesty, safety and
reliability of the brand and its content.
@oliviaday__

7. E-E-A-T EXISTS AT THREE DISTINCT LAYERS…
Content Author Brand
How is your content verified?
Is it of a high quality?
What are your sources?
Do you quote other experts?
Do you use the most up-to-date
statistics?
Who’s writing your content?
Is this information available to
users?
What qualifications and
experience do they have?
Where else have they been
cited?
What are people saying about
your brand? (e.g. TrustPilot)
Are other sites linking to your
content/expertise?
Is there evidence of your
brand across the internet?
@oliviaday__

8. Page 27, Google Quality Rater Guidelines:
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
BUT DON’T JUST TAKE IT FROM ME… GOOGLE’S QUALITY
RATER GUIDELINES
@oliviaday__

9. IT’S TIME FOR A
COUPLE OF TRUTHS…
@oliviaday__

10. YOU ARE NOT AN EXPERT…
(at everything)
@oliviaday__

11. YOUR CONTENT TEAM
CAN’T MAGIC EXPERTISE
OUT OF THIN AIR…
@oliviaday__

12. COPYING (OR EVEN
BETTERING) WHAT’S
ALREADY ON GOOGLE
DOESN’T EQUAL EXPERTISE…
@oliviaday__

13. YOU NEED YOUR CLIENTS…
@oliviaday__

14. CLIENTS ARE A LARGELY
UNTAPPED SOURCE OF
KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU AND
YOUR TEAM WILL
(PROBABLY) NEVER HAVE
More years of experience
Qualifications you’ve never
even heard of
Buying teams
Customer service teams
Authoritative figures
Product/design teams
@oliviaday__
In touch with latest trends
and research

15. NOT USING THAT EXPERTISE FOR
YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY IS LIKE
TRYING TO WRITE CONTENT
BLINDFOLDED.
@oliviaday__

16. 82% of survey respondents had only ever
spoken to up to three people at a client
company.
This presents a huge missed opportunity - think
of all the insight you’re not hearing because of
this!
If you work in-house, you have even less of an
excuse to not be talking to anyone and
everyone about SEO…

17. TALK! TO! PEOPLE!
@oliviaday__
Find product experts in your company and talk to
them.
● These could be the innovation team, product
buyers, engineers, designers, researchers
sustainability experts - anyone who is an
expert in something you know nothing
about.
● Put aside an hour for an open interview
(record it!) and watch the ideas flood in.
● Communicate the value of SEO and E-E-A-T
beforehand for maximum impact.

18. @oliviaday__
What would you love
customers to know
about X that you don’t
think is getting
through already?
Explain to me X
product/service as if I
were an alien who’d
just landed on planet
Earth.
Do we have any wider
marketing campaigns
that we can support
on?
What are our wider
goals for X
product/service or the
company as a whole
for this year?
What competitors do
you think are doing
really well at the
moment? Why?
What do you love
about the site as it is?
What do you
absolutely hate?
What are our biggest
challenges to growth
at the moment? Is it
competitors/
demand/the site?
Are there any trending
topics in our industry
that I might not be
aware of? What’s got
you excited lately?

19. TALK! TO! PEOPLE! (PART 2)
@oliviaday__
Talk to people who have direct contact with
customers. This kind of expertise you can’t find on
Google.
● Sit down with your customer service teams
and work out what customers have to say.
○ What questions/feedback is coming up
again and again?
○ What comments are we repeatedly
getting on social media?
○ How can we address these before they
even arise?

20. @oliviaday__
BUT WHY?
● You’ll get new ideas and identify trending
topics, even if they have no search volume yet.
○ Getting inside the minds of customers
means getting input from all angles.
● You can enhance the user journey by
answering every possible question before it
arises (this’ll help conversion rates, too).
● You’re providing genuinely helpful content that
answers real problems - not just content created
for the sake of it.

21. DELEGATE (SOME) CONTENT WRITING.
@oliviaday__
Your content team are great. But they won’t
always be best-placed to showcase your whole
company’s expertise.
● Producing helpful content that demonstrates
E-E-A-T requires unique insight backed up by
expertise.
● Your content team’s job is to collect internal
expertise and package it up into high-quality
content.

22. SPECIALIST
CONTENT
REQUIRES
SPECIALIST
AUTHORS
@oliviaday__

23. TURN YOUR EXPERTS INTO CELEBRITIES.
@oliviaday__
Use digital PR to showcase your experts to the
press (and the wider world).
● Journalists love to quote genuine experts and
link to author pages.
● Showcasing specific experts to the press can
lead to journalists coming back again and
again for comments.
● It might make your expert’s day to see their
name in the press!

24. ● Make sure these people are genuine
experts!
○ ASK your client who the best
experts are within their team.
● Google’s Quality Raters will see
through it if you’re using a marketing
person or someone with no online
presence as an expert.
● Make sure these people are the same
authors for your blog posts, to tie it all
together!
@oliviaday__

25. GET YOUR CLIENTS TO BE YOUR INTERNAL CHEERLEADERS.
Make sure as many people in the company know
who you are and what you do.
● Ask clients to share results and projects in
team channels, newsletters etc.
● Communicate the importance of spreading the
word about SEO and our projects.
● Build up that excitement and let wider teams
know this is a collaborative effort that anyone
can support.
● (Do good work - it shouts about itself!)
@oliviaday__

26. BUT WHY?
● You’re always on people's radar, meaning
the ideas are always flowing - ones that you
may not have thought of.
● You can promote SEO best practices in
every area of the business.
● It encourages collaboration - people
volunteer themselves as experts for
comment.
● It educates about the importance of E-E-A-T
- encouraging every area of the business to
think about how they can showcase
expertise.
@oliviaday__

27. A FINAL SUMMARY.
● E-E-A-T is unavoidable - businesses can’t keep burying their heads in the sand
about it.
● Succeeding with E-E-A-T means offering unique expertise - something that a
marketing department or agency alone cannot always offer.
● There is a goldmine of expertise in every company, but you need to go
digging for it.
● How you communicate SEO has a big impact on getting these experts to share
their knowledge.
Going above and beyond to extract this knowledge and weave it into your
existing SEO strategy will be what sets you apart from the competition in 2024.
@oliviaday__

28. Thank you!
You can find me at:
Twitter: @oliviaday__
LinkedIn: Olivia Day
Email:
olivia.day@digitaloft.co.uk
You can next see me
speaking at Digitaloft’s
Digital PR Summit on 11th
April 2024! Tickets are on
sale now.