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August 16, 2021What Is YMYL In SEO?
We turn to Google almost every day to find critical information in healthcare, employment, finance, nutrition, and so much more. If some of that information isn’t right, it can be a big problem.
That’s the type of content that Google calls YMYL or Your Money Or Your Life content. What this means, according to the search giant, is content that could affect the searcher’s health, financial stability, safety, or happiness.
These days, YMYL content is a vital consideration when you are doing search engine optimization (SEO) and writing content for your website. If your goal is to hit the top of Google in your niche, you need to know what YMYL content is and design your site for it.
If you want help to get your site to rank highly for YMYL content, consider hiring a skilled SEO professional to get the job done.
Table of Contents
Which Sites Does Google Say Are YMYL?
We described the basics of YMYL content above, but here are some of the website categories that Google says contain YMYL content:
- Finance: Offers information about currency, taxes, mortgages, auto, life and homeowners insurance, car loans, mutual funds, IRAs and 401ks, etc.
- Health and safety: Medical conditions, pharmaceuticals, doctors, healthcare facilities, personal and job security, etc.
- Commerce and shopping: Where to shop, how to show, sites that engage in commerce online, etc.
- Groups of people: Contain information about groups in a demographic, such as religions, nationality, age, race, nationality, gender, etc.
- Significant decisions: Information about buying a home, selecting a career or university, finding employment, etc.
- Government and civics: Deal with laws, voting, political topics, community matters, etc.
If your company produces products, services, and information in these niches, you need to ensure that your content is as accurate and informative as possible. Because Google will check!
How Google Checks Quality of YMYL Pages
One thing that many don’t understand is the guidelines that Google uses to check quality are not all automated.
It’s rumored that Google employs at least 10,000 people worldwide who go through pages manually to check how accurate the pages are in its index.
These human assessors submit reports about the quality of the content on these pages. But note that YMYL pages are looked at more strictly than other kinds of pages. This is understandable because a page that talks about what you should do if you have lung cancer is more important than, say, how many types of oranges are there?
As a business, Google needs to ensure that critical YMYL content is accurate because people’s money, safety, and happiness are at stake.
How To Get Your Pages Ranked
One of the important things to know about YMYL content is another acronym – EAT. This means ‘expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.’ Keep EAT at the top of your mind as you are developing content for YMYL pages.
EAT means that the search giant looks closely at the expertise of the person putting the content out and how authoritative the site is. Also key is how trustworthy that content is.
So, if you want to rank a page on getting a mortgage and you aren’t following EAT closely, the rating staff at the search engine may say your page isn’t high quality. This could affect how well you rank and could get you off the first page in some cases.
But remember that you can revise your content at any time to make it more authoritative and accurate. In addition, Google rechecks pages often, so you can always climb higher in the rankings once your content is updated.
More Tips To Get EAT and YMYL Content Ranked Higher
First, you should write the best content you can on your About Us and Bio pages. It’s important to write highly accurate information about your company on the About Us page that describes what your company does and how the produce or service it produces can help people in your niche.
For Bio pages, offer specifics that show the content providers are highly authoritative in their fields.
Second, if you have content on your site that isn’t getting views, you may want to take it down. Many people keep all of their blog posts up forever, but you may be damaging your Google ranking if no one is looking at it. We understand that you put a lot of time and effort into that blog post, but it’s worth taking it down if it’s hurting the site’s authority.
Third, try to get people to recommend your product or service on your website. This provides confidence to Google as well as potential clients or customers.
Next, make it simple for people to contact you. Have a clear call to action on critical pages, and ensure that the contact us page works! Also, you may want to have chat available. The more ways people can contact you quickly, the more Google sees you as trustworthy.
Also, you should think about ways to make your brand develop a higher reputation. The more available your website and executives are, the more credibility your brand has in Google’s eyes.
A Word About Google’s 2018 Guidelines
Google made some changes that year that instructed the site’s quality people to review each site’s EAT and the EAT of the people creating the content. This is a big deal.
Google is interested in who is writing the content for the site. What are their credentials and expertise? It’s especially important if the site is in a YMYL niche.
So, gone are the days when you could just have ‘someone’ writing content for your site. Instead, you should provide as much information as possible about who is writing the blog post and why they should be trusted.
Need More Help?
The bottom line with this content is Google uses myriad ways to determine which YMYL pages will get to the top of their rankings.
If you want your company to get highly-ranked YMYL content, you need to provide content that is as accurate and useful as possible. If you still need help doing that, it’s a good time to connect with a skilled SEO company to reach your goals.
He is a recurring speaker at the Search Marketing Expo conference series and a TEDx Talker. Today he works directly with high-end clients across all verticals to maximize on and off-site SEO ROI through content marketing and link building. Connect with Sam on Linkedin.
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