Meredith's Husband | SEO for People Who Don't Like SEO

SEO + EAT = AI

• A professional photographer and her SEO husband • Episode 151

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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
https://www.meredithshusband.com

Meredith's husband:

Do you remember? In a previous episode we talked about. Eat. Yeah, I know, I don't know why I ask you these questions.

Meredith:

You always ask me that.

Meredith's husband:

It's a good way to introduce things. It is so we talked about the concept.

Meredith:

EAT Remember.

Meredith's husband:

Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Yes, and I did that survey and asked people would you like to hear more about EAT? And people said yes, so we're going to talk about EAT Also. In a previous, a more recent episode, we talked about AI and how there is some new and for the first time, there is some guidance about AI and how to make your site appear in AI results directly from Google and there are tools like SEMrush that are now having things that you should actually do.

Meredith:

How about that so?

Meredith's husband:

that I have in a mini course on the site. Part of that mini course is about EAT, and that is the more conceptual part. So that's what we're going to talk about here today.

Meredith:

Oh, exciting.

Meredith's husband:

AI content. There is also some additional kind of technical how-to stuff which I can't really explain in the podcast Understandably, so I will link to that at the end if you want to check it out.

Meredith:

Excellent.

Meredith's husband:

But here we're going to talk about the more conceptual portion, the E-A-T.

Meredith:

E-A-T, e-a-t, e, to the beat.

Meredith's husband:

And it's now. They have added an extra E, so it's E-E-A-T.

Meredith:

Oh good.

Meredith's husband:

I don't think the extra E is necessary.

Meredith:

I think it is because everyone's going to think about eating, but E-E-A-T is extreme eating.

Meredith's husband:

Right, yeah, it is Okay. So I've told a story in the past about how Google works, how they developed their algorithm.

Meredith:

Sure.

Meredith's husband:

And it was. If you remember, there was a company of like I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was like 20,000 people in Australia. It was like a company that had 20,000 people and their job was to look at websites and then report on which ones they found the most authoritative, the most trustworthy. Which ones like yeah, like literally, which ones do you think you can believe and why?

Meredith:

Why Australia?

Meredith's husband:

I think, because it's far away from the US and it's like let's keep these people under wraps, anyway, okay, anyway. And so what Google did with that information is then they take it and they try to reverse engineer it and figure out a way to do the same thing with their algorithm. That's basically how Google works, wow, okay.

Meredith:

Those 20,000 Australians are still.

Meredith's husband:

No, they've let them go and replaced them with AI Let them.

Meredith:

Go and replace them with.

Meredith's husband:

AI, anyway. So the explanation that Google gives when people ask them and they often do what are the components of EAT? Yeah, they never give a straight answer. They do say because there's some sort of controversy and people say, well, if EAT is a ranking factor, you have to be able to define it. And Google says, well, it's not a ranking factor. So a ranking factor is like the individual things that you do, like how fast your website is. A faster website will probably appear higher in the rankings. It's a ranking factor. Eat is not a ranking factor in itself. So Google says things like it's not a ranking factor, but the things that make up EAT are ranking factors. It's a very kind of circular argument that people have found frustrating.

Meredith:

You think?

Meredith's husband:

Yeah, and so our goal, if we have a website, is to give it EAT, to make it authoritative and trustworthy and show our expertise and experience. Yes, how do we do that?

Meredith:

We go to marriage. Husband.

Meredith's husband:

This is a little bit to me kind of like the credentials after, like an MD, like doctors, lawyers, therapists, they have those credentials. It means they're licensed.

Meredith:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Meredith's husband:

Gives them some authority. Like if you were to go to a therapist and they had no initials after their name, you'd be like shouldn't you have some experience or license or something Same with a doctor or lawyer?

Meredith:

Yeah.

Meredith's husband:

So our job is to website owners, is to kind of do something along those lines to make people think that we know to show to show people, not make them think, to show people that we know what we're doing.

Meredith:

These are not the droids you are looking for.

Meredith's husband:

So this unfortunately again, there's no specific thing I can tell you. This is going to be probably different for everybody.

Meredith:

Yeah.

Meredith's husband:

For my clients. I'm just going to give you some examples For my clients. A lot of times they might do some research and they might have some connection to universities. Those are good. Maybe they're alumni, maybe they gave TED Talks, maybe they're a company that's in the news a lot of time. Those are the sorts of things that you would want to demonstrate to people visiting your website. We are an authority on this topic. Look at where we went to school. We're fancy, we're smart If you have published content, for maybe you're on the news and you're like a talking head.

Meredith:

For a good reason, not a bad reason, right yeah?

Meredith's husband:

Not your mugshot.

Meredith:

Yeah, let's be.

Meredith's husband:

If you have published content on you know Medium or somewhere where it would enhance your credibility, link to that. If you are writing, like I do this a lot, if I'm writing a blog about how to do something related to SEO, link to your sources. A lot of times for me, that would be linking straight to Google, where Google says you know in much more detail technical jargon, how to do that. Right, okay, now you may or may not. In fact, I kind of figure you. Probably, if you're visiting my website, you'll probably not follow that link to Google and read the 87 pages of technical jargon.

Meredith's husband:

I will not, but does that make me look more trustworthy if I do that? Yes, it does, okay. So again, there is no definitive check these boxes to be more trustworthy, but just look at it as a person. If you can do something to your website to make it more trustworthy, that's going to be good. You, for example, you link Me yeah. You on your website, you link to the charities that you support yes, okay. Yeah, you on your website, you link to the charities that you support yes, okay. Would a scammer or a shady photographer be supporting charities?

Meredith:

Hopefully, not yeah.

Meredith's husband:

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 that page on Google. If you have any, any credentials, which I think most photographers don't do- they.

Meredith:

No, they do. If they were like photographer of the year well, that's an award, that's not a credential.

Meredith's husband:

Like you don't have to be a licensed.

Meredith:

There's no if you if you are unaccredited from the guild and you went through all these courses, right, you know?

Meredith's husband:

there's stuff like that Anything you can do. And again, you just look at it as a user and think to yourself does this make me look more authoritative, trustworthy, like I have more experience, expertise?

Meredith:

Those are the things you want to do. Would you use the words that would capitalize on my experience?

Meredith's husband:

I would say you want to demonstrate or illustrate your experience? Illustrate, that works better for me.

Meredith:

That makes sense in my mind. My question is at the rate that AI is advancing?

Meredith's husband:

Yes.

Meredith:

Aren't things going to be changing all the time?

Meredith's husband:

Yeah, but this is becoming more important. So AI you know, if something is generated by AI and it doesn't say right up front this was generated by AI.

Meredith:

Because it don't.

Meredith's husband:

It's not going to link to the school that AI went to the university, or the. Ted talk that AI gave.

Meredith:

I just see a little AI with their little book bag filled with books.

Meredith's husband:

So this E-A-T principle, E-E-A-T. E-e-a-t Come on has been really the overriding principle at Google for decades now, and with AI even more so, and Google even mentions this in that guidance that I mentioned. That Google gives about how to get your website into AI responses.

Meredith:

Yeah.

Meredith's husband:

One of the things it says is you need to improve your EEAT. Okay, you need to demonstrate your expertise and authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Meredith:

It's a real mouthful, oh yeah.

Meredith's husband:

So yeah, ai is changing things, but it's going to make this even more important, because the big question with AI is can we? We're all content now? Can we trust it?

Meredith:

Right.

Meredith's husband:

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 the other details here, the more detailed aspect of how to get your site into AI, yeah, and that new guidance, the specifics of what you want to do now, like a checkbox. Follow the link below. We'll take you to what I call my insiders list.

Meredith:

Yeah.

Meredith's husband:

The people on that list. When that course is ready, you'll be the first to know, and I will include some sort of discount if you're on that list.

Meredith:

Oh, now you're talking.

Meredith's husband:

Yeah, you know, I've started to develop dad humor. Oh no, it's time, yeah, and you know, I thought that you had to be a dad first. I thought that was a result of being a dad and telling corny jokes to kids and thinking those jokes are funny but yeah, I've had some real dad jokes in the last couple of days.

Meredith:

Do you remember any of them?

Meredith's husband:

The big pile of shit that I brought home.

Meredith:

Oh God, that's right. Do you want to share that I?

Meredith's husband:

think I just did.

Meredith:

It was a stuffed poop emoji.

Meredith's husband:

but he came into my office saying I said there was a big pile of shit on the sidewalk and the dogs couldn't get enough of it, so I brought it home. The jokes that you have to explain are the best ones.

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