Link building has always been a central component of search engine optimization (SEO). However, with the increasing importance of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and the influence of artificial intelligence (AI), the landscape has fundamentally changed. Whereas it used to be about getting a strong article from a trustworthy site, this is no longer enough today. What’s more important is positioning yourself within the “EEAT” filter and identifying the sites that artificial intelligence uses to produce a ranking.
We need a new impetus and must examine and modernize traditional link building. Optimization is no longer done solely for Google, and Google now only accounts for 63% of linking sites.
Sites like Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others are becoming increasingly powerful factors when it comes to linking to websites or presenting content.
In addition, there are attempts to present sensible information using artificial intelligence.
Results with Google SGE – Google’s AI already provides links to the corresponding product.
So, in the complexity of search engine optimization, we’re moving into an area where it’s no longer just about ranking a page in Google. Rather, it’s about preparing the page in such a way that the AI actually recommends the respective company website, product, or company as a result of a search query.
The nice thing about this is that the older marketers among us still remember how optimization was required in 1998.
The following still applies:
- Content: The availability of relevant content, offers, and solutions remains a basic requirement
- Technical SEO: Technical SEO & info architecture make content findable and optimize performance
- Popularity: Links help Google assess the relevance of content
New additions include user signals such as UX and EEAT
- EEAT: EEAT is a search filter that Google uses to evaluate the quality of the web presence
- UX: The user experience determines the performance within and remaining in the top 10
What is EEAT?
Definition and meaning
EEAT is a Google concept that evaluates the quality of a website based on the experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness of the content and its authors. EEAT is Google’s quality concept and combines components from off-page evaluation methods (e.g., PageRank), on-page content evaluation methods (e.g., Panda), and entity evaluation (authors and organizations).
The four components of EEAT
- Experience: Quality of content.
- Expertise: Knowledge and experience of the author.
- Authoritativeness: The author’s fame and recognition.
- Trustworthiness: Credibility of the content and the author.
What are the characteristics of EEAT?
- Are authors listed for peer-reviewed articles?
And: Are they experts, or is there peer review? - Is a publication/update date provided?
Is all content current and an indication that it reflects the most up-to-date technical knowledge? - Are sources and further links provided?
- Are there any positive reviews and ratings? Are they included on the site?
- Are certifications, such as DIN, available and included on the website?
- Are there backlinks from high-authority domains?
Which characteristics generate EEAT – Trust?
Companies generate an entity through
- Website
- Industry directories
- GMB
- Social media channels
Content and mentions that create an entity through:
- Press releases that either mention or link to people or products on the website.
- Reports that indirectly confirm the product or the topic of the company or website
Persons generate an entity by:
- Entries in Xing, LinkedIn, Facebook (this allows the person to reference)
- Wikipedia entry
- Google Scholar
- Personal website or branding pages, e.g., Pinterest, etc.
- Google Knowledge
Link building with EEAT
Traditional link building vs. EEAT link building
Traditional link building focused primarily on the number and quality of backlinks. With EEAT, the quality and relevance of the linking pages, as well as the authority of the authors, are more strongly emphasized.
Practical approaches and examples
- Links to high-quality and trustworthy sites
- Inclusion of expert contributions
- Use of industry directories and portals such as Medium or Google Scholar
The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in modern link building
AI-driven SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
AI is changing the way search results are presented and evaluated. This also affects the weighting and evaluation of backlinks.
The mechanics of EEAT and AI
Google uses patents such as Agent Rank and Speaker Identification to identify and evaluate authors’ identities and expertise.
How Google patents can help explain how EEAT works
- Agent Rank – Google filed a patent in 2007
- This patent helps improve the ranking of pages based on the identity of authors or publishers.
- Google finds out if a site has mistakenly used the name of an expert as the author of an article that he or she did not write.
- Speaker Identification – Patent filed by Google in 2020
- Identify speakers using speech recognition
- The patent is often used in places like YouTube
- Google wants to index actual speakers and authors, and websites
based on the characteristics that make them unique.
- Google recognizes entities contained in a Knowledge Graph
- Since 2018, Google has been collaborating with the U.S. Census, the World Bank, and other data sources in an open database called Data Commons.
- Google will use natural language processing to better understand user intent and map queries to relevant sources in Data Commons.
- Google recognizes entities based on demographic characteristics
- A: Website representation vectors – Patent filed August 1, 2018
- Patent can determine whether a person or brand is a true expert in the respective field.
- Google can classify websites into different subject categories such as experts, trainees, and laypeople.e
- Analyzing the text or images on the website.
- Viewing other website content (e.g., links).
- A combination of two or more of the above.
- B: Obtaining Authoritative Search Results – Patent granted by Google in 2017.
- Google can distinguish websites from websites that are of low quality due to shallow content or too much advertising.
- Google is also working on identifying the authors of this patent.
- Google recognizes website relevance.ce
- Website Representation Vectors
- The patent determines which content is considered YMYL (Your Money, Your Life).
- Google uses neural networks to understand patterns and characteristics behind websites.
- Mainly to classify the category websites like health, medical, finance, and more.
- No patent on whether Google EEAT measures the author, page, domain, or brand level.
- However, there are search quality guidelines for the main content creator and the main content itself, as well as the website.
- In 2019, Google revised its quality guidelines to expand the term YMYL from page-level considerations to include “topics.”
Google products and their impact on EEAT
Important Google products
Products such as Google My Business, Google Scholar, and the Google Knowledge Graph play an important role in evaluating EEAT.
Google offers numerous products. It’s possible to establish a corresponding level of trust in each of these products. Therefore, this should be utilized.
Integration and use for better link building
- Use Google products to increase authority and visibility
- Integration of Google Jobs, Google News, and other relevant products
It’s important to highlight and showcase the relevant expertise in articles. Only by referencing this information can trust be established. Perhaps this is the way to seemingly showcase expertise without backlinks.
Digression: The three dots in the search results
During the beta phase, we reviewed the “three dots” in search results. At the time of the beta, there was a lot of information that is no longer available today.
In this research, we have:
- Top 10 different industries analyzed
- Germany and the USA
- Different search terms (money keywords) used
- Search terms expanded if necessary
- Special features analyzed
- Backlinks checked
- “Indexed for the first time on” evaluated
- Viewed reviews
How does Google train its LLMs?
The basis for the training of artificial intelligence is the following:
For each area, there are correspondingly strong pages that are taken into account. Important backlinks for news & media websites are therefore:
- wikipedia.org
- scribd.com
- nytimes.com
- latimes.com
- theguardian.com
Further examples can be found in the handout of my presentation at Campixx 2024, which is available for download below.
Best practices and recommendations for action
So what does this mean for the company? First and foremost, it’s necessary to build authority and trust in your brand and your company.
There are the following options for this:
Building authority and trust
- Building expert profiles on platforms such as LinkedIn and Google Scholar
- Creation of a central author profile that is linked accordingly
- Publication of scientific articles and studies
Use of industry directories
Entries in relevant industry directories are an important component of the company’s entity.
This includes the following directories:
Use of niche-relevant portals
Using specialized niche portals to increase relevance and authority is a popular way to gain greater benefits from artificial intelligence.
The example of the niche portal induux.de shows the benefits that arise from this
1. Position 0 and improved rankings
Portals often achieve featured snippets. Relevant content also improves the website’s ranking.
2. Displacement of competition
The top positioning of the company website also creates opportunities to squeeze out the competition.
3. Niche relevance is often even ahead of much more well-known platforms
Significantly better positions than competitors on specific topics are also conceivable and are often realized.
Link building using AI and EEAT
Integrating EEAT and artificial intelligence into link-building strategies is essential for long-term search engine success. High-quality and relevant content remains the focus.
What does change, however, is how the respective articles are linked.
Strengthening portals and author profiles is now much more important than a direct link from a blog article to the company website.
Building strong profiles and niche sites will form the basis for ranking in the coming years, without which achieving decent positions will be difficult.
By focusing on high-quality, relevant content and leveraging AI tools, companies can sustainably strengthen their visibility and authority. Here are some reasons for this:
- Quality awareness thanks to EEAT
- EEAT “can” rate quality without a direct link.
- Backlinks do not have more power, but more trust and traffic
- Prerequisite: Content that offers added value
- Google will perceive the link label as natural if the pages involved have high-quality, relevant, and useful content.
- The link helps to strengthen the authority of ALL (!) directly connected websites
⇒ Artificial intelligence uses this knowledge as a basis - Build backlinks from/to trusted sites with traffic and connect to author sites (which provide proof of EEAT)
EEAT and portals play a key role in determining the content of AI-powered search results.