By people, for people. Doing SEO in the time of AI

By people, for people
Doing SEO in the time of AI
A journey between E-E-A-T and GPT
in search of quality
Valentina Lepore - SEO Content Strategist - SEOjolie.it

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Valentina Lepore - @valijolie
● IT engineer in the IT industry since
2007
● 10+ years in agencies as an
SEO/Digital strategist specializing
in the travel/editorial industry
● today freelance consultant with focus
on technical SEO and content
strategies semantic-SEO oriented.
You can reach me on SEOjolie.it

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SEO is
communication
WHY?
· people communicate needs to
the search engine with an
intent
· a site has resources that
fulfill a purpose
· SEO's job is to understand
how people search, how the
search engine works, and how
to best communicate a site's
resources to match questions
and relevant answers
Usually people say SEO is a discipline of
web marketing, but it is reductive

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NEEDS > Let's talk about PEOPLE
before than search engines!
Whatever the (technological) scenario is, this relationship
is always valid
real quality

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SEO is not
“push a button and
solve the problem”
Whatever the (technological) scenario is,
don't trust one-click solutions,
(although sometimes… lucky can happens)

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NEEDS > Valentina Lepore - SEO Content Strategist - SEOjolie.it
real quality
What is quality?

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The quintessential quality content for Google has a
BENEFICIAL PURPOSE
What is quality (for Google)?

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Google E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T is the paradigm Google uses to evaluate quality content (not a direct
ranking factor!)
2014: introduced EAT in the Search Quality Raters Guidelines
2022: Added the E of Experience
Search Quality Raters are PEOPLE
who evaluate Google results.
Their guidelines help us
understand how to evaluate
quality content from the
perspective of PEOPLE, not
algorithms: it is worth spending
time studying them.

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E: Experience
Those who create content must have well-established knowledge obtained from
direct, personal experience.
Restaurant reviews: do you trust someone
who hasn't been there?
Product rankings: do you trust someone who
hasn't used them?
Tutorials: do you trust if the author
doesn't show that he or she has actually
put it into practice?

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E: Expertise
Who create the content must be competent and have some level of knowledge of the
subject matter.
“we are not just talking about formal
expertise. Informal expertise is
equally important”
Important for YMYL (Your Money Your
Life) research that directly impacts
people's lives, well-being, health and
safety as well as their finances.

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Experience / Expertise?
It depends on the purpose of the page and the need to be met!

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A: Authoritativeness
It is the extent to which the content creator/website is a reference source for the
topic being covered.
“ask yourself what
would make the content creator a
trustworthy source in that context”

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T: Trust
It is the ability of a site to come across as safe, reliable and therefore trustworthy.
“Trust is the most important member of
the E-E-A-T family because
untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T no
matter how Experienced, Expert, or
Authoritative they may seem.”

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Google & AI?
What does Google think about AI-generated content?
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content

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Google & AI
Principles valid even before the spread of
generative AI
➔ Quality, original and useful content for
people
➔ Do not manipulate the search engine
if you use automation, including
AI-generation, to produce content for
the primary purpose of manipulating
search rankings, that's a violation of
our spam policies.
➔ SEO
can be a helpful activity when it is
applied to people-first content, rather
than search engine-first content.

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TAKE AWAY SEO
1. Read SQRs guidelines
there are a lot of useful examples

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TAKE AWAY SEO
…and learn from examples :)
● Easy to use → user
experience and
usability
● Accomplishes purpose
→ the page should
achieve purpose in a
practical and useful
way
● Good reputation of
website → trust
find hints you can apply on your own projects

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TAKE AWAY SEO
2. Building authority
with content strategies
tool: Keyword infinity by SeoZoom
CREATING ROBUST CONTENT
ARCHITECTURES
to cover all the topics
of the theme you want to
become a reference for.
Can be done on any theme,
even when they seem as
unimaginative as “bolts”

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TAKE AWAY SEO
Content strategy can be build in many ways using diﬀerent
tools: e.g. SEOZoom (seozoom.it)

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TAKE AWAY SEO
Content strategy can be build in many ways using diﬀerent
tools: it’s also ok integrate AI in the process

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SCHEMA.ORG MARKUP
Representing content
(entities) with
structured data markup
(also with the help of
AI tools)
TAKE AWAY SEO
3. Building content relevance
for the search engine
“Structured data adds a level of
preciseness that a search engine needs, and
might not grasp, because it doesn’t have
the common sense of a human.”
After working for the people, use SEO to communicate with
the search engine

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WORK ON YOUR VALUE AS
AN EXPERIENCED AUTHOR
or collaborate with
recognized guest
authors who are
experts and have
experience in the
topic.
TAKE AWAY SEO
4. Building authority with
experienced and HUMAN authors
fonte:
https://www.healthline.com/health/beauty-skin-care
/supplements-for-better-skin

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LINKS AND CITATIONS
are still a relevance
factor for Google.
Make good resources
→ get links and
citations
TAKE AWAY SEO
5. Building authority
with human relationships

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TAKE AWAY SEO
6. Building a relationship
of TRUST with people
INTEGRATE GENERATIVE AI
PROCESSES and let users
know about it.
AI + people: improve,
don’t delegate as a
solve-problem-button
Source:
https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/what-is-a-bad-credit-auto-loan/

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TAKE AWAY (SEO)
7. Putting people at the
center = use AI
responsibly and ethically
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyulkanov/

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TAKE AWAY SEO
8. Go on and work on all the
"usual" SEO stuﬀ with quality in
mind
DEVELOP AN
ALGORITHM-PROOF
METHOD
that is enduring in
technological
evolutions
Analyze
Search
Personas
and needs
Analyze
keywords/
topics
and search
intent
Build solid
and complete
content
architecture
Build
resources
useful for
search intent
Edit
micro-content
(microdata/
tag)
Implement
entities
with
structured
data markup
Write/edit
content in a
natural way
(forget
SEO)
Improve
usability
and user
experience
Study how to integrate new
tools (AI) into repetitive and
low-value activities to have
more time to devote to quality

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THANK YOU <3
[email protected]
linkedin/in/valentinalepore
twitter: @valijolie
.it
Bibliography
● Search Quality Raters Guidelines
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.
raterhub.com/it//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
● Google EEAT
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/goog
le-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-t
● Google and AI
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/goog
le-search-and-ai-content
● Google Spam policies
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/s
pam-policies#spammy-automatically-generated-content
● Structured Data markup
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/s
tructured-data/intro-structured-data
● Italian SEO forum (and more): https://connect.gt/

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By people, for people. Doing SEO in the time of AI

By people, for people. Doing SEO in the time of AI

Valentina Lepore

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