🎙️ Unscripted SEO Podcast
Lily Ray Shares the Hard Truth and Reality of the SEO Industry
One of the most influential analysts in modern SEO on core update patterns, E-E-A-T in practice, and what the industry still consistently gets wrong about how Google actually works.
Lily Ray is Vice President of SEO Strategy at Amsive and one of the most closely followed analysts in the SEO industry — known for her detailed research into Google’s core updates, her expertise on E-E-A-T, and her willingness to share hard truths the industry doesn’t always want to hear. Her work on the Medic update established her as the go-to voice for understanding quality-signal-driven algorithm changes.
“Edd Dawson: Building Profitable Affiliate Sites & What Actually Works in SEO” — the first episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast under Jeremy Rivera’s hosting, with an affiliate site builder whose practical, results-first approach to SEO is the opposite of what most conferences teach.
— Edd Dawson | Listen: Edd Dawson on Profitable Affiliate SEO →
Key Takeaways
- The Medic update revealed that Google was evaluating site-level trust, not just page quality. Sites with excellent individual pages but a weak overall trust profile — low author credibility, poor about pages, unclear editorial standards — were demoted across the board regardless of individual page quality.
- E-E-A-T is the framework for how Google thinks about content credibility. Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness aren’t checkboxes — they’re holistic signals that the algorithm tries to measure through dozens of proxies. Building genuine EEAT means actually being the kind of source you’d want Google to trust.
- Core update recoveries take longer than practitioners usually acknowledge. In YMYL niches especially, a site that was negatively impacted by a core update may need substantial content, editorial, and trust-signal improvements — and may not see recovery for two or three update cycles.
- The SEO industry’s relationship with hard truths is complicated. There’s financial pressure to tell clients what they want to hear, community pressure to maintain optimism, and commercial pressure from tool companies to emphasize what their tools can measure. Lily’s value is her willingness to cut through all of that.
Connect with Lily Ray
- LinkedIn: Lily Ray
- Twitter/X: @lilyraynyc
The Unscripted SEO Podcast features candid, unscripted conversations with SEOs and digital marketers. Hosted by Jeremy Rivera.
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