Every SEO on LinkedIn is banging on about E-E-A-T. Almost none of them can tell you what it actually means. So let’s fix that.Hi, I’m Nikki Pilkington. My site is https://nikki-pilkington.com/ and in this episode of "SEO F**king What", I’m taking apart two things you’ve been told matter enormously by people who, if you push them, probably couldn’t tell you where either one came from. E-E-A-T and helpful content. One is a description of what good looks like, written for contractors who can’t touch your rankings. The other stopped existing as a separate thing in March 2024. Neither of them is a score, and nobody can sell you one.Here’s what I’m covering:— What the four letters actually stand for, and where the extra E came from in December 2022— The 180-page free PDF that E-E-A-T lives in, who Google gives it to, and why those people are mystery shoppers rather than traffic wardens— Why there is no E-E-A-T score sitting in a database marking your website out of 10 — and why it still matters anyway— Why trust is the one that counts, and how you can have all the expertise in the world and still be worth very little— YMYL, why a page about chemotherapy is held to a stricter standard than a page about scented candles, and where a small B2B business actually sits— What happened to the helpful content update, and why anyone offering to recover you from one is selling you a thing that no longer exists— The three questions Google published for free — who, how and why — and the one that catches everybody out— Why the E-E-A-T audit grift works so well, and why a headshot and a byline is not expertiseI also give you a proper piece of homework. Not the "might do that one day" kind. The actual do-it-this-week kind. Three pages, three questions.If you know someone who’s been quoted two grand for an E-E-A-T audit, or who’s been told that adding author schema will conjure expertise out of nowhere, send them this. It might save them an invoice.Get found. Make money. Stop stressing. Stop paying for a score that doesn’t exist.Links mentioned:Non-Wanky SEO Courses — the On-Page SEO Toolkit is completely free right now: https://nonwankyseo.comGoogle’s own "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content" page — this is the free thing with the who/how/why questions on it: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-contentGoogle announcing the extra E, December 2022 (the Search Quality Rater Guidelines PDF downloads from this page): https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/google-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-tGoogle folding the helpful content system into the core algorithm, March 2024: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policiesEpisode 15 — the AI search audit racket:https://seofuckingwhatpodcast.co.uk/episode/dont-be-conned-into-paying-for-an-ai-search-optimisation-audit-ffsEpisode 18 — auditing your whole site page by page: https://seofuckingwhatpodcast.co.uk/episode/you-havent-read-your-own-website-have-you-time-for-a-content-auditFollow Nikki:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkipilkington/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikkipilkington/Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/nikkipilkington.bsky.socialMentioned in this episode:ICN Network

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.