The 7 Pillars of SEO 2: All You Can E-E-A-T [sic!] to Become POPULAR

pillars


It’s 2024 and Google attempts to fend off the AI crap invasion using its E-E-A-T principles.

Will it be enough to become popular? I don’t think so.

In order to succeed in a social media driven online environment

  • website owners
  • bloggers
  • businesses

have to take certain steps. Only then you become POPULAR. SEO 2 can help.


Are You Popular on the Web? Like with People?

These practical steps are based on a theoretical foundation with 7 main pillars.

These 7 pillars of SEO 2 enable anybody to truly be part of the current Web in order to succeed financially or in any other desired way.

The 7 pillars of SEO 2 needed to be POPULAR with people are:

  1. Presence
  2. Outreach
  3. Participation
  4. Usefulness
  5. Love
  6. Authority
  7. Recognition


Presence

Presence is more than Web presence as in the synonym for website. It’s online presence in a direct sense!

I’s the almost physical presence of appearing everywhere on the Internet where it matters for a particular

  • person
  • group
  • brand
  • business

Example:

  • musicians had to be on MySpace a few years ago
  • journalists needed to be on Twitter
  • professionals have to join LinkedIn.

The mere presence on online communities is often required to be visible at all.


Outreach

Outreach means the active encouragement of bilateral communication between you and your audience.

Be it blogging, be it UGC (user generated content) or letting the community decide which Linux distribution should be used by Dell.

  • You can send mass mailings to hundreds of “prospects” by mail.
  • You can talk to strangers out of the blue and ask for favors right away.
  • You can annoy people with dozens of automated follow ups!

Yet that not true outreach. real outreach is about reaching out personally.


Participation

Participation is about not only being there passively to be contacted like in “presence”.

It’s not only short term or low level communication efforts.

You have to truly participate to the benefit of all.

Genuine engagement is about taking part actively in communities on social sites on a ongoing basis.

Just dropping in and shouting about your latest content piece does not cut it.

It’s about being part of communities, building them up or setting up new ones in a larger context.

SEO 2 experts do not try to infiltrate and spam social networks from outside.

They are an accepted part of them from day one.


Usefulness

Usefulness is the most important part of SEO 2. It’s the pillar that is in the center of the holistic SEO 2 approach.

Without actual value all of the other pillars are utterly useless. In fact the created value is the foundation on which all of the other pillars reside.

Value is an objectively as useful accepted piece of know-how transferred without payment to the online audience.

Only free access to content created by you or other types of value provided makes it valuable for the Internet community.

Free access ensures the acceptance by the online community. Value that is only accessible behind a paywall does not count.

When you give nothing for free people will not be willing to accept your presence among them in a casual non-commercial environment that social media inherently is perceived as.

To sell something give something away.

This is the reason why Open Source solutions have such a success.

Nonetheless developers earn their fair share by support and services.


Love

Love is needed for SEO not only for link love! You need the passion!

And you need the sheer energy of being in love with what you do.

Trust is a middle term goal. Based on usefulness and in accordance with the other pillars above you build trust.

A relationship based on the love of links is a good start. Passion is also carrying for the short term.

Yet over time true love can develop based on a link love affair, passion and trust!

Once you have created value people will come back once again to check whether you will do it twice.

When you provided value three or more times people will get accustomed to you and gain confidence in you.

In case you don’t disappoint them by trying to oversell in between you will gain trust over time.

They will learn to love your content after a while and return again and again.

When people love what they do it shows in their work no matter whether they get paid or not.

I love SEO and thus my blog here is always well take care of.


Authority

Authority is the long term goal you have to strive for when you want to succeed with your SEO 2 efforts. Why?

Being useful and loved is not that difficult to achieve. Gaining authority is an endeavor you need endurance for. It may take your whole life!

Just take a look at me! I blog about SEO since 2007 and I still feel like an impostor! Am I an authority?

To become an authority in your industry, on your subject or in your community you have to be useful and lovable by

  • being present
  • doing outreach
  • participating
  • being recognizable

over a long period of time. I talk about many years!

The question of authority is too complex to be described in a short paragraph on a list.

Let it be said that being useful and lovable are compulsory.

The other aspects mentioned are also needed.

Yet often they are not enough to achieve authority. Authority depends on how other people speak about you.

Do they even recognize you? Years of practice my not suffice when you stay a nobody!


Recognition

Recognition is based on stability, and recurring symbols like logos, avatars and names throughout different platforms and media.

As long as active participation is not recognizable it does not work.

An individual or company who has a positive record already on the other hand will be welcomed elsewhere on the web.

SEOs of the first generation were changing names and being viewed as attackers from outside.

SEO 2 experts have an established and well respected online persona which can easily integrate into a new platform due to it’s existing online credentials.

Social media expert Tamar Weinberg is the best example for this.

As a well respected member of a few online communities her sheer appearance on a new one ennobles this community.

Recognition also means that other consider you to be helpful! I’m delighted to say that the search community has recognized me on Search Engine Roundtable years ago!


Is This Still Search Engine Optimization?

And can it even be done at all? It sounds like quite a lot to do and achieve at once!

Yet by now even Google itself requires pretty much of it in its E-E-A-T concept.

Now most of you new to the still vague concept of SEO 2 will argue along the lines of

  • This is not SEO anymore or what does that have to do with search?
  • To achieve this you need a whole team of Internet experts working 24/7

These assumptions are understandable but not true.

The boundaries between search and social media or SEO and other marketing departments are crumbling.

It’s the historical and still valid connection of content optimization in order to be found on Web.

That is the basis of the evolved SEO 2 concept or popularization.

While the content might not be on “a website” anymore and the search performed not via a so called “search engine” the metaphor is still the same.

There is no need to come up with new cryptic acronyms each time the focus of the discipline changes.


Does This Blog Have All Seven Pillars?

Look at SEO 2, the blog, the term or me as the force behind the SEO 2 philosophy!

You will notice that at least 6 pillars out of 7 can be partly or wholly attributed to my work.

I maintain an active online presence via multiple channels. I do plenty of outreach on various platforms.

My participation on at least three international social media sites can be described as substantial.

There is no problem with recognition due to my

  • name
  • nickname
  • avatar

and the attraction of the SEO 2 concept itself.

The value aspect is not as easily achieved as the above.

Yet I strive to offer and promote the best and most useful information to enable my readers to succeed online.

I already see that some of these techniques have worked.

How do you know? Typical signs that people trust you are:

  • a lot of subscribers and followers in your narrow niche
  • other bloggers linking or referring to you
  • overall acceptance of your shares and content on various social sites etc.


The 7 Pillars of SEO 2 Empower You to Become POPULAR!

The 7 pillars of SEO 2 empower you to become popular online – and succeed even in a monetary sense.

I’m living proof. When you gain the authority described above you can even sell something without the need to advertise.

By then people will trust you as much that you won’t need any marketing at all.

I hate the term in the first place. The Internet is not a market. That’s just a tiny part of it.

Stay with me to grasp the POPULAR concept. Content, freebies or free products are not popular per se.

It depends on how helpful they are. And indeed by 2023 Google itself requires “helpful content”.

Are you already POPULAR or do you still have a lot to E-E-A-T to get visibility on Google?

Please “leave a reply” and tell me about you and your SEO approach in the comments!