#304 – Kyle Roof Reveals 2023 E-E-A-T Secrets

This week, Gael was joined by Kyle Roof.

We kicked off this interview with Kyle by asking him to go through each of the E-E-A-T guidelines and walk us through what he thinks of each of them and how they can be achieved.

So let’s dive in!

Experience

First of all, let’s sum up the difference between Experience and Expertise. Experience is something you gain over time but don’t necessarily study. Expertise is something that can be studied and learned.

So how, in particular, do we convey Experience to a bot or algorithm?

Well, it’s Kyles’s belief that it all comes down to the wording and language used throughout the site. While many factors go into his, these are undoubtedly the easiest for a bot to get right.

First up, Kyle thinks context plays a big part in this. While the topic of LSI keywords has always been a patchy one, it’s hard to deny that Google works by building up a “picture” of what your article and site are about. If you’re missing the types of keywords that other sources are using, can you really be trusted as an “expert” to a bot?

What’s more, subtle differences can also stack up.

Your content should be humanized. You should use language which indicates that you, a human, have experience with the product being reviewed.

Let’s look at a few examples:

He also went on to iterate that you can still provide this personalized human advice without owning every single product in your niche. A great example Gael pointed out was The Hoops Geek, who provides reviews based on observing other peoples’ YouTube videos.

Expertise

It’s Kyle’s belief that Google doesn’t make value judgments. A Degree is a Degree, regardless of where you go it from, so there’s no need to worry about where such qualifications come from as long as it’s relevant. He also believes that you can certainly go ahead and hire people from cheaper locations to fact-check and qualify content.

What’s interesting here is that there’s no hard or fast rule to what’s more important: Experience or Expertise, in Kyle’s view.

And that makes sense, right?

Who are you more likely to trust, a self-trained mechanic with 40 years of experience or a fresh graduate?

When degrees and education are required, let’s say for a YMYL niche, he also emphasized the importance of using the Person Schema. This is because it’s much easier for a bot to crawl.

What’s more, you can use the Same As property to tell Google what your degree or education is equivalent to.

Authority

His main takeaway from this is that Authority isn’t about one person or author on the site. It’s about the entire site being an authoritive source.

While you may have a handful of really great articles on your site, that doesn’t necessarily make you an authority on the topic if you’re still missing other important topics.

Pay close attention to the topics your competitors are writing about and ask “is my site is truly an authority?” or is it missing topics?

Enabling comments is a great way to prove to Google that people are going to your site as a source of truth and that you’re actively answering their questions.

Trust

Well, Google said it themselves. Nothing else really matters if you screw up the trust aspect of your site.

But again, how do we do that? And how do we do it in a way that Google can easily crawl and see.

First, Kyle believes trustworthy sites MUST have a visible, real face who is responsible for everything on the site.

He pointed out that the infamous Dr Axe is a great example of how not to approach being the face of a site. It takes a long time to really get to the bottom of who Dr Axe is if you’re just visiting the home page of the site. You really have to dig, and even then, do we really believe this guy is actually in charge of the site?

It should clearly define who is responsible for the content on the site.

Kyle also believes that adding an Address, Phone Number, and multiple email addresses can really help move things along. Again, he believes Google is looking for the easiest signals it can find, and this is a perfect example of something only a real human could provide in its eyes.

He also argues that while some people may be shy about putting such information live on the web, he emphasizes the fact that your website is a business. Would it be acceptable for a business owner in any other industry not to share legitimate contact information? No, it wouldn’t! So start taking your website and business seriously!

At the very least, he believes every page should have a proper about page that explains your business and who you and your team are. Not one full of fake information, but the REAL story behind your business!

Finally, he believes that Sitemaps are also incredibly important because, at the end of the day, Google is looking for the easiest way it can to find this information. Making it easy for Google to crawl your About Pages etc., is critical in ensuring this.

ChatGPT

And, of course, we couldn’t have a guest interview without talking about everyone’s favorite hot topic!

First, he reiterated that Google doesn’t care about AI content – they only care about shit content.

He thinks that Google will approach AI content similarly to duplicate content. Eventually, if people start running their sites on autopilot with AI, trends will become clear that Google can pick up on.

Not because of the content itself but because the structure, words, and general outlines are likely to be the same due to AI’s limited nature.

Overall, his advice would be to stick with the E-E-A-T guidelines to avoid getting lost in the AI takeover. There’s no harm in utilizing it in your business for things like outlines etc., but he doesn’t believe truly great content can exist with AI alone.

About Kyle Roof

Well, in his own words:

And, if you liked this advice, we’ve got good news for you!

Kyle’s tool, Page Optimizer Pro, now runs through many E-E-A-T metrics and will analyze your articles to see what it thinks you’re missing.

It’ll do it at scale without needing to manually scour through every article on your site.

And what’s more? He’s offering a whopping 15% discount to our listeners!

Just head to Page Optimizer Pro and enter the code authorityhacker15

Seriously. If you liked his advice, this tool only builds on it, and will set you on the right track to fixing your E-E-A-T.