How E-E-A-T and Core Updates Will Shape SaaS SEO Content Strategy in 2023

2023 started with a bang with AI tools making ripples in the Market. How will they be used, how will they replace humans, how will they contribute to content writers, etc

Along with AI tools, there has been a drive in the landscape to provide quality content that is targeted at the audience and not towards traffic.

In Dec 2022, Google Introduced another E to the existing EAT. So what does the new ‘E’ stand for?

Experience

Let’s do a quick recap of E-A-T before we explain the new ‘E’ added.

EAT is not to be mixed with ‘eat’ which is necessary sustenance for life. Likewise, E-A-T is Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthy – necessary sustenance for every piece of content on a site.

EAT first started around 2014 when Google added this to their search quality guidelines to determine if the content is actually valuable to the readers.Until then content was written first for the search engines and then for the users. Ranking for keywords and search engines ranking their articles on the first page was the only criteria.

In EAT:

• Content Creator’s expertise was taken into account
  
• Authority of the website, the actual piece of content and the authority of the content creator was taken into account for authoritativeness
  
• Trust is the most important among EE & A – where it must answer
  
• What exactly the website or the author saying about themselves
  
• What others say about the website or the author
  
• What’s visible on the page to validate like comments, reviews, citations etc.
  

These factors were taken into account for getting content or the site ranking which will be helpful to users visiting the page.EAT and now EEAT is especially very important for websites that publish YMYL ( your money,your life) content.

Adding an additional E for experience is to showcase whether the author or content creator has the real life experience on the topic. This will apply to all YMYL content on the site. This type of content is a guiding principle for page classification that impacts a person’s health,finances,safety and happiness. So , google holds YMYL sites to the highest possible EEAT standards as misrepresentation of information affects users more due to the subject matter.

YMYL has 2 perspectives a) as mentioned real life experience for e.g. investing in stocks and overall experience or a humorous way of mocking a company. The other is expertise by an Expert who is providing instructions and supporting data for a particular stock

Now that we know what the new E is in EEAT, how will it affect SaaS SEO strategies in 2023? What do SaaS companies do or do not do?
These are some points noted from our team’s experience of working in the B2B SaaS industry:

Keywords – Rethink and Rejig the strategy –

1. Keywords are still relevant, necessary and they have to clustered as done until now but the overall strategy has to be refined keeping EEAT in mind as well.
   
2. Add examples in pillar pages that show experience along with blog and other resources pages to indicate both users and search engine fo not only expertise but also your real life experience in the topic.
   

Content Strategy –

1. Without a doubt, this is the most affected field.
   
2. Along with providing well researched and well thought fo content providing value to the users, also showcase your experience in the subject with relevant examples to bring out trustworthiness more
   
3. Author bios need to be rewritten keeping EEAT in mind
   
4. Especially for YMYL content as SaaS products and businesses can be in, ensure that the EEAT guidelines are given topmost priority
   

Your site needs to tell who you are

1. About US pages, Team Pages, Testimonials showcase your experience and expertise creating trustworthiness
   
2. IF you do not have author bio pages, this is the time to have it
   
3. Social media links to the Authors social media pages corroborate what you ahev written giving users and search engines the right signals about your experience and expertise
   

Content Purpose and Updation

1. Be very clear on the purpose of your content and do not write articles with unclear headings etc. Are you giving information or describing something or is it to convince the user to try something? Make sure it is clearly described what the content is for
   
2. Updating old content and ensuring he site stays updated with any changes in the industry is as important as content biomes stale soon due to tons of new content produced everyday
   

Backlinking

1. Ensure backlinks are not gotten randomly from random niches. The backlinks should be obtained from sites which conform to EEAT as well.
   

EEAT is the new mantra and here to stay so SaaS businesses should be restrategizing for 2023 keeping this in mind.