Show expertise and trustworthiness through high-quality content – with Valentina Stragliotto

Valentina Stragliotto explores the idea that it’s also key to demonstrate expertise and trustworthiness through high-quality content.

Valentina says: “Focus on EEAT and high-quality content.

Also, use traditional SEO, as we always have.”

Is EEAT just as relevant for newer, AI search engines as it is for more traditional search engines?

“We have been talking a lot about GEO as opposed to SEO. After reading a few studies about it, I think that what we have been using for SEO is also applicable for GEO and optimization for these LLM systems.

I've been looking at the actions we have to take to optimize for LLM systems. Obviously, there is a big focus on domain authority and branding, which is something that has always been suggested. There have also been quite a few studies showing that there are particular actions related to EEAT and showing trustworthiness and expertise in your content, as opposed to being keyword-focussed and other things that we usually use.

Before GEO came into the world, we used to focus on EEAT because we wanted search engines to rank our content and, within the ranking factors, what we had to write for the users and demonstrate was our expertise. This is something that you also have to do for GEO.

You have to add statistics, you have to show expertise, you have to cite sources, and you have to make the content fluent, because the new way of searching is with a full-on question rather than a query keyword.

Obviously, there is the whole element of structured data, which is also very important because you want the bots to read your content more easily. Again, this has also been important over the last few years because of featured snippets and all the structured content that was appearing on search engines.

That’s why I say that this is a very similar trend; we’re just talking about it in a different way.”