Spoke
The Experience signal
The first E is the newest and the most neglected. It's also the only one you can't buy, study for, or fake — which is exactly why it's worth building content around.
That Experience was added to the framework is documented. What counts as convincingly demonstrating it is judgment, not a published rubric.
Expertise can be studied. Authority can be accumulated. Experience can only be had.
That asymmetry is the whole opportunity. Competent, accurate, well-structured content is cheap to produce now. Firsthand experience is the one input that doesn't scale — which makes it the one that separates you.
What counts as demonstrating experience?
Details only somebody who did it would know. What it cost. How long it took. What surprised you. What you tried first that didn't work. What you'd do differently.
Generic correct advice shows you did some reading. Specifics show you were there. The test: could this paragraph have been written by somebody who only read about the subject? If yes, it isn't an experience signal, however accurate it is.
What it looks like
Two true statements about the same thing.
Entity consistency matters because inconsistent information across the web can make it harder for search engines to confidently identify your organization.
We checked three of our own sites for this and found the same company carrying three different identifiers — one per site, each perfectly valid on its own, together describing a blurrier world than it needed to be. Nobody had done anything wrong. Nobody had ever looked at all three at once.
The first is correct and anonymous. The second is correct and could only be written by somebody who went and looked.
Notice the second one isn't more flattering. It admits a problem on sites we're responsible for. That's usually what makes an experience signal land — it cost something to write.
Where to find yours
Most firms have far more of this than they publish, because the good material sits in places nobody thinks of as content.
- What you stopped doing, and why. The tactic you abandoned after it failed is more useful than the one you recommend.
- Real numbers from real engagements, with permission and sensible anonymizing.
- The question clients keep asking. If it comes up every month, nobody has written a good answer to it.
- The failure you now check for by reflex, and the incident that taught you to.
- What something actually costs, including the part everybody leaves out of the quote.
The honesty constraint
This is the easiest thing on the E-E-A-T list to fake and the most damaging to fake, because a reader who has done the work can tell immediately.
Invented case studies, borrowed anecdotes, "we've seen clients achieve" with no client attached — all recognizable from the inside. And in regulated work the exposure isn't just reputational. Case results and testimonials carry specific rules that change by state.
The constructive version: if you haven't done the thing, say who did. Interviewing somebody with the experience and attributing it properly is a completely legitimate way to put experience on a page. Pretending it's yours isn't.
How we handle it here
We work on law firm operations, technology and growth. We are not lawyers.
That's why we cut a planned legal playbook rather than write it confidently, and why a page on getting reviews compliantly is still sitting unpublished. Knowing how a firm runs doesn't qualify anyone to write about bar advertising rules in your state, and pretending otherwise would fail this page's own test.
More in E-E-A-T & YMYL
What E-E-A-T is
It comes from the instructions Google gives the people it pays to grade search results. Knowing where it comes from explains both why it matters and why most advice about raising it is confused.
YMYL
Topics where bad information costs somebody their money, health, housing or legal position get held to a higher bar. If you publish in one, the review process isn't overhead. It's the product.
Reputation & reviews
Reviews are among the strongest trust signals available and among the easiest to acquire illegally. The FTC rule on consumer reviews is in force, and several widespread marketing practices fall inside it.
Human vs AI content
The most argued-about question in search right now, split into the part Google has put in writing, the part people assert with no evidence, and the part nobody outside the AI companies can answer.
AI content workflow
How to use AI for the parts it's good at, keep it away from the parts it's bad at, and put a human check in the one place that matters.
Author bios
A byline says somebody stands behind this. That only means something if they're real, the credential fits the subject, and the same identity shows up everywhere else.
Backlinks
A link is somebody deciding your page was worth sending a reader to. Everything useful about links follows from that, and so does everything wrong with trying to manufacture them.
Mentions & citations
Getting named with no link attached is now a common kind of visibility. What it proves is clear. What any AI engine does with it is not, and this page keeps the two apart.
User engagement
These are the most over-interpreted numbers in search marketing. Worth watching, and they don't mean what your dashboard implies they mean.