Go beyond backlinks to gain authority in the new algorithm

Joseph says: “Look beyond the blue links and build for AI.”

Are we just talking about blue links in Google?

“We're talking about blue links everywhere. Most people think, ‘Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks.’ The old world of SEO was just about using backlinks to build authority, and that isn't the way to build authority anymore.

Links still matter, but it's very specialised. I can beat just about anybody in the service business, and in a lot of different places in SEO, without using a single backlink strategy.”

How do you build authority without backlinks?

“A lot of people consider backlinks to be something in a directory or something in a citation. I'm actually talking about that, more than PBN backlinks or getting cited guest postings.

Generally, people are just looking to get the backlinks themselves. In reality, what matters to LLMs, AI searches, and even Google generative search is where that backlink appears. That means, is there automatic EEAT built into it? Is there automatic trust and authority built into it? That's why a citation in Yellow Pages or in Yelp is different from a backlink on a guest post.

If you get two or three citations in authoritative locations, that will beat any backlink strategy because Google now considers where the link comes from.

I also want to say that now, more than ever, brand mentions don't have to be linked. The brand mention itself goes into that LLM database, along with where it's mentioned or where they were talking about your company. It's not about backlinks anymore; it's about being found as an influencer in the right space and the right areas of Google.

That could even be social media properties as well, so a lot has changed there.”

How do you acquire automatic EEAT?

“EEAT is the new algorithm. As you know, Google came out with EEAT in December of 2022. Guess what else came out in November of 2022? ChatGPT. Google's EEAT was actually built a month after ChatGPT came out to the marketplace because they could see that this was where search was going to happen in the future.

They couldn’t do it with Panda, BERT, or all the different algorithms that are based on preventing scamming or spamming. Google was all about fighting spammers and scammers, and people replicating content. When AI came out, everybody wanted to just duplicate a thousand different articles. Google said, ‘How are we going to defeat that spam monster, before AI content gains traction?’ That's where EEAT came into play.

A lot of people have EAT, which is expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. Then they added an extra E: experience. A lot of people also add some other stuff to it as we're figuring out this new algorithm. The main point is, it's no longer about backlinks in this algorithm. It's about being authoritative. The A part is where I'm centring this tip: Authoritativeness.

Authoritativeness, for our clients and how we're doing it right now, means taking that content or your expertise and making it multimodal. You want to make sure that you have that same authority, that same mention, on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, your blog, your webpage, in an article coming out about you, and in the directories. Everywhere you can think of. That's the A part.

Backlinks used to be domain authority. Now it's: Where are you at? If Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or any of these other tools are going to have you show up in the LLM, you've got to be authoritative.

What does that mean? It means that you're not just found on one single web page with a bunch of backlinks. You're also found on YouTube. You're also found on LinkedIn. You have content articles and things that may not have backlinks, but have mentions and have you talking about them. That also goes into the database.

It is also getting harder. Back when this first came out, you only really needed 25-35 different pieces of work to be authoritative. Now it's 50-plus. If you want to show up for a keyword in the LLMs, you need 50-plus items mentioning you, your resource, the topic attached to you, etc., to be authoritative.

It's a little bit harder, but it can be planned out. It's not about backlinks; it's about providing value in that space on the topic.”

How do you start building trust with authoritative directories like Yellow Pages?

“Through effort. Everybody wants to do the easy thing, appear everywhere, and have an AI fill it out for them.

Why does Yelp get the trust? Why does Yellow Pages get the trust? Because you can't just send an AI bot to fill that out and have it be accepted and agreed upon. You have to make a phone call, talk to somebody, and actually verify your identity. That's why that matters more than a backlink – or even a hundred backlinks – because it was verified by phone.

Even YouTube channels need to be verified. If you want to get certain capabilities on YouTube, you have to verify your identity. You can't just be a no-name nobody and spam and win anymore.

The harder the citation is to get, the more it’s going to matter, and the more it’s going to have that built-in trust.”

How do you make search engines more certain that you are the brand that is being referred to?

“You can link to your Yellow Pages listing, for example, to demonstrate that you are the brand being referred to. Google crawls those.

I believe there's another E as well: engagement, which is a part of the trust equation. If you're in all these authoritative places, hopefully, there's conversation taking place. There are likes, questions, or whatever.

Just like with Google reviews, if you, as the owner, are responding in a timely manner to any reviews, that's the engagement part of trust. Are you engaging with the content? Are you responding? Are you answering questions? It's not just about peppering it in; it's about the conversation now.

Instead of being a megaphone, you're a CB radio. It’s a two-way conversation. You're not blasting out information, one-to-many. Engagement and trust are now about you saying, ‘Here's how I can fix this. Here's more content. Here's extra stuff.’ That's the trust.”

If brand is more important now, does it not matter as much if the user doesn't end up on your website?

“It's all about the topic, and the intent.

Google classifies things as buyer intent, knowledge intent, etc., so we're no longer showing up for informational intent queries unless we're the only ones with that information. Generative AI, Google, and everybody else are going to answer those questions.

They're not going to send you a blog anymore. They're not going to send you to a ‘How to Feed Your Cat’ blog. You're not going to rank for that. ChatGPT is never going to send that to a regular blogger.

However, if they're crawling and you have more information about cats and that topic, and you have the authority on that topic (with more than 50 pieces of work in the index), when a user asks, ‘How do I take care of a cat?’, it's going to say, ‘We got all these resources from this guy who knows how to take care of a cat.’ It’s going to pump you in as a resource, as a citation, in any LLM searches and Google AI searches.

Google AI Mode shows a new SERP now, which comes up over on the right-hand side, with different results than what's on the bottom. In AI Mode, that new SERP is based on the directories and citations in the answer that Google provides, not what's found below in the organic results. There are almost two different models right now.”

If users are now consuming your content on AI search engines, how do you measure the value of that?

“If you are that cat food brand we mentioned, you have to do the research up front and find out where all the cat owners are looking for this information. That's where you need to be posting all of your different multimodal things: your videos, your blogs, etc.

You have to home in and find where they are, wherever that might be. Groups are a great place to be, especially public groups, because those public groups get crawled, and that information gets fed in.

You've got to understand where they're at and then create multiple modes of content around how to feed your cat properly, like a YouTube video, an Instagram reel, or a Facebook post – in addition to your blog entry. Then your blog post on your website points to your YouTube video and your Facebook page. Send out an email campaign with these links in it as well.

That email traffic also drives that authoritativeness score. How many people are looking, clicking, and going to that particular piece of information? If you're posting it in a Facebook group, people are clicking on that link and going to that resource. That traffic counts as you being authoritative and engaged with on that content.”

For multimodal content, does each piece need to be unique, relevant, and hyper-appropriate?

“Yes, and that's a great way to use AI. You can take your video, pull the transcript, use AI that's trained on your voice (it's not just out of the box, generic, vanilla AI. It's trained on you, your voice, who you are, your expertise, etc.), and transform it.

Don’t just replicate the same content; that’s old school. You want to take the topic and share it in a different way, answering all the questions related to that particular thing. You need to brainstorm all the questions people are going to ask ChatGPT and make sure they are included in that video.

From that video, you can take the transcript to whatever AI tool you're using and say, ‘Help me create a Facebook post,’ ‘Help me create a LinkedIn video,’ or ‘Help me create a blog post.’

It's going to take the transcript, and then you're going to create a new piece of content that's basically identical but uses what's good and helpful on the platform in question to make it relevant for that platform. A Facebook post looks different from a LinkedIn post, which looks different from a Twitter or Instagram post.

You're taking the same content and saying, ‘How can I describe this in different ways across different platforms?’”

How do you ensure that the phraseology within your content is hyper-relevant to the type of question that people may be typing into ChatGPT?

“Would you believe I asked ChatGPT that exact question you just asked me?

What you can do is take five or so main communities or resources around the niche. Feed that to ChatGPT and say, ‘Here are the top public communities around pet food. Study all the conversations, the questions, and everything that these people are doing in these public communities, and first, show me all the public blogs/communities for pet food.’

Then, you take those URLs and say, ‘Pull out the potential questions, concerns, topics, and issues that these people have around pet food.’ Then, it crawls the relevant communities to give you all the juicy bits that you can use.

Also, that community is in the index. If you're creating answers and content related to all of those communities, that's going to be crawled, and it’s going to pull in the fact that you're answering all the questions in these top five communities with your content. If that content is multimodal, across different platforms, it’s going to think, ‘This guy knows everything about this particular industry.’

AI is going to just make that easy for you. You could have it done in an afternoon.”

Joseph, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Do an EEAT audit on your brand/website. Look it up on Google, you'll find various ways of doing it.

This is the new algorithm that came out in 2022. Do an EEAT audit for all of your content. Is it showing expertise? Does it have the right experience? Does it have authoritativeness? Does it have trust and engagement?”

Joseph Kahn is President of Hum JAM. Find out more over at HumJAM.com.