There’s no getting around the fact that Google is the biggest player in the search engine arena. So when they make sweeping ‘core updates’ that affect how their algorithm ranks pages, it causes a lot of discussion. Many SEO blogs will be posting explaining what difference people will notice, and what digital marketing teams and SEOs need to do to keep abreast of the changes. We’ve written before about the impact of last year’s ‘Medic’ update and E-A-T (the concept of Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust) on pet websites, but how will the March 23 update affect our vet-authored articles?
E-A-T and E-E-A-T
Google’s trusty ‘E-A-T’ now includes a second E, this time for Experience. While this isn’t a new concept (first being discussed at the end of 2022), Google seems to have leaned heavily on the concept of experience in their update this time around. Rumour has it that adding phrases like ‘in my experience’ to pages is quickly improving their ranking, although this could just be coincidence. ‘Double-E-A-T’ is the new kid on the block. But what does it mean?
The Trinity of Trust
Experience, Expertise and Authoritativeness now form what I like to call the ‘trinity of trust’. These three things impact on how trustworthy a page is. The more trustworthy, the higher it should rank.
Just to recap, because these are all important:
Authoritativeness – is the content creator known as a ‘go to’ for the particular topic? Authoritativeness could be built by increasing a content creator’s online presence, backlink building, guest posting etc, and the authoritativeness of a particular website can be linked to domain authority.
Expertise – does the content creator have the knowledge or skill necessary to be a trustworthy source for this topic? For informative pet websites, expertise can be built by using vet writers or quoting veterinary professionals.
Experience – does the content creator have first-hand life experience of this topic? Vet-authored articles can be really helpful for adding experience to pet websites.
How much expertise, authoritativeness and experience is necessary to produce a trustworthy article and website depends on the topic. For pet articles, which are considered ‘YMYL’ or ‘Your Money or Your Life’ articles, it’s likely a high degree of expertise combined with experience is the best way to win Google’s heart.
What changes are we making to our vet-authored articles?
What does this mean for vet-authored articles then? Well, we already have the expertise part down, so there’s no issue there. And our writers have a lot of authority due to their online presence. But in order to move with the times, and do the absolute best for our clients, we are now adding evidence of experience to all applicable articles.
In practice, this means asking our vet writers to write some paragraphs in the first person, such as saying ‘in my experience’, or ‘I often see’, or even ‘I’ve seen XX of these cases, and YY survived’. We believe this evidence of experience will help your vet-authored articles rank highly on Google.
Another benefit of adding Experience to our articles
Apart from helping Google see what a great article our vets have written for you, adding personal experience to our articles is also doing something else. Since the launch of ChatGPT, critics and thought leaders have been trying to guess how AI is going to impact search engine results and website rankings. We never use ChatGPT for pet writing, and by adding experience to our articles we are giving readers something that robots can’t – real, first-hand, experience, directly from a veterinarian.
Conclusion
Vet-authored articles already rank well on Google, but by the addition of tidbits of experience we can complete the trinity of trust and help your pet articles rank.
We’re automatically doing this for all applicable new articles ordered with us. We’re also offering low-cost article updates for old articles to help them meet these new guidelines from Google. Get in touch with us to learn more!
