July 7, 2025 • 10 mins
This episode explores the concept of E-E-A-T—Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—and how it plays a critical role in building a credible website, especially in the age of AI-generated content. Meredith's husband explains how site owners can improve their perceived authority through credentials, affiliations, backlinks, and content transparency. These factors not only build user trust but also align with Google’s evolving expectations for inclusion in AI search results.
Chapter Markers:
[0:00] Episode 151
[0:24] Intro to E-E-A-T and survey results
[1:28] AI-generated content and why E-E-A-T matters more now
[2:11] How Google developed its algorithm using human input
[3:06] E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor—but its components are
[4:06] Real-world parallels: professional credentials as credibility
[5:28] Demonstrating authority through affiliations and publications
[6:42] Linking to credentials and reputable sources
[7:13] Thinking like a user to evaluate trust signals
[7:45] Why E-E-A-T is even more critical in the AI era
[9:00] Mention of AI course and how to get access
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Meredith's Husband
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Meredith's husband (00:00):
Do you remember?
In a previous episode we talkedabout.
Eat.
Yeah, I know, I don't know whyI ask you these questions.
Meredith (00:06):
You always ask me that .
Meredith's husband (00:09):
It's a good way to introduce things.
It is so we talked about theconcept.
Meredith (00:13):
EAT Remember.
Meredith's husband (00:15):
Expertise, authoritativeness and
trustworthiness.
Yes, and I did that survey andasked people would you like to
hear more about EAT?
And people said yes, so we'regoing to talk about EAT Also.
In a previous, a more recentepisode, we talked about AI and
how there is some new and forthe first time, there is some
(00:37):
guidance about AI and how tomake your site appear in AI
results directly from Google andthere are tools like SEMrush
that are now having things thatyou should actually do.
Meredith (00:50):
How about that so?
Meredith's husband (00:51):
that I have in a mini course on the site.
Part of that mini course isabout EAT, and that is the more
conceptual part.
So that's what we're going totalk about here today.
Meredith (01:02):
Oh, exciting.
Meredith's husband (01:03):
AI content.
There is also some additionalkind of technical how-to stuff
which I can't really explain inthe podcast Understandably, so I
will link to that at the end ifyou want to check it out.
Meredith (01:15):
Excellent.
Meredith's husband (01:15):
But here we're going to talk about the
more conceptual portion, theE-A-T.
Meredith (01:19):
E-A-T, e-a-t, e, to the beat.
Meredith's husband (01:22):
And it's now .
They have added an extra E, soit's E-E-A-T.
Meredith (01:27):
Oh good.
Meredith's husband (01:28):
I don't think the extra E is necessary.
Meredith (01:30):
I think it is because everyone's going to think about
eating, but E-E-A-T is extremeeating.
Meredith's husband (01:37):
Right, yeah, it is Okay.
So I've told a story in thepast about how Google works, how
they developed their algorithm.
Meredith (01:47):
Sure.
Meredith's husband (01:47):
And it was.
If you remember, there was acompany of like I don't remember
the exact numbers, but it waslike 20,000 people in Australia.
It was like a company that had20,000 people and their job was
to look at websites and thenreport on which ones they found
the most authoritative, the mosttrustworthy.
(02:08):
Which ones like yeah, likeliterally, which ones do you
think you can believe and why?
Meredith (02:12):
Why Australia?
Meredith's husband (02:14):
I think, because it's far away from the
US and it's like let's keepthese people under wraps, anyway
, okay, anyway.
And so what Google did withthat information is then they
take it and they try to reverseengineer it and figure out a way
to do the same thing with theiralgorithm.
That's basically how Googleworks, wow, okay.
Meredith (02:35):
Those 20,000 Australians are still.
Meredith's husband (02:39):
No, they've let them go and replaced them
with AI Let them.
Meredith (02:42):
Go and replace them with.
Meredith's husband (02:42):
AI, anyway.
So the explanation that Googlegives when people ask them and
they often do what are thecomponents of EAT?
Yeah, they never give astraight answer.
They do say because there'ssome sort of controversy and
people say, well, if EAT is aranking factor, you have to be
able to define it.
And Google says, well, it's nota ranking factor.
(03:03):
So a ranking factor is like theindividual things that you do,
like how fast your website is.
A faster website will probablyappear higher in the rankings.
It's a ranking factor.
Eat is not a ranking factor initself.
So Google says things like it'snot a ranking factor, but the
things that make up EAT areranking factors.
It's a very kind of circularargument that people have found
(03:24):
frustrating.
Meredith (03:25):
You think?
Meredith's husband (03:26):
Yeah, and so our goal, if we have a website,
is to give it EAT, to make itauthoritative and trustworthy
and show our expertise andexperience.
Yes, how do we do that?
Meredith (03:39):
We go to marriage.
Husband.
Meredith's husband (03:42):
This is a little bit to me kind of like
the credentials after, like anMD, like doctors, lawyers,
therapists, they have thosecredentials.
It means they're licensed.
Meredith (03:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Meredith's husband (03:53):
Gives them some authority.
Like if you were to go to atherapist and they had no
initials after their name, you'dbe like shouldn't you have some
experience or license orsomething Same with a doctor or
lawyer?
Meredith (04:06):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (04:06):
So our job is to website owners, is to kind
of do something along thoselines to make people think that
we know to show to show people,not make them think, to show
people that we know what we'redoing.
Meredith (04:20):
These are not the droids you are looking for.
Meredith's husband (04:23):
So this unfortunately again, there's no
specific thing I can tell you.
This is going to be probablydifferent for everybody.
Meredith (04:29):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (04:30):
For my clients.
I'm just going to give you someexamples For my clients.
A lot of times they might dosome research and they might
have some connection touniversities.
Those are good.
Maybe they're alumni, maybethey gave TED Talks, maybe
they're a company that's in thenews a lot of time.
Those are the sorts of thingsthat you would want to
demonstrate to people visitingyour website.
(04:51):
We are an authority on thistopic.
Look at where we went to school.
We're fancy, we're smart If youhave published content, for
maybe you're on the news andyou're like a talking head.
Meredith (05:04):
For a good reason, not a bad reason, right yeah?
Meredith's husband (05:07):
Not your mugshot.
Meredith (05:07):
Yeah, let's be.
Meredith's husband (05:09):
If you have published content on you know
Medium or somewhere where itwould enhance your credibility,
link to that.
If you are writing, like I dothis a lot, if I'm writing a
blog about how to do somethingrelated to SEO, link to your
sources.
A lot of times for me, thatwould be linking straight to
Google, where Google says youknow in much more detail
technical jargon, how to do that.
(05:30):
Right, okay, now you may or maynot.
In fact, I kind of figure you.
Probably, if you're visiting mywebsite, you'll probably not
follow that link to Google andread the 87 pages of technical
jargon.
I will not, but does that makeme look more trustworthy if I do
that?
Yes, it does, okay.
So again, there is nodefinitive check these boxes to
(05:52):
be more trustworthy, but justlook at it as a person.
If you can do something to yourwebsite to make it more
trustworthy, that's going to begood.
You, for example, you link Meyeah.
You on your website, you linkto the charities that you
support yes, okay.
Yeah, you on your website, youlink to the charities that you
(06:12):
support yes, okay.
Would a scammer or a shadyphotographer be supporting
charities?
Meredith (06:17):
Hopefully, not yeah.
Meredith's husband (06:18):
But probably not.
Yes, yeah, for the most part,people are not going to do that.
If you have any credentials,like I have a Google certified
partner badge I link to thatpage on Google.
If you have any, anycredentials, which I think most
photographers don't do- they.
Meredith (06:35):
No, they do.
If they were like photographerof the year well, that's an
award, that's not a credential.
Meredith's husband (06:41):
Like you don't have to be a licensed.
Meredith (06:43):
There's no if you if you are unaccredited from the
guild and you went through allthese courses, right, you know?
Meredith's husband (06:49):
there's stuff like that Anything you can
do.
And again, you just look at itas a user and think to yourself
does this make me look moreauthoritative, trustworthy, like
I have more experience,expertise?
Meredith (07:01):
Those are the things you want to do.
Would you use the words thatwould capitalize on my
experience?
Meredith's husband (07:07):
I would say you want to demonstrate or
illustrate your experience?
Illustrate, that works betterfor me.
Meredith (07:13):
That makes sense in my mind.
My question is at the rate thatAI is advancing?
Meredith's husband (07:21):
Yes.
Meredith (07:22):
Aren't things going to be changing all the time?
Meredith's husband (07:25):
Yeah, but this is becoming more important.
So AI you know, if something isgenerated by AI and it doesn't
say right up front this wasgenerated by AI.
Meredith (07:35):
Because it don't.
Meredith's husband (07:36):
It's not going to link to the school that
AI went to the university, orthe.
Ted talk that AI gave.
Meredith (07:44):
I just see a little AI with their little book bag
filled with books.
Meredith's husband (07:49):
So this E-A-T principle, E-E-A-T.
E-e-a-t Come on has been reallythe overriding principle at
Google for decades now, and withAI even more so, and Google
even mentions this in thatguidance that I mentioned.
That Google gives about how toget your website into AI
(08:12):
responses.
Meredith (08:13):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (08:13):
One of the things it says is you need to
improve your EEAT.
Okay, you need to demonstrateyour expertise and
authoritativeness andtrustworthiness.
Meredith (08:23):
It's a real mouthful, oh yeah.
Meredith's husband (08:26):
So yeah, ai is changing things, but it's
going to make this even moreimportant, because the big
question with AI is can we?
We're all content now?
Can we trust it?
Meredith (08:35):
Right.
Meredith's husband (08:36):
Where does it come from?
Right?
What am I looking at?
So this is even more important,okay, so if you want access to
that AI course that has theother details here, the more
detailed aspect of how to getyour site into AI, yeah, and
that new guidance, the specificsof what you want to do now,
like a checkbox.
Follow the link below.
(08:56):
We'll take you to what I callmy insiders list.
Meredith (09:00):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (09:01):
The people on that list.
When that course is ready,you'll be the first to know, and
I will include some sort ofdiscount if you're on that list.
Meredith (09:09):
Oh, now you're talking .
Meredith's husband (09:10):
Yeah, you know, I've started to develop
dad humor.
Oh no, it's time, yeah, and youknow, I thought that you had to
be a dad first.
I thought that was a result ofbeing a dad and telling corny
jokes to kids and thinking thosejokes are funny but yeah, I've
had some real dad jokes in thelast couple of days.
Meredith (09:29):
Do you remember any of them?
Meredith's husband (09:30):
The big pile of shit that I brought home.
Meredith (09:32):
Oh God, that's right.
Do you want to share that I?
Meredith's husband (09:35):
think I just did.
Meredith (09:37):
It was a stuffed poop emoji.
Meredith's husband (09:41):
but he came into my office saying I said
there was a big pile of shit onthe sidewalk and the dogs
couldn't get enough of it, so Ibrought it home.
The jokes that you have toexplain are the best ones.
Do you remember?
In a previous episode we talkedabout.
Eat.
Yeah, I know, I don't know whyI ask you these questions.
Meredith (00:06):
You always ask me that .
Meredith's husband (00:09):
It's a good way to introduce things.
It is so we talked about theconcept.
Meredith (00:13):
EAT Remember.
Meredith's husband (00:15):
Expertise, authoritativeness and
trustworthiness.
Yes, and I did that survey andasked people would you like to
hear more about EAT?
And people said yes, so we'regoing to talk about EAT Also.
In a previous, a more recentepisode, we talked about AI and
how there is some new and forthe first time, there is some
(00:37):
guidance about AI and how tomake your site appear in AI
results directly from Google andthere are tools like SEMrush
that are now having things thatyou should actually do.
Meredith (00:50):
How about that so?
Meredith's husband (00:51):
that I have in a mini course on the site.
Part of that mini course isabout EAT, and that is the more
conceptual part.
So that's what we're going totalk about here today.
Meredith (01:02):
Oh, exciting.
Meredith's husband (01:03):
AI content.
There is also some additionalkind of technical how-to stuff
which I can't really explain inthe podcast Understandably, so I
will link to that at the end ifyou want to check it out.
Meredith (01:15):
Excellent.
Meredith's husband (01:15):
But here we're going to talk about the
more conceptual portion, theE-A-T.
Meredith (01:19):
E-A-T, e-a-t, e, to the beat.
Meredith's husband (01:22):
And it's now .
They have added an extra E, soit's E-E-A-T.
Meredith (01:27):
Oh good.
Meredith's husband (01:28):
I don't think the extra E is necessary.
Meredith (01:30):
I think it is because everyone's going to think about
eating, but E-E-A-T is extremeeating.
Meredith's husband (01:37):
Right, yeah, it is Okay.
So I've told a story in thepast about how Google works, how
they developed their algorithm.
Meredith (01:47):
Sure.
Meredith's husband (01:47):
And it was.
If you remember, there was acompany of like I don't remember
the exact numbers, but it waslike 20,000 people in Australia.
It was like a company that had20,000 people and their job was
to look at websites and thenreport on which ones they found
the most authoritative, the mosttrustworthy.
(02:08):
Which ones like yeah, likeliterally, which ones do you
think you can believe and why?
Meredith (02:12):
Why Australia?
Meredith's husband (02:14):
I think, because it's far away from the
US and it's like let's keepthese people under wraps, anyway
, okay, anyway.
And so what Google did withthat information is then they
take it and they try to reverseengineer it and figure out a way
to do the same thing with theiralgorithm.
That's basically how Googleworks, wow, okay.
Meredith (02:35):
Those 20,000 Australians are still.
Meredith's husband (02:39):
No, they've let them go and replaced them
with AI Let them.
Meredith (02:42):
Go and replace them with.
Meredith's husband (02:42):
AI, anyway.
So the explanation that Googlegives when people ask them and
they often do what are thecomponents of EAT?
Yeah, they never give astraight answer.
They do say because there'ssome sort of controversy and
people say, well, if EAT is aranking factor, you have to be
able to define it.
And Google says, well, it's nota ranking factor.
(03:03):
So a ranking factor is like theindividual things that you do,
like how fast your website is.
A faster website will probablyappear higher in the rankings.
It's a ranking factor.
Eat is not a ranking factor initself.
So Google says things like it'snot a ranking factor, but the
things that make up EAT areranking factors.
It's a very kind of circularargument that people have found
(03:24):
frustrating.
Meredith (03:25):
You think?
Meredith's husband (03:26):
Yeah, and so our goal, if we have a website,
is to give it EAT, to make itauthoritative and trustworthy
and show our expertise andexperience.
Yes, how do we do that?
Meredith (03:39):
We go to marriage.
Husband.
Meredith's husband (03:42):
This is a little bit to me kind of like
the credentials after, like anMD, like doctors, lawyers,
therapists, they have thosecredentials.
It means they're licensed.
Meredith (03:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Meredith's husband (03:53):
Gives them some authority.
Like if you were to go to atherapist and they had no
initials after their name, you'dbe like shouldn't you have some
experience or license orsomething Same with a doctor or
lawyer?
Meredith (04:06):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (04:06):
So our job is to website owners, is to kind
of do something along thoselines to make people think that
we know to show to show people,not make them think, to show
people that we know what we'redoing.
Meredith (04:20):
These are not the droids you are looking for.
Meredith's husband (04:23):
So this unfortunately again, there's no
specific thing I can tell you.
This is going to be probablydifferent for everybody.
Meredith (04:29):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (04:30):
For my clients.
I'm just going to give you someexamples For my clients.
A lot of times they might dosome research and they might
have some connection touniversities.
Those are good.
Maybe they're alumni, maybethey gave TED Talks, maybe
they're a company that's in thenews a lot of time.
Those are the sorts of thingsthat you would want to
demonstrate to people visitingyour website.
(04:51):
We are an authority on thistopic.
Look at where we went to school.
We're fancy, we're smart If youhave published content, for
maybe you're on the news andyou're like a talking head.
Meredith (05:04):
For a good reason, not a bad reason, right yeah?
Meredith's husband (05:07):
Not your mugshot.
Meredith (05:07):
Yeah, let's be.
Meredith's husband (05:09):
If you have published content on you know
Medium or somewhere where itwould enhance your credibility,
link to that.
If you are writing, like I dothis a lot, if I'm writing a
blog about how to do somethingrelated to SEO, link to your
sources.
A lot of times for me, thatwould be linking straight to
Google, where Google says youknow in much more detail
technical jargon, how to do that.
(05:30):
Right, okay, now you may or maynot.
In fact, I kind of figure you.
Probably, if you're visiting mywebsite, you'll probably not
follow that link to Google andread the 87 pages of technical
jargon.
I will not, but does that makeme look more trustworthy if I do
that?
Yes, it does, okay.
So again, there is nodefinitive check these boxes to
(05:52):
be more trustworthy, but justlook at it as a person.
If you can do something to yourwebsite to make it more
trustworthy, that's going to begood.
You, for example, you link Meyeah.
You on your website, you linkto the charities that you
support yes, okay.
Yeah, you on your website, youlink to the charities that you
(06:12):
support yes, okay.
Would a scammer or a shadyphotographer be supporting
charities?
Meredith (06:17):
Hopefully, not yeah.
Meredith's husband (06:18):
But probably not.
Yes, yeah, for the most part,people are not going to do that.
If you have any credentials,like I have a Google certified
partner badge I link to thatpage on Google.
If you have any, anycredentials, which I think most
photographers don't do- they.
Meredith (06:35):
No, they do.
If they were like photographerof the year well, that's an
award, that's not a credential.
Meredith's husband (06:41):
Like you don't have to be a licensed.
Meredith (06:43):
There's no if you if you are unaccredited from the
guild and you went through allthese courses, right, you know?
Meredith's husband (06:49):
there's stuff like that Anything you can
do.
And again, you just look at itas a user and think to yourself
does this make me look moreauthoritative, trustworthy, like
I have more experience,expertise?
Meredith (07:01):
Those are the things you want to do.
Would you use the words thatwould capitalize on my
experience?
Meredith's husband (07:07):
I would say you want to demonstrate or
illustrate your experience?
Illustrate, that works betterfor me.
Meredith (07:13):
That makes sense in my mind.
My question is at the rate thatAI is advancing?
Meredith's husband (07:21):
Yes.
Meredith (07:22):
Aren't things going to be changing all the time?
Meredith's husband (07:25):
Yeah, but this is becoming more important.
So AI you know, if something isgenerated by AI and it doesn't
say right up front this wasgenerated by AI.
Meredith (07:35):
Because it don't.
Meredith's husband (07:36):
It's not going to link to the school that
AI went to the university, orthe.
Ted talk that AI gave.
Meredith (07:44):
I just see a little AI with their little book bag
filled with books.
Meredith's husband (07:49):
So this E-A-T principle, E-E-A-T.
E-e-a-t Come on has been reallythe overriding principle at
Google for decades now, and withAI even more so, and Google
even mentions this in thatguidance that I mentioned.
That Google gives about how toget your website into AI
(08:12):
responses.
Meredith (08:13):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (08:13):
One of the things it says is you need to
improve your EEAT.
Okay, you need to demonstrateyour expertise and
authoritativeness andtrustworthiness.
Meredith (08:23):
It's a real mouthful, oh yeah.
Meredith's husband (08:26):
So yeah, ai is changing things, but it's
going to make this even moreimportant, because the big
question with AI is can we?
We're all content now?
Can we trust it?
Meredith (08:35):
Right.
Meredith's husband (08:36):
Where does it come from?
Right?
What am I looking at?
So this is even more important,okay, so if you want access to
that AI course that has theother details here, the more
detailed aspect of how to getyour site into AI, yeah, and
that new guidance, the specificsof what you want to do now,
like a checkbox.
Follow the link below.
(08:56):
We'll take you to what I callmy insiders list.
Meredith (09:00):
Yeah.
Meredith's husband (09:01):
The people on that list.
When that course is ready,you'll be the first to know, and
I will include some sort ofdiscount if you're on that list.
Meredith (09:09):
Oh, now you're talking .
Meredith's husband (09:10):
Yeah, you know, I've started to develop
dad humor.
Oh no, it's time, yeah, and youknow, I thought that you had to
be a dad first.
I thought that was a result ofbeing a dad and telling corny
jokes to kids and thinking thosejokes are funny but yeah, I've
had some real dad jokes in thelast couple of days.
Meredith (09:29):
Do you remember any of them?
Meredith's husband (09:30):
The big pile of shit that I brought home.
Meredith (09:32):
Oh God, that's right.
Do you want to share that I?
Meredith's husband (09:35):
think I just did.
Meredith (09:37):
It was a stuffed poop emoji.
Meredith's husband (09:41):
but he came into my office saying I said
there was a big pile of shit onthe sidewalk and the dogs
couldn't get enough of it, so Ibrought it home.
The jokes that you have toexplain are the best ones.
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