Case Study: 1400% visibility increase in 6 months through E-E-A-T of the source entity

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In this article, I would like to show the background, implementation and results of a test that gave the domain aufgesang.de a visibility boost of over 1400% in 6 months. This case study provides insights into how powerful E-E-A-T of the source entity can be. It also reveals some further interesting observations that I was able to make around this test and that question some previous theories about E-E-A-T.

Contents

1 Background
2 The test scenario
3 The test results
4 Conclusion

Background

With a visibility index of >5 at Sistrix at times before December 2020, the domain sem-deutschland.de was one of the most visible agency websites in the D-A-CH region for several years. Since the core update in December 2020, the domain saw a downward trend in visibility until the August core update, mostly due to the various core updates.

Our second agency domain, aufgesang.de, had no significant claim to rankings or visibility until this year and was primarily intended to serve the brand traffic of Aufgesang. At the end of last year, we also started to build a technical glossary on aufgesang.de, which primarily pursues SEO goals.

In April, I decided to transfer some selected glossary entries from sem-deutschland.de to the glossary on aufgesang.de without changing them. What all these entries have in common is that they had top 5 rankings for search terms with >500 searches per month until the end of 2020, but then dropped out of the top 10.

Before I go into the test and the results, I would like to explain the theory that I wanted to support with this test.

The theory for the loss of visibility

We can assume that Google evaluates websites and results for ranking on three levels or dimensions:

Document level: Relevance scoring at the content level according to classic IR scores, e.g. according to BM25, TF-IDF, user signals…
Domain level: Quality assessment at the website area or website level, e.g. E-E-A-T. The domain is the digital representation of the source entity.
Source Entity Level: I define the source entity as the organization/publisher or the author behind the content of a website. For the evaluation, brand signals are used such as occurrences and search patterns around the brand, brand mentions, and co-occurrences of brand and topics.

Read more in the article The dimensions of Google ranking.

The source entity Aufgesang is more associated with the domain aufgesang.de than with the domain sem-deutschland.de due to the brand traffic it receives.

Klick Distribution between brand and generic Keywords for aufgesang.de

Impression Distribution between generic and brand terms for aufgesang.de

Klick Distribution between brand and generic Keywords for sem-deutschland.de

Impression Distribution between brand and generic Keywords for aufgesang.de

The domain sem-deutschland.de is associated more with the entity “Olaf Kopp” than with the entity “Aufgesang”.

This clearly shows that Google is trying to match domains with an entity listed in the Knowledge Graph. Furthermore, the source entity SEM Deutschland and the domain sem-deutschland.de itself does not collect any brand signals, so it is somewhat isolated.

My theory before the content was moved was that the brand strength of the source entity Aufgesang significantly boosted the same content and restored the old rankings for the identical content on aufgesang.de. This would be an indication of the great influence of E-E-A-T of the source entity on the ranking.

To counter any doubts about this theory, I compared the backlink profiles and Core Web Vitals of the two domains beforehand. The backlink profile of sem-deutschland.de was better before the move, both in terms of the number and quality of the links. Since 2010, we have been able to collect many high-quality links for sem-deutschland.de by publishing studies, e-books, blog posts, etc.

Domain Rating aufgesang.de vs. sem-deutschland.de in ahrefs

Amount of referring Domains aufgesang.de vs. sem-deutschland.de in ahrefs

Page Experience Metrics for sem-deutschland.de

Page Experience Metrics for aufgesang.de

So these two factors can be ruled out.

The test scenario

I have selected 29 pieces of content to move unchanged to the glossary on aufgesang.de between April and August 2024. In the past, Google rated all of the articles as relevant and rewarded them with top rankings before 2021, but over time they lost their top 10 positions.

The old URLs were redirected to the new ones via 301. For the internal linking of the glossary entries, we use WordPress plugins for both domains for the automatic internal linking with the main keywords as anchor text. The only difference in the design of the glossary entries is that I am not named as the author on aufgesang.de and no author boxes are used. In theory, this should actually be a disadvantage, but the results show that, surprisingly, it has not turned out to be a disadvantage.

I monitor the visibility and ranking developments of the individual content in several Sistrix dashboards.

I would like to mention that none of the currently hyped methods such as Topical Mapping, Micro Semantics, Macro Semantics or other complex approaches were used in the production of the content. The relevance optimization was carried out in the traditional way using TF-IDF analyses and research of W-questions.

The test results

The domain aufgesang.de has increased its visibility by over 1400% since April. The old rankings that the content on sem-deutschland.de was able to achieve before 2021 have almost all been restored and in some cases even improved.

Looking at the current overall visibility of both domains together, there was an increase of about 250%, although it should be mentioned that the August 2024 Core Update partially led to a recovery for sem-deutschland.de.

Conclusion

Since 2013, I have been working on the topic of entity- and domain-specific quality assessment. Even before Google introduced E-E-A-T in the Quality Rater Guidelines in 2015, I had the feeling that there were influential ranking factors that could be influenced primarily by digital brand building. With E-E-A-T as a quality and brand concept, Google gave this feeling a name.

I would like to draw the following conclusions from this test:

The trustworthiness and authority of a page has a very large influence on rankings, not only for YMYL topics.
Author boxes do not play a major role.
Surprisingly, authorship does not seem to play a major role, but rather the source entity of the company or publisher itself.
E-E-A-T depends mainly on brand-related macro factors at the domain and source entity level, and less on the individual content itself. (see graphic)

This test provides further evidence that this “feeling” is not just pure theory. There are only a few tests that have examined the topic of E-E-A-T and brand influence on the ranking so far. This test, as one of the few case studies, should lead to an increased focus on the topic of E-E-A-T.

About the Author
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About Olaf Kopp

Olaf Kopp is Co-Founder, Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO) and Head of SEO & Content at Aufgesang GmbH. He is an internationally recognized industry expert in semantic SEO, E-E-A-T, modern search engine technology, content marketing and customer journey management. As an author, Olaf Kopp writes for national and international magazines such as Search Engine Land, t3n, Website Boosting, Hubspot, Sistrix, Oncrawl, Searchmetrics, Upload … . In 2022 he was Top contributor for Search Engine Land. His blog is one of the most famous online marketing blogs in Germany. In addition, Olaf Kopp is a speaker for SEO and content marketing SMX, CMCx, OMT, OMX, Campixx...