With the advent of AI technologies, the SEO industry is experiencing a seismic shift. The proliferation of AI-content generators, such as ChatGPT, and their ease of use means that anyone can churn out content, resulting in an influx of AI-generated content cluttering up the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

This surge has led to a primary focus on the quick improvement of rankings, overshadowing the core intent of delivering quality content that resonates with real users.

However, the solution isn’t to shun AI entirely. Integrating E-E-A-T principles into AI-driven content ensures that your content ranks in SERPs and resonates with real human interests and needs.

In this article, we'll explore how AI can complement your content creation using Hallam's data-driven examples.

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It's Google's standard for assessing content quality, crucial for combating fake news and spam while providing users with relevant, high-quality content. You can find more about Google’s content quality guidelines in this 168-page paper publication.

E-E-A-T guides Google's quality raters to evaluate how well a page achieves its purpose. High E-E-A-T scores typically align with content that satisfies user intent and delivers informative experiences.

Beyond ranking, content with strong E-E-A-T is crucial as users tend to trust and engage more with sites offering reliable, insightful information, making it vital for a positive brand experience.

In general, we split the process into four core parts:

1. Start with a content audit

When we initiate our content creation process at Hallam, we begin with a thorough content audit to ensure our website embodies E-E-A-T principles. This involves essential checks like showcasing author bios and evidencing expertise, laying a solid foundation for our content.

We also ensure our website aligns with its central theme or product and that our content is relevant and fulfills user intent. For instance, if we focus on beverages, our content remains pertinent to that subject.

We have a checklist of E-E-A-T assets that we compile in every audit.

To make this process efficient, we've developed our own ChatGPT build that audits different parts of the website for content quality and intent.

2. Understand your target audience

At Hallam, we conduct an audience audit to identify the ideal funnel for our audience and determine the types of content they seek throughout their journey.

1. We first need to identify our client's audience to conduct this audience audit. We usually interview our clients during onboarding, ensuring alignment when we pencil down their primary personas and objectives. If the client does not know (which is quite often), we can help them understand.
   
   Below is an example of an identified audience for a client and what they care about:

2. Once we understand what they care about, we identify topics of interest for the personas, aligned to potential content pieces and stage of the funnel journey:

3. Planning the content

To effectively map out this funnel, we utilize tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm persona pain points, feelings, and interests. This approach allows us to tailor our content plan to address our audience's needs and interests.

Apart from ChatGPT, we also use BrowseAI to get ideas on how to understand queries and trends for our users on a specific topic.

For example, for one of our clients, we identified the main Reddit forums, scraped and extracted all the topics:

We then aligned them with our keyword research, the work done in the audience needs above, and the topics from the forum. Next, we created content pillars and content clusters for better organization and to push overall performance for non-branded keywords:

Next, we put the content ideas into a content calendar for the client to keep them in the loop about content deliverables.

If it’s a content strategy beyond the traditional blog posts, we specify where and when it will go:

Once we have the content plan, we use ChatGPT to write the content:

1. We start by crafting 2—3 high-quality content pieces manually. Our skilled copywriters write these to ensure they set a strong benchmark for quality and relevance.

2. We then use our AI tool to audit this manually-created content against Google's Rater Guidelines. This step ensures our content aligns with the highest standards of E-E-A-T.

3. With our benchmark content set, we ask ChatGPT to generate similar quality content for a specified topic, using our manual examples as a quality standard.

4. After AI generates the content, we compare it with the first few articles ranking on Google. This comparison helps us identify any gaps or additional information we need to include.

5. Our copywriters then refine the AI content, adding unique insights, perspectives, and information not covered by the top-ranking blog posts.

6. Finally, we optimize the content with SEO best practices in mind. This includes implementing internal linking, schema markup, and incorporating E-E-A-T elements.

While AI can produce content en masse, it often lacks the personal touch and depth that E-E-A-T demands.

Here are the pitfalls of unguided AI content and how to avoid them.

Problem 1: Lack of personal experience

AI-generated content often lacks the personal touch and real-world experience that makes high-experience content. It may provide correct information but needs more nuanced understanding from actual involvement in the topic.

The fix: Demonstrate experience

Experience reflects the author's practical understanding and personal experience of the topic. It's about showing that you are knowledgeable and have real-world experience in the subject matter.

You can demonstrate with content that includes personal anecdotes, case studies, or practical tips.

Problem 2: Questionable expertise and authoritativeness

While AI can mimic authoritative writing, it doesn't have real expertise or credentials. This results in content that fails to replicate the depth of knowledge and credibility of an expert's work. It's often just regurgitating existing content, offering nothing new or fresh.

Remember, as outlined in their content quality documentation, Google values fresh content.

The fix: Demonstrate expertise and authoritativeness

Expertise is your knowledge and skill in a specific field. This is important for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics, where accurate and expert advice is essential. You can demonstrate expertise through well-researched and accurate content, often showcasing your qualifications or unique insights. You can also show expertise by providing the author's name and bio.

Meanwhile, authoritativeness is the credibility of the website and content creator. You can establish authoritativeness through credentials, external reviews, links from reputable sites, and recognition in the field. You can also showcase your authority by building well-cited sources, expert endorsements, and content that aligns with the consensus in the field.

Problem 3: Trustworthiness issues

AI-generated content may inadvertently spread misinformation due to its inability to fact-check or cite reliable sources. This is problematic for YMYL sites where accuracy is paramount. Users increasingly question the authenticity of online information, and AI-generated content without verifiable facts can erode trust and credibility.

The fix: Build trust in your content

Trustworthiness is the accuracy, transparency, and legitimacy of the site and its content. This includes clear author identification, citing sources, and presenting factual information. It’s reflected in transparent authorship by having comprehensive author bios, clear sourcing of information using internal linking, and a secure website that respects user privacy.

Google's stance on AI content, unofficially and through its algorithm updates, emphasizes rewarding quality and penalizing superficial content. Recent updates, including the Helpful Content, Freshness, and Review updates, all reinforce E-E-A-T principles, with AI content mentioned in the latest Google Quality Rater Guidelines.

Officially, Google has published some articles discussing its opinion about AI content and how it views it:

“When it comes to automatically generated content, our guidance has been consistent for years. Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.”

Ultimately, the true measure of your content's success is based on how well it serves your users. Strive to deliver content infused with E-E-A-T qualities, offering vital information and unique perspectives. Finally, use AI to complement, not substitute, human insight and expertise.