Google E-A-T by Kevin Miller (GR0)
Webinar recorded on
Join our weekly live webinars with the marketing industry’s best and brightest. It’s 100% free. Sign up and attend our next webinar.
Join our newsletter
Get access to trusted SEO education from the industry's best and brightest.
Kevin Miller of GR0 joined the Clearscope webinar to share what Google E-A-T is and how to implement it correctly on your website.
Kevin shared how he organizes a post and an author bio page. He recommends including information supporting the author’s expertise such as their credentials.
Occasionally, content becomes out-of-date. Kevin suggests creating a process for how to update the content along with how to inform the reader of the update.
Kevin graciously stuck around to answer many questions ranging from how to cite sources, how to find authoritative and credentialed authors, and how to find excellent writers.
Watch the full webinar
Check out Kevin's slides here.
And check out the resources Kevin shared below:
About Kevin Miller:
Kevin is an SEO and digital marketing guru. Born and raised in Florida, Kevin moved to the west coast to start his dream job of working for Google, but quit after two years to later start his own digital marketing agency called GR0.
Follow Kevin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kmillertime421
About GR0:
Co-founded by Kevin Miller and long-time friend and partner, Jon Zacharias in 2020, GR0 is one of the fastest growing digital marketing agencies based in Los Angeles. They specialize in SEO, but also offer paid ads, email and SMS, influencer marketing, and are currently expanding to offer more.
Follow GR0 on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gr0/
Read the transcript
Kevin:
So the topic for today is on Google E-A-T. We're going to talk about what it is, why it's important, and how it can impact your content. And I want to give a quick shout-out to Camille Freking. She works on my content team. She's our chief editor of Health and Regulatory Affairs for GR0, and she put together this deck in collaboration with myself and just has done a ton of research to make it a really impactful presentation today. So I'm very thankful for her contribution.
So today, we're going to talk about what is E-A-T and what is YMYL, which stands for your money, your life. We'll talk about who falls under these categories, examples of titles that would fall under E-A-T, what E-A-T stands for and what it really means, and how it ties into the Helpful Content updates and the algorithm changes that we've seen. There's two SEO analysts on my team, Wyatt Edgecomb and Seth Trammell. They're sort of like my guys who... They're so deep in the weeds of technical SEO, they can feel the tremors of the algorithm changes before they even happen. So they do write-ups within hours of that.
So if anyone's interested in those insights, I'm happy to connect you and you guys can all chat. And we'll talk about what sites can do to improve their level of E-A-T, what it means to use the proper sourcing. We'll talk about authorship, authorship pages, and how to really demonstrate to Google that you have the expertise to write on the topics that you're writing on. This is a core thing that we've been doing at GR0 since we've started. I think it's the reason why we've grown so fast, is our content is authentic. And at the end of the day, we're a storytelling company.
Everyone in my SEO department is really well-versed in content that's high-quality. So Google E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. I'm going to start by talking about where it really came from. So E-A-T and YMYL came out of the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines that came out in 2015, which is basically just like, what are the requirements to rank well on Google? It talks about the fact that if you want to rank well on Google, you need to have content that has a real purpose. It needs to help users.
If there's content created for any reason other than helping users in answering a question, it's not going to rank on Google. And so, in order to get a high ranking spot on Google, the content has to be beneficial. It has to come from a source that's trustworthy, where you believe that the person who wrote the content knows what they're talking about, and it needs to appropriately navigate the topics that could impact users' quality of life and it needs to have a degree of accuracy that is credible.
So getting a little deeper into this, what type of content falls under E-A-T and YMYL? The most obvious inclusion for YMYL would be healthcare and medicine, supplement and nutrition, given the fact that you're ingesting a supplement, crypto and digital assets, anything financial-related because that directly affects your money. Those things are obvious. Google is most strict on pieces of content where it can affect your health, because if you're searching for, "How do I get rid of my scratchy throat?" and you get a recommendation for a supplement that ends up getting you sick, that's a big problem for Google. They can't have that, and you probably won't want to revisit Google to get advice for your health if it led you to the wrong place.
So if you guys are looking at any piece of content on Google that's going to be most strict and under most scrutiny, it's going to be something like that. Less obvious inclusions would be the connection of a real estate agent who's providing information on what neighborhood to live in and why, school quality, things like that, or an oral care company providing information on how to whiten your teeth. Those things will probably be under less scrutiny, but they're still very important.
In fact, my opinion today is that every single piece of content on the internet, on Google, should have perfect E-A-T and YMYL qualifications. To me, it doesn't make any sense to write a piece of content or have it ranked on Google no matter what the niche is. And so, I think that I'm pretty serious about that and I just don't think anything deserves to rank unless it's written by someone who knows what they're talking about and can demonstrate that.
We'll talk about a little bit of some more special E-A-T considerations and the guidelines that come about that, but this is just more examples of what content categories come out of YMYL. So news and current events, government and law, health and safety, different things of that nature. They all fall into that bucket of YMYL and E-A-T is closely connected to it.
What constitutes YMYL topics where E-A-T is most important? I think this is going to be something that is very easy for everyone to understand, but there's different degrees of seriousness when it comes to this. So if someone is googling an evacuation route for a tsunami or a hurricane for people who are like me and are from Florida and grew up with that, inaccurate information on something like that could cause significant harm to people who are trying to get that information. So that has to be correct.
The most recent example of this would be anything related to COVID and COVID vaccine information, information about how to avoid it, how to social distance. These things you'll notice, nothing ranked on Google other than content that was from the CDC itself or any other .gov-associated source. And I think that was the right thing to do by Google, but it was also very interesting. And if you're a real SEO, you're looking at and analyzing those SERPs and you're finding that Google was really, really particular and strict about what shows up under that type of a topic. Things like how to frequently wash your jeans, that topic's unlikely to cause harm. So it's not nearly as scrutinized as something like coronavirus.
And so, this is just a very clear-cut grid that will explain how Google thinks about that and how it ties into E-A-T and the helpfulness content update. So let's dive into the first core pillar of this, which is expertise, and I want to clearly demonstrate what gives content expertise. And so, when Google talks about expertise in terms of E-A-T, they're looking at the person who wrote the content. Do they have a background that makes them credible to write on that piece of content?
So if I am writing about a specific type of surgery or something like that, I need to be the doctor who has an MD and a specialization in that specific subject matter, or I really can't write the content. It's incredibly important. We're going to show some visual examples of what this looks like in a few minutes. But the content cannot rank well unless it's written by someone who has performed that surgery or has studied it extensively and has years of expertise being in those operating rooms, for example, and can talk about, how long does the surgery take to do? Who's eligible for it? Why? What are the pros? What are the cons? What are the risk factors?
These things, there needs to be a demonstrated, tangible expertise in that field, or you shouldn't even write on that piece of content, mainly because it's so competitive to rank on Google these days that if you're not following all these guidelines, it's just a waste of time. So that's what I try to talk to and impress upon my clients when I'm working with them, and all of my SEO campaign managers do as well. It's just not worth the effort, unless you can truthfully demonstrate that level of expertise.
And in addition to this, we'll get to this in a few minutes, every piece of content needs to have an author box that explains in a paragraph who that person is, needs to have a headshot, needs to have a clear bio. It needs to link out to an internal page that tells you more about that offer. And in best-case scenario, they have another link that goes out to LinkedIn or a medical page where their bio is listed as well. It's just another third-party authenticator to show that this person is who they really are. And if I'm the reader, it gives me a lot more trust that I really know that this person knows what they're talking about.
Number two is authoritativeness. So this has to do with the position of the author, and are they qualified to talk on a specific subject matter? So, for example, with myself, I'm the co-founder and CEO of an SEO and digital marketing agency. If I wrote a blog post on how to start an SEO agency and scale it to 100 employees or a few hundred clients, I'm uniquely positioned to do that. If I was to write on pretty much any other topic, here we use the example of the best gym to go to in L.A., that content's not going to be so authoritative.
I have a real-life example of why this is so important and how it manifests itself on Google, which is, when I started GR0, I launched a website called thewordcounter.com, and it came out of just doing extensive keyword research at midnight on a weekend. I found that the term "word counter" gets 1.5 million unique searches a month, and that was interesting to me. And I thought, if I was going to start an SEO agency, who would want to hire someone who doesn't have their own website? It's like hiring a mechanic who's never fixed, who has never changed their own oil.
And so, I built this website, and it answers every question that you could have about the English language. What's the definition of this? What's the difference between this and that? But I did something very interesting. 50% of the articles were authored by me, and I wrote them, and then I had other writers on our team write them. The other 50% were written by English teachers and people who had English degrees from different schools. About six months ago, maybe nine months ago, the traffic for this website was still up and to the right, did about a million unique visitors a month.
An algorithm update came out that I think was a precursor to the helpful content update, and the traffic for the website got cut in half. Now, why was that? The thing that I think that's obvious to me now and I didn't know at the time was that I did not meet the authoritativeness benchmark that Google was looking for. I tried to. In my author bio, you guys can see it on the website, it talks about how I'm an enthusiast, of all things, related to the English language, but I do not have an English degree. I haven't been a teacher. I don't have a demonstrated expertise in that field. And so, I think that's the most practical example of how this works and how it manifests itself on Google, and I think that's why I believe in it so much.
And at GR0, my SEO agency, we really won't let anyone publish an article and have it go live unless they have met these guidelines for that reason, because it's just doing them a disservice. And that's the biggest thing that I see companies fall into that's a shortcoming, is they pretty much do everything but this. Their article might be 1,500 to 2,000 words, it's well-researched, they cite their sources, but they just fall short on the authoritativeness factor, and there's just no margin for error, given how competitive Google is.
So authority is built over time. If you're trying to build a really big website, you need to publish regularly and demonstrate that you're a reliable source on a particular subject matter and that's how you carve out your niche, and Google begins to know that they can rely on you for this type of content. So authority and expertise are going to work in tandem to support each other. And then lastly, what makes content trustworthy? There's two factors to that that Camille and I came up with, which is a site's reputation and their intention.
So reputation has to do with, what does Wikipedia say about you? If you don't have a Wikipedia page, what do other sites say about you? How well are you rated on the internet? What are your Google rankings? What are your Clutch rankings? What are your reviews on other third-party websites that talk about you? Do they speak positively about you or do they not? I believe that Google knows the difference and they take that into account. And secondly, what is the intention of your website? Is it honest? Is it communicating content that's promotional, or is it informational just to help Google and support that ecosystem? Does your title mislead users, or is your title specifically answered in the long-form body of your content?
These things are really important. And the biggest point that I'll make about all of this is just that if you cut corners with Google E-A-T, Google will find out and you will not win. Anyone who believes that they're too smart or they're smarter than the Google algorithm, myself included, I have fallen into that category so I can speak pretty fluently on it, it does not work. Google knows better, and it's proven that time and time again.
I want to tie this into the helpful content update as a predictor for future algorithm changes. We have 65 people on this call. If you're on this call, that means you're an SEO nerd, and I use that as a term of endearment. I call everyone in my company an SEO nerd. You can't work with us if you're not. Every one of you has probably explored with Jarvis or one of these other GPT-3 content generators. My belief is that original, helpful content written by people for people is going to continue to win. This exact verbiage is written in the helpful content update that Google sent out.
And I think, last month, we wrote two million words across 300 clients at GR0. Not one word was used with one of these GPT-3 tools. And that's a very intentional move by us because we have faith in the integrity of Google's algorithm, and we believe that people might be able to use this. But again, to my previous point, it's only going to be a tool to help people cut corners. And so, this is not going to be the first up... This is not the first update related to this. We don't believe it's going to be the last, and we think that Google is going to get harsher and harsher and harsher on, do you have a high level of E-A-T in your content? And I think that's just going to be incredibly important over time. I really just can't stress that enough.
So let's get into the practical part of this. How do sites improve their level of E-A-T? So there's five key ways. Number one, including proper sourcing and citations. So when you're doing your sourcing and your citation... Again, I talked with Camille about this ad nauseam. Your sources need to come from a .gov, a .org, or some other reputable site where they have extreme authoritativeness and they've had a long 10-, 15-, 20-year history of being trustworthy on Google. By transitive property, that's going to lend trust to your content that you just wrote.
Secondly, you need to regularly update your content, but only as appropriate, and I think that's a really important piece of this. A lot of times, people update content where there is nothing new that was added to that content. You definitely do not want to fall into that group of people. Only update your content if the nature of the content lends itself to that. It has to be something where maybe you're writing an article about COVID or about... Bernard was talking about the Ethereum Merge. If you've got an article about Ethereum, this would be a very timely time to talk about the Merge and its implications.
But if you have a website like mine where you're explaining the definition of a term, that's not subject to change every six months. So you definitely don't want to go and update that for no reason. Secondly, I see people go and make updates to their content where they just go and update the date of publish and they change maybe a word or two. Some people have the theory that that will ping Google to crawl your content again and trick it into thinking that it's new. No. Again, that falls into the bucket of, "I'm smarter than Google." Again, there are 65 people on this call. None of us are, or else we would've invented Google. So don't fall into that pitfall. Only update your content if there's a real reason to do so.
Number three, have trusted authors and trusted reviewers of that content. This mostly applies for medical content. Again, we're going to get into examples of USA Rx and Genexa, which are two of our clients that both write on medical topics. You want to have an author who has a degree in that subject matter, but then you want to have another person who acts as a second authenticator who's reviewing that content and agreeing that it's real. You want to have a separate individual author page that gives the reader more in-depth look as to why that person is qualified. And then lastly, you want to have an advisory board that also lends credibility to that.
We have a client called Ritual. I'm going to give an example of what their page looks like. This is their medical advisory board. They've got experts here. They have a science team. This guy is the chief scientific officer. You can see his full bio here. It links out to his LinkedIn. These are all the credentials of Dr. Bucci. And then you've got the author and why she is qualified. So this is really important. This exists on every single article that Ritual has. You can then link into their standards. They talk about their clinical trial, their clinical study. These things are all supporting factors into why you should trust their organization.
If we scroll into the footer, you can read about the clinical study. If we come here, you can read into who they are and why. You see a bio on their CEO, their founder. Again, here's the Scientific Leadership Team. Most of our clients are direct-to-consumer e-commerce. No one really goes to this level of depth. Not only does this help me rank on Google, but if I'm a customer, I'm more inclined to buy from this D2C company because I believe that they've done their homework. Okay? So I think that's very important for us to think about.
Okay. Let's move on, I'm going to share back here, into proper sourcing and citations. We talked a little bit about this. Include your sources, include your references on each piece of content. Don't skip over that. Make sure that the data comes from reliable sources. And like we mentioned, use a .gov, use a .org, use a .edu. We talked about regularly updating your content, when to do it, when not to do it. We talked about the authors and reviewers and making sure that they're trustworthy, denoting that they're an MD, a DO, a PhD, a CPA, et cetera. If you have that, you want to make sure that you can do it. We talk about the authorship and contributor pages.
I want to go back here and show what this looks like for one of our clients, USA Rx. So this is exactly how it manifests itself and this is really, I think, the best that you can do, is, you're writing an article about the causes of insomnia. You can see the publish date. You can see who is it written by. If we link out into this, this is a direct application of what I would suggest. You can see why the CEO and the founder is qualified to write on this. If we go back here, it's fact-checked by a second party, Jacqueline Hensler. This takes us to the Medical Writing Team page. You can see the URL matches that specifically. And then we go into not just the CEO, but we have a medical writer. We have another medical writer. We can see what their credentials are.
We go back to the main content page and we can see it's medically reviewed by Erik Rivera, takes us back to the same page, and it has a bio on Erik Rivera and who he is and why you should trust the content. So this is potentially overkill, but if I'm looking at this and I'm a consumer and I'm a reader, or if I'm Google, I'm really going to believe this. And then every article that we write that talks about something as important and controversial as insomnia, you're going to notice that it's 2,000, 2,500 words in content. Our references are from the Mayo Clinic, which is a world-renowned organization that everyone can trust, same as the case with the Cleveland Clinic, the Sleep Foundation, and then WebMD. And that is a direct application of how I would suggest everyone on this call who's writing content should demonstrate their E-A-T qualifications to Google.
Next is an example of our client Genexa. You can see this content was written by Camille. She's got an MS Pharmacology from Ohio State University, and this is a direct call-out of where you would place this in the byline for an article. You can then see that we have an author page for her here. She's got a demonstration of her Master's of Science in Pharmacology at the top of the article, and then here's her bio. So I know I'm going through this kind of ad nauseam, but I just want to make it very clear of the direct application.
There's many ways to do it. There's not just one way to demonstrate E-A-T qualification to Google, but I think it's important that you don't skimp on it, and there's many different ways by which to do this. But if it looks anything like what Genexa has done, you're going to meet that guideline that Google has. And as long as your content is in-depth and long-form and well-researched, you will have achieved what Google is looking for in their guidelines.
The extra credit would be to have an advisory board. We have 300 clients. I would say maybe 15 to 20% of them have an advisory board. If you have the opportunity to do that, you absolutely should. We have a new company that we're working with called MOSH. It's founded by Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger. They have a protein bar that is focused on... It's essentially called a brain food. They've got a charity that they're giving money to. 1% of all their profits goes to an Alzheimer's foundation. And they've organized an advisory board that's with probably the top five to 10 Alzheimer's doctors in the world.
And so, we use that to show off that they have the expertise in that particular space, and then their customers can actually interface with that advisory board, and they do Q&As to give their regular consumer access to people of that caliber who otherwise would never be available. And then this, again, is just an example of what an elite group of advisors looks like and how they get demonstrated on the Genexa website.
And so, the bottom line is that E-A-T has the potential to positively impact content and exponentially build scale for your content, and each step towards E-A-T helps you put more into improving E-A-T. The more that you put into it, the more you're going to get out of it, the better reputation you will earn with Google, and you're going to have longevity with publishing on Google. The more trustworthy you can be, the less risk you'll have of waking up one day and having your content be downranked because you didn't meet these guidelines.
So while E-A-T is directly related to YMYL topics, the thing is, more and more topics are becoming considered YMYL, and that's why I'll end this conversation the way I started it. I believe that every single piece of content on Google, agnostic of subject matter, needs to meet these guidelines. I think that you should really scrutinize why you're writing the content if you're not going to go to these lengths. I believe that people worry about algorithm updates all the time. But if you just go to this length, you'll never have to worry about being negatively impacted by an algorithm update because you will inherently be doing what Google wants you to do since the day they were founded, which is, produce information that answers a question for the consumer that is trustworthy and real.
So with that, I would love to open it up to any questions. I'm obviously very passionate about YMYL and Google E-A-T, and it's something that I believe is the whole reason for the success that we've had as an agency and why we are delivering improved rankings for our clients. So I'd love to get into it and answer any questions that I can.
Travis:
Awesome. Yeah. Great job. We do have a couple questions and Camille is knocking them out as we go. I think one of the ones we want to touch on first is, "Can you overdo E-A-T to the point where Google views your site negatively?" And Camille kind of answered it, but I think it might be a good point to drive home too.
Kevin:
Well, I think it's possible to overdo E-A-T, but I think it's kind of... If you're writing from a place where you have an advisory board and you've checked all those boxes, there's no reason to overdo E-A-T. The only reason would be if you're not actually legitimate and you want to try to trick Google into thinking that you are when you're not. I think you just need to have the author, the author page, you need to have credential in that space, you need to demonstrate that you have an advisory board, and that's really it. You don't need to go and try to tackle it ad nauseam. You need to cite your sources, like we mentioned. As long as you do that, I think you're totally fine.
Travis:
Awesome. And another question from Jeanette. "How would you recommend a client deal with needing writers to use pen names or aliases due to safety concerns or harassment?"
Kevin:
What would the nature of the safety concerns be like? People reaching out to them and...
Travis:
Possibly. I think you see it sometimes in the affiliate space. She says, correct, harassing them. I guess the topics could kind of range, but you have some people that do the personas. Will they want to hide their identity for maybe not honest reasons? But what are your thoughts on that, of that having a pen name?
Kevin:
I think it's tough. It's a difficult thing to navigate. Google doesn't want you to have a pen name. It's just as simple as that. They want it to be authentic where the person who wrote the content, they're demonstrated on the page. I think that if you do have a pen name, then having a second reviewer and having that reviewer's bio be authentic would help with that, and that could be a case where that second-factor authentication could help get you over the edge. But nothing's more important than preserving your safety and not being harassed, so it's weighing the pros and cons.
Travis:
Yeah. She kind of elaborated a little bit. They are a religious site, which kind of falls under YMYL, but writers often get harassed or...
Kevin:
Got it. Yeah. I mean, there's always going to be edge cases to that. I think that's tough. I think, in that event, there's no... Ranking high on Google is not more important than someone's safety, so I would just make sure that the content is accurate. And if you do that, you're still providing value to the person who's reading it, and that's the most important.
Travis:
Agreed. And we got another question from Phil. "Do you think sites that use an authoritative author but use ghostwriters behind the scenes will fare okay?"
Kevin:
Yeah. I do think they can fare okay. I think the ones that won't fare okay and should not fare okay are the ones that are using these content tools, that use GPT-3, because I think no matter... My opinion isn't always what has been that Google knows if a computer wrote the content versus a real human being. The algorithm can sense emotion and can sense intonation, the way that someone's talking about a topic. They can sense passion. So I think a ghostwriter is okay, as long as it's a real human being, and you can be truthful about that. I think you're totally fine. It just can't be computer-generated. That's the most important.
Travis:
Sounds good. And then we have a couple questions around the advisory board. I guess the first one would be, "Where should a site that wants to establish an advisory board start, especially if they lack resources?"
Kevin:
Great question. So, first of all, I think that when you're creating your advisory board, when you reach out to individuals who want to be a part of it, it's a very flattering thing. Camille and I have gotten really deep into the medical community now because one of our biggest value-adds to our clients is that we can help them manufacture that advisory board. A lot of people don't have the connections, but basically what we do is we reach out to them. We let them know why they are desirable to us. We can negotiate equity deals between them and the client, or some sort of small financial compensation.
And a lot of them are so passionate. That's why they spent eight years becoming a doctor or 10 years becoming a doctor and going through the hell that is residency to go and have a direct application and get paid to do it for a consumer brand. It's really met with great reception by a lot of these people. So we try to go and create some sort of financial relationship with them, and their arrangement is that they will review five articles a week or five articles a month, whatever the cadence is for their publishing, and that's typically how it's done.
But Camille has a very specific process for how to find those people and convince them to join your advisory board. So I'd encourage anyone to reach out to her after the call and she can help explain how we do it.
Travis:
Yeah. Quick shout-out to Camille. She's been in the chat answering a lot of questions as well.
Kevin:
Good.
Travis:
Sierra has another question about the advisory board page, and Camille kind of already answered it as well, but their question was, "Does it matter what you call it?" For example, the company Sierra works for has an advisory board. When they lean on it, they kind of refer to it as gurus, and Camille said, "You could use gurus, but you may need to explain what that is." If you want to elaborate on that.
Kevin:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think it just needs to be clear that it is the advisory board. Using a brandable name like that is totally fine. There's usually friction between is something perfectly SEO-optimized and how does that relate to a brand and their brand considerations, and I think there always should be some level of compromise. So you can use gurus. Just explain what that is.
Everything that we've talked about today just comes down to being truthful. It's really just, can you back up what you're talking about or not? And if you can, Google will recognize it. If you can't, Google will also recognize it. So that's the biggest point I think I'd like to make to everyone today, is that if you're truthful and you really do have grounds to stand on to write on a specific subject matter, you will win.
Travis:
Awesome. Yeah. Now we have several questions around citations, kind of started off with Christopher. "How do you properly cite sources of reference used in an article?"
Kevin:
The way we do it is we use sources that link at the bottom of the article, and we cite it in typical MLA format, just like you would do on any scholastic essay, and we try to link out to where we got that information. We try not to just have it be written in plain text. You can also do it in the actual publication, in the right inline source, right in the middle of the article. It depends on your preference and what you think your reader will prefer. One of the two works.
Travis:
Okay. That makes sense. And then Thad has a question. "If internal bio pages aren't an option, is it sufficient to link to an author's LinkedIn page in the bio box?"
Kevin:
It's a great question. I think that it's a bit controversial to do that, but yes, it is. I think LinkedIn's been around long enough to have a pretty good process for fake pages. Certainly, you can create them, but it's pretty obvious whether a LinkedIn page has a history or not. I would hope that it is an option though to do internal author pages because, usually, if someone has control of their own domain, they're able to do that. But I actually think that it's easier to fake an author page on your own website since you're the owner. LinkedIn has a different degree of authoritativeness because it is a third party. Best-case scenario is that you have both.
Travis:
Gotcha. And then Bernard actually sent over a question. "Have you experimented with other ideas to boost E-A-T? For example, update timelines, when this article was last touched and by who." How do you approach that?
Kevin:
We have. We've spent a lot of time analyzing the effectiveness of updates. But like I mentioned, our findings are, an article should only be updated if there truthfully is new information that wasn't previously made available on a specific topic. If it's an evergreen piece of topic that doesn't need to be updated, but once a year, and it's updated every three months, it's completely useless in my opinion.
Travis:
Oh, interesting. And kind of still related to that, how do you maintain... You mentioned having an update section. How do you maintain that section and what depth do you include in it?
Kevin:
Yeah. It totally depends on how much of an update is warranted for that subject. I think a few paragraphs is typically customary for the updates that we do on some of the medical pieces we write on. Yeah. I mean, Seth put in something in the chat about product review websites. If there's a new model that comes out on a vacuum or a hair dryer, you need to update that so that everyone is apprised of what those changes are and the new features, the new price point, things like that. It just comes down to what does the reader need to know, and you need to express what they need to know and leave out everything they don't need to know.
Travis:
Awesome. And then Christopher asked, "When citing sources, do you think it matters of how the links get placed? Inline sources or links in a tooltip that pop up when you hover on it or do you add it at the bottom?" Kind of an experience on the question we had previously.
Kevin:
I don't think that it matters. I think, as long as you have them, Google recognizes that and the reader recognizes that. It's really just a binary thing between, do you have them or do you not? How you choose to display that is totally up to you as the designer of the page and your preference of how you want it to look for your own brand.
Travis:
Gotcha. Have you noticed any kind of preferences from readers?
Kevin:
I think the tooltip is fantastic. I think that's pretty universally understood by readers on the internet, and I like it and it's not invasive for me as a reader. And so, I'm actually a fan of that mechanism.
Travis:
Excellent. And then we have a question from Natalie. "If writers are testing products and the article is medically reviewed, fact-checked, is it going to harm a site if the writer is not an expert in the product or topic?"
Kevin:
Can you say that question just one more time?
Travis:
Yes. "If your writers are testing products and the article is medically reviewed or fact-checked, is it going to harm a site if the writer is not an expert in that product or topic?"
Kevin:
I don't believe so, but here's the thing about that. If you are reviewing a product, I've chatted with Seth and other members of my team about this ad nauseam, you need to be able to prove that you ordered the product, that you used it, that you are taking photos of yourself holding it. A lot of product review sites that really got destroyed in the most recent update were ones that were taking, regurgitating product reviews from other product review websites and couldn't demonstrate that they actually purchased the product and owned it.
So you have to have firsthand experience using it, and it needs to be over an extensive timeline that's long enough to actually figure out if the product is good or not. And so, that's the most important thing, is that you're actually using it. And if you are, you're great. If you're not, you're not great.
Travis:
Yeah, I agree with that. And then Cindy asked, "How much does volume of content published matter? In other words, is it more important to publish 20 articles in one day or is a regular publishing schedule of, say, one to three articles per day sufficient to build authority?"
Kevin:
It's a fantastic question. I would love to debate this with other SEOs. I'm sure they have differing opinions. The way that we handle it is, I like to demonstrate to Google that we are going to write on a specific subject for a long period of time. So if I am trying to build authority, I want to publish one time a day every day for multiple years. So, for example, the way that I built up my grammar website, thewordcounter.com, is we published three times per day every single day.
If you don't have the money or the time to be able to publish that much, that's totally fine. You can publish every other day. But I don't think there's a benefit to publishing 20 articles on a day and then taking a big break. I think you need to regularly show Google that you're going to be contributing to their ecosystem. And if you do that over an extended period of time, you will start to build that authority and that trustworthiness with Google and you're going to see it in your rankings.
And then I think it's also important to note, every article that we published on this grammar website was an A+ in Clearscope and there was a direct correlation between high rankings, and we actually tested it with things that weren't graded in Clearscope. So that's the final check that I put on all of our content in addition to all the content that we do for all of our GR0 clients.
Travis:
Fantastic. And Craig has an interesting question. It's like, "How can you spot that a writer, as in like a team member or a freelancer, is using GPT-3?" It's more of like a protection of your brand.
Kevin:
It's an interesting question. I have done so much intense experimentation with it that I can tell just by reading it. I think it is hard for the layman to figure out if it's been written by using GPT-3 or not. But my opinion is what it's always been, is that Google knows. Doesn't matter if I know. The reader may not know. I think Google knows, and I think that's all that matters when you're trying to have sustained rankings, because the whole game in SEO is, anybody can get number one for a specific term for a short period of time. I think everybody on the call has probably done that, has achieved that.
But do you have staying power? And that's most important, because if you don't have staying power, then all of your efforts become worthless, and I think we are all trying to avoid that. And so, I'm just not... I think there are use cases for GPT-3, for example, if you're writing headlines for Facebook ads, Google Ads, Instagram, any type of product page copy. You want to speed up that process, meta descriptions. There's a lot of direct applications, but not long-form content that you want to have staying power.
Travis:
Perfect. And we have three more questions. If I forgot any or missed any, feel free to keep dropping them in the Q&A box actually because we have a couple more now.
Kevin:
Yup.
Travis:
One more that Bernard asked, "How do you navigate a situation where you might want to link out to an authoritative source but your client disapproves?"
Kevin:
Ooh, man. We do run into this, Bernard, so I like it. I like it. We try to have an open conversation as to why that client wouldn't want to link out to that source. If it's a valid reason, for a brand reason or for any other reason, ultimately it's their brand. We're not going to force them to do anything. What we try to do is find another source that they can agree on that has similar authoritativeness, and we try to come to a compromise and then we publish that source.
So sometimes, we do run into that. There's a valid reason that they have, but that's where you have to just be talking human to human and that you need to find a compromise. Typically, we always land on something that it has a similar effect.
Travis:
Gotcha. That helps. And then Phil asked, "Any advice on recruiting experts to write for your site?"
Kevin:
Yeah. I mean, the best people to talk to on my team, we have a girl named Emy. She manages all of our writers. Emy LaCroix is her name, if you guys are looking her up on LinkedIn. Bridget Reed is our head of content. They work together to manage all of our writers. We have a website called copybuddy.com where we have a Rolodex of 1,000 writers at all different price ranges, and they're verticalized based on their area of expertise.
It's hard to find these writers, but what we do is we've been working in this game for so long. We have writing samples on file for every single person. And so, you can use that website to be connected with an expert. But the place that we started was Upwork. We started the company by recruiting writers on Upwork and I would meet with them in person and I would figure out what other pieces of content have they written, do I believe that they can do a really good job, are they trustworthy, can they deliver on the right timeline, are they the right price?
So we kind of productize that process into this website, copybuddy.com. So any of you can feel free to use that and it can save you all the time and effort of doing so. But if you're starting from scratch, I would start with Upwork or I would start with Scripted. That's a good third party that is heavily venture-backed that has gone through this process as well. But I went through Upwork to find three writers that had English degrees for my grammar website before we even started GR0, and it worked out really well for me. I got a really strong relationship with them, they wrote for me for three years, and they were always reliable. All you really need is two or three writers to be able to produce one piece of content a day.
Travis:
Awesome. And then Phil also asked, "Is this the end of the 10-cents-per-word freelancer?" which then can be more expanded to, how do you compensate writers and what's the best strategy for working with freelancers?
Kevin:
The way I try to do it is to come at a rate per article. I don't love the cent per word, even though we definitely do compensate writers in that way. Sometimes, it's unavoidable. But pricing that way sometimes can incentivize people to write more words. Google doesn't like that. There's no sense in using more fluff to get to a certain end conclusion. It's almost similar to the way that paid ad teams charge a percent of ad spend, kind of incentivizes them to spend more money. They should actually be charging on a CPA model so their incentives are aligned with the customer.
But no, I don't think it is. I think it's all on a case-by-case basis. You just have to build a strong relationship with the writer and understand what's going to work for them financially. If you can guarantee them a certain level of volume, you're going to have a better chance of negotiating with them in a way that works for you.
Travis:
Gotcha. And then Pat has a question. "How important is consistent style and tone coming out of the company?"
Kevin:
Incredibly important. Incredibly important, I think both for the reputation of Google, but also for your reader. The reader doesn't want to go back and forth. They want to know that they can expect a certain type of language from you and have it be consistent. Any brand or creative director would agree with that. Consistency is paramount.
Travis:
Perfect. And then Bernard's got another question. "How does someone work with GR0?" So what's a typical engagement look like start to finish? And then just walk us through that process.
Kevin:
Yeah. So people come to GR0 for many reasons. The core reason is that they want a full, in-depth SEO strategy. So we do content writing, we do backlink building, and we do on-page optimization. The reason I think we've been successful in delivering for clients is our content packages are huge and they're relatively cheap for what we do. So the baseline content package is 20,000 words per month. We don't believe in someone publishing two or three blog posts per month. We think it needs to be eight to 10 per month, and have that go in perpetuity. Gives you more shots on goal to rank well. So people come to us for that.
Our backlink building is really highly differentiated. For those of you who know Help a Reporter Out, we're one of the first people to productize that. We produce eight to 10 HARO links for all of our clients per month. Those links go to the homepage, and that link authority is really strong and that trickles down to all the child pages. And so, that's the second pillar of our work. And then our on-page optimization is what our analysts do. They make sure that Core Web Vitals are strong. They're fixing site hierarchy. They're writing title tags, Heading 1s, meta descriptions.
And so, all of that is typically around $10,000 per month. It can go up or down based on how much content you're writing. But I think we're one of the cheaper-priced SEO agencies which is, again, probably why we have gotten off to a hot start, but we are really, really communicative. We try to tell our SEO campaign managers, "You're not communicating with your client enough until they tell you they want a restraining order." And that's when you know that you have communicated with them enough. They should never wonder where they're at with your strategy. And half of what we do, half the value we provide is education. We want people to walk away with a PhD in SEO. So that's a typical engagement and that's why someone would work with us.
Travis:
Perfect. And then Sierra has got another question. "On the topic of product reviews, what if you are an online consignment store that does product reviews of the products you sell? Is this okay since we don't sell one brand but thousands?"
Kevin:
Yeah. I think that's totally fine as long as you explain the viewpoint, the vantage point of who you are as a writer and how it relates to the fact that you are doing consignment. That would explain why it's the same person and why you're reviewing so many different products. But most important thing there is showing real-life pictures of the fact that you have the product in hand and you've used it and here's where it came from and here's how much it costs. If you're able to demonstrate that, you'll have no problem.
Travis:
Awesome. And there's an interesting conversation going in the chat right now. One of the questions was, "What is the best way to find industry experts to help review, write content, for example, for a fintech content?" And she kind of elaborates, "How about if we need actual experts already working or retired in fintech?" And Camille is kind of going back and forth helping.
Kevin:
Yeah. I'm sure Camille has a lot of good answers to that. The way I would do it, just off the top of my head, is by cold outreach on LinkedIn. I would try to find someone who's got the right background and demonstrated credentials, and I'd reach out to them and try to recruit them through cold messages and see where that gets me. The other way would just be networking through friends. That always seems to work. If you're one degree away from someone or you can get a warm intro, that works very well.
But it's a flattering thing to be approached with something like that and then, of course, have some sort of compensation tied to it. There's also platforms like intro.co or mentorpass.com where you're able to pay 50 bucks or 100 bucks to talk to an expert and, on that call, you can ask that person. If they say no, they can connect you to friends who have the same thing. So I've made great use of those two platforms to help shortcut my learning process on a number of topics. I would suggest everybody give that a shot as well.
Travis:
Oh, fantastic. Those are good resources. And it looks like we have one last question from Christopher. "Is the honcode.net something you consider reputable enough to try and get accredited by?"
Kevin:
Where is that in the chat? I'm not seeing that.
Travis:
It's in the Q&A, but I'm not... Christopher, that link's not working. I'm not sure if there... You can try it again.
Kevin:
Yeah. I'm trying to go to that website. I actually don't know what that is, so I can't confidently speak on that. I just don't have any experience with it.
Travis:
Awesome. Well, thanks again, Kevin. This has been fantastic, and we've got a lot of questions answered and we're kind of wrapping up on time. But everyone, if you got it, can you drop a note on Twitter for Kevin? We'll drop his Twitter handle in chat. Let him know how much you appreciate his time today and if you have any more questions. And of course, we dropped in GR0's website as well if you want to hire them for more work. But Kevin, do you have anything you wanted to add before we give everybody their day back?
Kevin:
I just wanted to give my email, which is kevin@gr0. Anyone who has any questions, feel free to email me. I have no expectation of anyone becoming a client. I love this stuff. I live and breathe it. I'm happy to talk for free. So just please reach out and we would love to nerd out on anything SEO-related. Thank you guys for coming. And again, I really appreciate being asked to do this.
Travis:
Awesome. Well, everybody, have a great rest of your day and take care. Bye.
Kevin:
Thank you.
