What It Is
A sharper, more actionable version of E-E-A-T: link out to authoritative primary sources for the claims you make. When crawlers and large language models can follow your citations to a verifiable source, they are more likely to trust your page and, in turn, cite you as a synthesizing authority. Sourcing your own claims signals that you did the research, not just the writing.
How It Works
- For every factual or statistical claim on a page, identify the original primary source rather than a secondhand blog.
- Link directly to that primary source with descriptive anchor text so both readers and crawlers can verify it.
- Prefer authoritative origins (studies, official docs, first-party data) over aggregators that add no verification.
- Add your own analysis or synthesis on top of the cited facts so your page becomes the connective layer worth citing.
- Audit older content and retrofit citations where claims currently stand unsupported.
Who Recommends It
- Drew Dorenfest endorses — Argues the key to getting cited is to cite your own sources so the model can see and verify them. Unscripted SEO episode →
Difficulty & Time Estimates
EasyDifficulty
WeeksTime to Results