Welcome to my April 2024 newsletter.
My comment last month about seeing a few nicer days of weather turned out to be a false spring. It’s been so wet here in the Welsh Borders that I needed Wellington boots for a walk I did for Country Walking magazine over Easter on Brown Clee Hill—the West Midlands’ highest point at 1,770 feet. It says something about the water table if you’re trudging through standing water at that altitude. At least I picked a bright day when the cloud was high enough to appreciate the view!
When this newsletter drops into your inbox, I should be coming to the end of a week’s holiday in Pembrokeshire. As I write this, the weather forecast is suggesting I may have a dry(ish) week. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high. The British weather has a knack of delivering unexpected surprises.
Edit: I’m over half way through my break now and the weather has been AMAZING! Here’s a picture from one of my days out:
Squinting for EEAT
“We used to kid ourselves that if you squint, it’s like looking at Las Vegas.” Sarah, my guide, giggles at the silliness of the statement.
I grab the evening-air chilled harbour-side railings to steady myself and regret it. Immediately, they suck all warmth from my fingers, sending a pulsating shiver up my arms, through my torso and down to my feet.
The screech of Herring gulls pierce the gentle lapping of the tide against the harbour wall, stabbing the rhythmic calming sound waves of the moon’s gravitational pull.
I scrunch shut my eyes to block out the scene, then try separating them, millimetre by millimetre. Peering through a curtain of eyelashes, a twinkling of yellow, orange, red, green, and white lights flicker in a mesmerising display.
Sarah giggles again. I sense her mirroring me. “In its own way, it does look beautiful.”
In the darkening sky, the illuminated towers thrust high above the silhouetted horizon, just like the skyscrapers of a North American city. I can almost imagine the jingle of fruit machines and the clatter of coins dropping into a payout slot.
After a minute or so, my eyes ache. Squinting is hard work on those eye muscles.
I relax, and my vision blurs briefly, as my now-wide eyes recover from their unnatural exercise. I blink away the excess moisture, creating a strobing effect in the skyline opposite. Not another Las Vegas light show, but my brain getting to grips with the reality before me.
For there, a mile across The Haven, the towering chimneys of Pembroke Oil Refinery controls the view. Not a gambler’s paradise, but an industrial metropolis dominating Milford Haven’s landscape, life, and economy.
Okay, so that was the squinting part, here comes the EEAT. When Google determines which websites it will show you when you search for something, one of the (many, many, many) deciding factors in its algorithm is EEAT: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
In other words, was the result written by a human or was it written by artificial intelligence?
I came across this term a few weeks ago, while I was watching an online tutorial about writing for the internet, organised by the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild. (Unfortunately, it’s a members-only session, so I can’t link to it here, but I can recommend joining the organisation if you write about the outdoors.)
Of course, if you’re writing primarily for the Internet and need to understand the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) then this is a challenge many writers are facing. Artificial Intelligence can (and is) producing some practical content, but it’s doing so at such a rate it is swamping human-created material, and less and less of that is being returned as results to people searching the World Wide Web. This is why Google has been attempting to address the situation with EEAT since March 2024.
But, essentially, for those of us in the business of writing (whether we write articles for print, or online, or books (both fiction or non-fiction), screenplays, radio drama, or whatever), this is what we’ve been doing forever, either consciously or subconsciously. If ever I review a piece of my work and feel it’s not working, it’s flat, and it’s boring, it’s generally because I’ve missed out the EEAT.
When we write about our experiences, immediately this makes us an expert. It gives our writing authority and that makes it trustworthy. The Milford Haven piece above is designed to show that. I’ve been to Milford Haven. (It’s a very nice place, despite the oil refinery!) Those brief paragraphs convey a very small part of that experience.
Having been there it makes me an expert. Don’t get me wrong, someone who lives there will be a far better expert than someone like me who stayed there for three days. But I”m still more of an expert than someone who hasn’t been there (and that includes AI!). And because I’ve been there, I can write about my experiences with authority and conviction. Bring those three elements together and the reader will feel a sense of trustworthiness.
We can apply this to fiction, too. By drawing upon our experiences, we make our characters’ lives more realistic. It’s those little details: the racing heart and sweating brow when we send an email and realise immediately that we’ve made a huge mistake; the petrichor—that fresh aroma after rain that makes you expand your lungs to their maximum capacity just so you can savour that sweet aroma for as long as possible; or those blissful moments on a warm summer’s day, when you close your eyes, and all you can see is the bright orange glow as the sunlight penetrates your eyelids and the sun’s warmth microwaves your cheeks.
Effectively, by sharing our experiences with our characters, it brings them to life in our readers’ imaginations because they then have experience, authority, and trustworthiness.
There’s a lot of doom and gloom online about how AI will make writers redundant. But it’s the humanity of our writing that makes our text more entertaining than anything created by AI. People will always be interested in the stories other people have to tell. (And when I use the word ‘stories’ I mean fiction and non-fiction.)
It seems many AI-written articles have titles beginning How To . . .. Whereas, if I want to give some advice to readers sharing my experience, I might begin my title with How I . . .. It’s a subtle difference, but it immediately conveys experience, expertise, and authority.
Sprinkle a little EEAT into your writing and you’ll not only tell the world you’re human and not an AI-bot but you’ll also make it more engaging and interesting for your readers. And that’s what keeps them coming back for more.
Until next time, keeeeeeeeeeep writing!
Simon
PS. While I’ve been away on holiday, two of my photos have been broadcast on national television during our weather forecasts. (For those who don’t know, the BBC invites viewers to send in photos illustrating the weather during the day, and I’ve been doing this for a few years now. The BBC gets tens of thousands of images every day, so it’s a real dopamine hit when they pick one of mine!)
Here’s one used during the BBC’s Weather for the Week Ahead broadcast on 20th April (Snapper Simon is my BBC WeatherWatcher username):
And here’s one that appeared on the weather bulletin during the BBC Six o’clock news programme on 23rd April:
Told you my weather has been good this week!
Thanks for the interesting article, especially the EEAT. But... 15C...??!! That's practically mid-summer.
LOL - pleased you were able to enjoy it. Now please send it up to Yorkshire.