Faking E.A.T

[harrytwatter]

I work with a moderate pool of lower authority affiliate sites, pretty cookie cutter affairs. Focused on scaling content and linkbuilding, bread and butter shit.

That said, being "small" doesn't bode well for Core Updates and Google's recommendation following a core update is "doEsnT mEan aNytHing iS wRonG wItH yOuR siTE" but then, they say, if you are to take action, they seem pretty fixated on improving your expertise, authority and trustworthiness. Great...

Fundamentally, I cannot be a true expert or authority in the dozen different industries I operate. Assuming most marketers aren't real experts in their niches either, we're not PhD-holding primary researchers in "best blue widgets", and most of our content is outsourced to faceless keyboard donkey's anyways.

So accepting the plain fact that I cannot display true honest authority or expertise, and trustworthiness (can't think of a harder thing to quantify, online and offline) then what's the next best way to make Google THINK I've got that sweet sweet EAT?

Anyone who isn't an actual SME in their niche found success in faking EAT or read any case studies on the subject?

Just riffing here, could one potentially attribute content to actual subject matter experts and just link to a list of their publications on an external domain? Say you're in the bonsai niche, you attribute your content to a "Mike S." and then on your authors page (linked from individual article bylines) you have a blurb about Mike S. being a horticultural master, generated profile pic, and from that one author page, you link Mike S to an external page listing some of a real-life expert Michael Stuttenheim's horticultural achievements or list of publishers the real person has been featured on?

From Google's perspective your content could plausibly be authored by a documented and cited bonsai authority. The real Michael Stuttenheim would probably never be the wiser, assumedly rarely Googling his own name and if so, the published shorthand "Mike S." has plausible deniability baked into it, if it would even pop up for his full name search in the first place given how many Mike S's there are out there. You could also publish a few lengthy quotes from the real expert on the page as well to warrant the associated claim...?

Or should I pull myself out of the rabbit hole and just stick with volume publishing and edit/guest post link building to hammer my "EAT" home to big G the old fashioned way?

 

[bernard]

I see expired domains doing very well at the moment.

That's all links, but also the specific editorial links that are hard to get.

I think your idea about linking to experts is sound, I do it all the time, using quotes from sources, and the testimonial widget with a picture of them.

I'll have some expert say "Blue canaries are much better pets than red canaries - obviously, red canaries are vicious" and then I'll have an image of said expert and a title "Canary Expert" and then I'll add their blog/employer byline and link both to that.

My hunch is that EAT is still about links, high quality editorial links, and overall "distance to trusted source", but I feel like including these expert sources is an easy way to add authority and trust, which I care about from a purely marketing perspective because I push affiliate stuff that requires a purchase.

In pure marketing aspects it is appeal to authority and piggybacking on that, but for SEO purposes, meh, don't think so, it's all about those gov/edu links or your link distance to those links.

It's a fairly simple theory: Mayoclinic is max EAT, so a link from Mayoclinic is good for EAT, but a link from a site that has a link from Mayoclinic is also good.