EEAT Future Predictions by Ellie Wraith - SEO Stream #1

welcome back to SOS stream 2023 we've got another amazing speaker Lin up for you today the next presentation I know a lot of you are going to be excited for it's going to be specifically covering what you should be expecting out of eat going forward from Google and all of the predictions that Ellie and her team at digital Loft have made so put it together for Ellie wraith ladies and gentlemen [Music] wow thanks so much for

that introduction Charles um yeah it's great to be here today um at SEO stream um today I'm going to be talking about the predictions for the future of eat uh and how Brands and businesses can outperform and outrank their competition in 2024 and Beyond so today I'm going to be looking at kind of a recap of the past and present of eat predictions for what the future um of eat is going to look like and some

actionable takeaways that you can use from today to help going forwards I'm going to be inviting everybody to think beyond the here and now to look towards what the future of search has in store for all of us both as kind of individuals and as professionals working in the digital Arena so without further Ado let's recap and set the stage because to have any kind of shred of Hope of understanding what's in the future and even

what's in the present we need to have a really really solid grasp of what's gone before so once upon a time we had eat and this stood for experience this stood for expertise authoritativeness and trustworthiness expertise being does the author have the knowledge and qualifications to back up what they're saying authoritativeness being is the site reputable within its industry does it have a really really great breadth and depth of topical Authority and trustworthiness can the website's

creators be trusted to provide secure browsing for the users and correct information now eat was introduced way back in 2014 which feels like a lifetime ago now as part of Google's quality rated guidelines and as the name suggests these are the guidelines that the quality rors use when assessing the overall quality utility relevance and accuracy of the content that's on a web page but eat really gained Traction in 2018 following the now Infamous medic core update

and this is an update that specifically targeted the quality reliability and veracity of your money your life ym y content why well in a word safety we know that knowledge is power but the wrong knowledge in the wrong hands has the potential to be incredibly dangerous think about it this way would you trust somebody to take your appendic out after they'd only read a set of instructions written by an amateur probably not right but this need

for protection this need for safety it transcends so many boundaries it spills out way beyond the obvious fields of medicine Finance law into just about every other industry because consumers wherever they are they need protection from scams they need protection from incorrect information and they need protection from harmful content regardless of what they're searching for and this need for protection this need for safety paired with kind of overall user satisfaction is what has always sat at

the heart of eat so we've reminded ourselves about eat's origin story and apparently it's now one of Marvel Superheroes so we're in a position to turn our attention to what it's evolved into more recently at the end of 2022 Google added the second e to the core eat framework and this e stands for experience it refers to the need for the author to demonstrate genuine lived experience in their area of expertise now why did Google do

this well in classic SEO style it kind of depends for starters we can see experience as kind of the sum of eat's parts by this I mean with lived experience somebody's going to have a certain level of expertise they're going to be able to speak with a certain amount of authority and they're going to serve as a trustworthy source of information but I think we can push it much further than this I think we can see

the inclusion of this second e as the first unofficial action Google took against the very kind of real risk of unhelpful unqualified content appearing on serbs as a result of the rise of generative AI think about it this way when was the last time you saw chat gbt walking down the street into that new Italian restaurant that's opened and trying out the new menu you haven't right and when was the last time you saw Bard kind

of working through five years of University to be begin practicing as a dentist you haven't right lived experience is the key differentiating factor between human and artificial intelligence so it makes sense for Google to leverage it as the marker of high quality trustworthy information and actually just last just just this week the Miriam Webster dictionary announced that its word of the year for 2023 is authentic showing how globally interest in issues surrounding trust truth and originality

is greater now than ever before so we understand the past we understand the present so now we turn to the main event here are some of my predictions for how the state of search is going to change in the month and years to come and these are the things that I think people in all businesses all Industries will need to put into practice from now if they want to carry on outranking and outperforming their competition moving

forward so prediction number one taking Google's lead and kind of throwing some more letters into the eat framework my first prediction is that we'll see an N added to the Quality guidelines and this n will stand for new now in truth this n could sit anywhere within the acronym but if we did at the beginning it makes a word so we're going to go with that so prediction number one neat similar to how we can see

kind of the addition of experience to eat as kind of being a response to the rise of AI we'll see a new emphasis on unique content when it comes to determining ranking potential in the future I see Google rewarding content that presents new innovative ideas shares a original perspectives and experiences and pushes existing knowledge bases further than ever before and giving rise to this prediction is a belief that the buzzword gener generative AI is fundamentally misleading

it invites people to think that AI tools have the capacity to create when in reality all they can really do is reproduce and as we've seen kind of across mass media reproduced with varying levels of success perhaps a more appropriate title for tools like chat GPC like Jasper AI like Bard would be transformative AI since all they're ultimately doing is consuming processing and regurgitating content that already exists and if all we ever do is rehash the

same old information how can we hope to make any progress we can't regardless of the industry regardless of the discipline Improvement and advancement come from Having the courage to pursue new ideas and establish different models of thinking not from redressing what we already know but what's Google said about this well spoiler alert this isn't actually breaking news because Google's made it stance on un kind of unoriginal rehash content pretty clear from the get-go it's published successive

anti-spam guidelines for creators it's rolled out update after update specifically targeted at spam content to weed out offending sites and pages and when we look at the Official Guidelines from Google on the issue of spam we can instantly see a common theme emerging in the official guidance Google says we need to be providing additional useful Services added value original content that's of unique benefit to the user we need to be providing substantial added value we can't

be copying content modifying it only slightly reproducing it from elsewhere and this all makes perfect sense because ultimately Google wants to protect its users from outof dat potentially incorrect information by returning the most relevant helpful content possible for a given search query and if quality rers can see that new research original ideas genuine human thought is been layered throughout a website's content then this is a solid indication that these resources deserve to rank highly on Surs

but what might this look like in practice well firstly we shouldn't be relying on AI the likes of chat GPT the likes of Bard the likes of Jasper to write our content for us now I'm not saying that AI tools don't have a place in modern businesses and their marketing functions I think they do for example today we're all learning from Stacy on how AI can enhance link building efforts but I think the ways in which

we use AI especially when there's any degree of creativity involved need to be tempered with Extreme Caution next we need to be utilizing in-house experts using their exclusive knowledge and insights on the topics we're covering to really provide that added weight that credibility to what we're saying if we don't have these in in-house experts at Arms Reach we need to go out and find them we need to find them from elsewhere and get them to contribute

to our content to add that credibility we need to be doing indepth regular Ser analysis to establish solid benchmarks for existing competitive content and then ask what can I what can we do as a business to provide further value for Searchers Beyond what's already there providing this additional value is going to take putting time and effort into hyper relevant research that sets us apart from everybody else but of course this is going to put a strain

on our resources so I think it may well be that the future of search the future of SEO is a story of quality over quantity Where creators are publishing fewer pieces of higher quality content of course for smaller brands or businesses with reduced in-house capacities Outsourcing is going to be essential not everybody can be an expert on everything and that's okay because collaboration between individuals who really really know their stuff in a particular field is essential

for upholding quality and integrity ultimately we need to be delving deeper thinking bigger and working harder than our competitors to succeed on serup going forwards and this all kind of leads on really nicely into my second prediction whereby I think we're going to really need to be putting some effort some hard work some elbow grease into our content going forwards so my second prediction prediction number two for today is that Google will add a third e

do its eat guidelines and this third e will stand for effort now for the sake of tongue twisters um I don't see anybody kind referring to this as ee a we'll we'll start calling it Triple E A or 3 eat but why will this be the case why will Google choose to put greater emphasis on clear demonstrations of effort when determining rankability well there's no getting away from the fact that kind of one of the biggest

draws for businesses and using AI is streamlining operations and cutting costs but this poses a really really big problem for Google if businesses see the rise of AI as an opportunity to make cut cutbacks to take shortcuts with their marketing functions I think they're fundamentally and fatally misguided when we rely on AI to automate things like content production like image generation like video creation all we're really demonstrating is disinterest and laziness neither of which relates to

expertise authoritativeness or trustworthiness we know that researching a topic in breadth and depth takes time and qualifying these learnings with credible experts takes resources and effort but in the future Sur success will be enjoyed by the sites that recognize the importance of this going above and beyond to exceed expectations and what's Google said about this well we know that Google stance on what creators need to do to meet eat quality criteria has always been clear and

we also know that living up to these criteria isn't the quickest or the most straightforward of tasks we know that quality raters have a near 200 Page document to use when assessing sites so meeting EA is not a simple tick boox exercise it's an incredibly nuanced complexed art which is why the whole field of SEO exists but for those of us working in SEO and in SEO content this became a whole lot more interesting following the

helpful content update in August of 2022 now when we saw the introduction of the helpful content updates there was a whole new focus on the notion of providing users with a satisfying experience creating content that provides additional added value for users and we can see it here again in the official documentation from Google we see bringing Searchers additional value creating satisfying content leaving people feeling as though they've had a satisfying experience but what do we mean

by satisfying well kind of this has been a hot topic of discussion amongst people working in SEO in the last kind of 12ish months some Brands and their seos see satisfying as kind of providing the necessary information and little more but I think we can go much further than this when we look at the dictionary definition of satisfying when we look at the semantics we can see how it means so much more it also means pleasurable

enjoyable convincing persuasive satisfying creating satisfying content means much much more than just m meeting the minimum requirement requirements we need to be embracing a much more holistic approach to content creation paying attention to how factors such as page design ux accessibility features information architecture all contribute to how satisfied our users are going to feel after consuming our content but what might this look like in practice well as a baseline it's going to meet existing all all

eat requirements these include firsthand experience genuine expertise and off-page Trust signals but beyond this it's going to be it's going to mean thinking bigger than just words on a page looking at overall experience it's going to mean including original images illustrations diagrams graphical representations of data to to make really complex topics easier to understand and digest for our users it's going to make creating downloadable assets such as ebooks white papers thought leadership articles infographics sharable resources

that provide real added value for users it's going to mean giving careful consideration to on page ux including features to enhance overall readability and scannability such as navigation menus information architecture best practices and again accessibility features it's going to mean finding unique insights from trusted sources that crucially can't just be taken from page one of servs we need to be going out and getting these off our own backs in the future satisfying this Triple E A

framework it's going to mean recognizing that digital content is as I said Far Far More Than Just Words on a web page it's going to mean embracing a multidisciplinary approach we're going to need to Leever leverage a wider range of skills and expertise graphic designers behavioral psychologists storytellers customer insights teams web developers technical SEO Specialists to create content that doesn't just walk the walk doesn't just talk the talk but that walks the walk so on to

my third and final prediction for today keeping with the same same 3 eat framework this e could also stand for environment Now by environment I'm talking about the digital carbon Footprints the very real environmental impacts of search of sharing online information and of Google's own operations because many people don't realize that websites all have carbon Footprints as an amount of co2e is generated each time a user accesses a websites pages and consumes its information why well

to simplify things right down Google's data centers use inordinate amounts of electricity and as we know the generation of electricity results in carbon dioxide and I see B Google's business case for putting far more of a focus uh on these environmental responsibilities as being three-fold number one we're entering an era defined by environmental crisis and an era that's led by a generation of increasingly climate conscious consumers more and more we're going to see big businesses held

to ever higher sustainability standards both by their industri Associates and by their target markets and we're going to see being purpose-led becoming a prerequisite for commercial success and we can see this kind of global rise in search volume for the keyword sustainability over the last 5 years we can see the trend from 2019 through to today searches for sustainability have increased threefold and that trajection is set to move in an upward Direction going forwards number two

we can't forget that Google itself is a business with ambitious profit targets and decision makers looking at things through a commercial lens this commercial agenda is always going to be a principal Focus for stakeholders and Google is always going to be looking for ways to kind of minimize costs for itself and number three all of this is happening within a bigger picture where Google's actually laging lagging behind several of its key competitors in terms of sustainab

sustainability progress and commitments and when we look at this environmental bigger picture from between Google and its closest competitors kind of the narrative becomes clear I've used scope one and scope two emissions data from recent um ESG and CSR reports and we can see that Google is lagging behind the likes of Microsoft meta Apple in terms of its emissions and this puts it at quite a significant competitive disadvantage but for big tech companies offsetting their carbon

emissions using standard measures that kind of smaller businesses or kind of the likes of you or I might use dayto day it just isn't practical in tangible terms it takes 46 trees to remove one metric ton of CO2 from the atmosphere but when we look at the numbers for the scope one and scope two emissions generated by Google it would need to plan in the region of 304 mil 580,000 352 mature trees to offset the organization's

environmental footprint and I don't know about you but I think that's quite a lot of trees so how might Google achieve this in practice well it's actually already set out some of how it's going to do this in its most recent environmental report in this it published its official stance on how it plans to work towards a Greener future in the rest of the decade and alongside investing in Renewables alongside kind of using recycled materials and

its physical products in its 2023 environmental report Google sets out how reducing its scope to emissions will be Mission critical for its ongoing efforts to decarbonize and these scope to emissions as we can see there in page 20 in page 35 from the environmental report these scope 2 emissions are generated due to the electricity demands of its data centers so how is Google going to reduce the electricity demands on its data centers well in practice for

us working in SEO it's going to see Google rewarding lighter websites websites that use electricity and place smaller demands on its servers by lighter websites I mean streamline sites with only the necessary pages and content sites with faster page speed with optimal core web vitals and this is going to mean investing in really robust technical SEO foundations from the get-go of any website project it's also going to mean running fewer routine crawls each time Google crawls

the web it uses electricity so fewer crawls means reduced energy consumption and reduced cost for Google too remember how we said that Google is a business itself with its own commercial targets to meet and ultimately this is going to mean recalibrating our entire approach to content content creation and website management it's going to mean recalibrating away from a just get it written and published mindset we're going to need to evaluate sites as whole entities recognizing that

fluff heavy pages may well impact the ranking potential of other higher quality Pages just as having kind of spammy pages on sites can impact the ranking um of high quality content at present it's going to mean putting a far far greater focus on on page ux to make it easier and quicker for users to find the information that they're looking for minimizing time spent on pages and it's going to mean putting sust stainable website design principles

into practice at the outset of any project and critically this is where this prediction kind of differs from the other two that I've already shared I see the third e for environment being different from effort from new content I see it being a key determinant in a website ranking potential so where the existing e eat framework um kind of gives guidelines for Google's quality rers when assessing the quality and kind of utility and credibility of content

this third e for environment will be much more of a make or break Factor environmental credentials will be in a similar space then to core web vitals and they're going to give rise to a future state of search where a website's digital carbon footprint sits sits as a foundation stone in a wider SEO strategy and this is because the carbon footprint the environmental impact of a website is a quantitative not qualitative thing things like page speed

things like redundant HTML things like overly large images these are facts that aren't open to interpretation this is information that's already publicly available and If a site can't meet these clearly defined criteria it's going to struggle to rank so fre predictions summing things up as marketers as seos as people working working in the digital oras know what do we need to remember going forwards number one you are not competing with chat GPT you're competing with the

person using it AI tools are only as good as the person who's using them and people that don't understand when and when not to use them will be the victims of their own streamlining efforts if your competitors are singing ai's praises from the rooftops right now put more effort put more Humanity into your content because it's going to put you in whole position as things change number two and this takeaway is inspired in part by a

recent seminar led by Google's own public liaison Danny Sullivan in which his biggest take-home message was this he said if you chase the algorithm you're behind if you chase what people like you're ahead of the algorithm so my message is be wary of any self-titled experts who try and sell themselves as search first writers search first marketers if you're in- house or agency seos are working to please Google your brand and its online presence will always

be one step behind we need to stop communicating in B to B2B or even B Toc terms and stop thinking as what we do as a means to Ser success we need to embrace a h to H human to human mindset and understand that we're person first creators we need to be putting energy into producing exceptional resources for real human users thinking about what individuals want need enjoy dislike fear and value and the results are going

to speak for themselves number three environmental care potentials will become a factor that directly facilitates or hinders ranking potential as the states of businesses branding SEO become ever more intertwined with wider sustainability challenges Google is going to begin rewarding websites that meet certain environmental standards it's also going to start running fewer crawls to streamline data center operations and reduce the amount of energy used by its servers meaning we'll need to recalibrate our approach to content creation

accordingly and making content quality a priority from the outset rather than an afterthought and number four upholding quality metrics it takes effort but if we fail to demonstrate this in our content we'll fail to perform on CS anybody probably even my grandma no offense Grandma I hope you're not watching can put a prompt into chat GPT get a long form respon response and then copy paste and share it as if it were their own but where's

The credibility in that as the state of search shifts and as our access to information evolves alongside it just putting words on a page will no longer be sufficient to rank in the future I see the winners being those who recognize the essentiality of putting the effort into pursuing more holistic content strategies that present information in a far wider far broader range of formats and mediums than ever before so as a passing message I'm going to

leave you with this if we want to be leaving the pack if we want to be one step ahead of the game if we don't want to be lagging behind and chasing algor algorith RMS we can't be responding to changes we need to be Thinking Beyond the Here and Now planning strategically executing proactively we need to position ourselves position ourselves ahead of the algorithms putting ourselves in Prime position to outrank and outperform our competitors as search

evolves thank you I've been Ellie wraith thanks very much for listening if you're hungry to learn more about what the future kind of might hold for SEO for PR for the wide digital landscape you can catch me and a whole bunch of other super speakers um at next year's digital PR Summit um in person in Manchester um there's a Q Car QR code there for more information um and if you've got another question about eat or

SEO content in general and the future of it all hit me up on LinkedIn um I'd love to connect thanks very much