Does your website have a significant impact on a person’s happiness, health, financial stability or safety? Are you a financial advisor or accountant?
If yes, “your money or your life SEO” is going to be crucial for your business. And you’re going to have to E-A-T up!
Confused yet?
Don’t worry. This blog post delves into the world of “Your Money or Your Life” (or YMYL), providing valuable insights and SEO strategies to help your website increase its search engines rankings.
Short Summary
- Marketing for the financial services is not the same as in other sectors.
- Understanding YMYL pages is essential for website owners to ensure high-quality content in search results.
- Enhancing E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) requires demonstrating knowledge and building trust with the audience.
- Optimising a successful SEO strategy involves tracking key metrics and adapting to algorithm updates & industry trends.
Related Reading: What is Financial Services Marketing? The Ins & Outs
Understanding YMYL Pages and Their Impact on SEO
Defining YMYL Pages
YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life” and refers to websites that could potentially affect a person’s well-being, financial security or safety. Websites such as ecommerce sites, medical sites and news websites are classified as YMYL – not to mention financial advisors and accountants.
Low-quality YMYL pages are those that lack expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T). They can potentially negatively impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability or safety.
In contrast, high-quality pages demonstrate everyday expertise, are well-researched, and provide helpful content that satisfies readers.
Their significance lies in the fact that they are subject to greater scrutiny due to the high stakes associated with this type of content. Google’s “medic update” in September 2019 altered rankings for numerous websites, especially those focusing on health, medicine and healthcare, emphasising the priority of delivering high-quality, reliable content in search results.
The Role of YMYL Pages in SEO
YMYL pages play a crucial role in SEO as Google closely evaluates their content for quality and accuracy, holding the belief that users expect them to maintain the highest levels of trustworthiness and safety for YMYL searches. E-A-T is a key criterion that Google considers when ranking YMYL content.
To optimise YMYL SEO as an accounting or financial advisory firm, it is essential to understand the “search intent” behind the main keywords, target audience, and the topics to be covered. On-page SEO can assist in improving search rankings and guarantee that YMYL website content is based on a strong foundation, ensuring that visitors receive the desired information.
Enhancing E-A-T for YMYL Websites
E-A-T is a measure of quality for Google when ranking websites based on ‘Expertise’, ‘Authoritativeness’, and ‘Trustworthiness’. Maintaining a high level of E-A-T is essential for YMYL pages as it provides a positive outcome for users and ensures that the content is in line with Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines.
To achieve high E-A-T, content creators must demonstrate their expertise, establish authoritativeness and build trustworthiness. This involves providing accurate, well-researched information, attributing content to its writer, and furnishing author details and transparency.
Expertise: Demonstrating Your Knowledge
Google defines “everyday expertise” as knowledge acquired through life experience in a specific topic, which can be either general or highly specialised. Demonstrating in-depth knowledge about the subject is essential in order to show expertise on YMYL pages. Exhibiting proficiency in specialties such as legal, financial and medical is of utmost importance.
Ensuring that your content is well-researched, accurate and up to date can help establish your expertise and boost your YMYL SEO.
Authoritativeness: Building Your Online Reputation
Authoritativeness in SEO is the reputation of a knowledge source within a professional circle. Building a positive online reputation is crucial for YMYL pages, as it helps establish your authority in your niche and enables Google to trust your content more.
To build your online reputation, focus on creating valuable content, obtaining mentions on reliable websites and inviting real experts for interviews. Additionally, ensure that your author bio page includes a summary of your past content and relevant information that establishes your identity and professional activities.
Trustworthiness: Establishing Credibility
Trust is essential to ensure both users and Google are satisfied with the quality of YMYL content. Establishing trust involves providing accurate, well-researched information that supports your claims, as well as using clear and concise language.
In addition, it’s important to provide useful contact information and transaction information on pages like Contact, About and FAQ pages to ensure that your YMYL site appears more reliable.
Identifying and Addressing Low-Quality YMYL Pages
Low-quality YMYL content can harm your Google rankings as it has no beneficial purpose, is inaccurate or spreads hate and misinformation. Identifying and addressing such content is crucial in maintaining a positive online reputation and ensuring your website ranks well in search engine results pages.
To improve low-quality YMYL pages, focus on enhancing the E-A-T of the page using the guidelines above.
Signs of Low-Quality YMYL Content
Low-quality YMYL content is characterised by a lack of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Such content can result in erroneous decisions that can have a deleterious effect on a person’s well-being, health, safety or financial security in the case of accounting and financial advice.
Identifying these signs can help you address the issues and improve the overall quality of your YMYL content.
Crafting High-Quality Content for YMYL Pages
High-quality YMYL content should be authoritative, factually backed and well-researched, while also considering optimising the site with bare-minimum content. This involves conducting in-depth research, organising content structure and optimising content for SEO. By creating high-quality content, you can ensure your website ranks well in search results and provides a positive outcome for clients, customers, users or readers.
Research and Planning
Research and planning are essential for YMYL pages to guarantee that the content is precise, reliable and abides by the E-A-T criteria. This is particularly imperative as YMYL pages cover sensitive topics related to health, finance and safety that can have a direct and lasting effect on people’s lives.
When creating YMYL content, it is important to factor in your brand, industry and goals, and to carefully consider the topics to be covered.
Writing and Formatting
Writing and formatting are essential for YMYL pages as they necessitate the utmost level of E-A-T. This must be evident from the writer’s biography and the details about the website proprietor or business.
Ensuring that your content is well-researched, accurate and up to date can help establish your expertise and boost your YMYL SEO.
Optimising Content for SEO
Optimising content for SEO is essential as it enhances visibility, drives traffic, produces leads and reinforces credibility and authority. When selecting topics and keywords for YMYL content, it is important to understand the “search intent” behind the main keywords, as well as understanding the target audience.
Utilising keyword-rich title-tags, on-page titles and content that is accurate and not deceptive can help optimise your YMYL content for SEO.
Monitoring and Adjusting Your YMYL SEO Strategy
Monitor and adjust your YMYL SEO strategy by tracking key metrics and adapting to algorithm updates and industry trends. By staying up to date with the latest SEO news and trends, tracking your website’s performance and modifying your SEO strategy as needed, you can ensure that your YMYL content remains competitive and relevant in the ever-changing landscape of SEO.
To optimise your YMYL SEO strategy, consider focusing on enhancing YMYL legitimacy and E-A-T to assist with other aspects of SEO. This involves providing accurate, well-researched information, attributing content to its writer and providing author details.
Tracking Key Metrics
When optimising a YMYL SEO strategy, it is important to monitor:
- Organic search traffic
- Rankings
- Click-through rate
- Bounce rate
- Conversions
By tracking these key metrics, you can identify areas of improvement and make necessary adjustments to your YMYL SEO strategy, ensuring that your content remains competitive and relevant.
Expert Help with YMYL SEO
Creating and maintaining high-quality YMYL content is crucial in today’s competitive SEO landscape. But it can be hard enhancing E-A-T when you have so much else on your plate.
That’s where Rapport Digital’s SEO services for accountants come in. We’ll craft authoritative and well-researched content while monitoring and adjusting your YMYL SEO strategy and even addressing low-quality content. Over time, our team can improve your website’s search rankings by providing valuable information to your audience.
Sound good? We provide digital marketing services for accountants and accounting firms across the UK, helping fast growing, ambitious businesses across multiple sectors rise to the top of Google and generate more leads. Contact our team to talk about YMYL SEO for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the E-A-T strategy for SEO?
E-A-T is an SEO strategy that stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. It refers to the criteria used by Google to evaluate the quality of content and how it should be ranked in search results.
To employ this strategy effectively, web page content should reflect strong expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness so that it ranks highly on SERPs.
What does YMYL stand for?
YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life” and represents websites that offer content that can have a major impact on users’ well-being. Such topics are related to finance, health and safety.
What is a YMYL site?
Your Money Your Life is a website that Google believes has the potential to directly impact the happiness, health, financial security or safety of its users.
To ensure that a Your Money Your Life site is trustworthy, it must adhere to certain standards. These standards include providing accurate and up-to-date information, having a secure website and having a clear privacy policy.
What is an example of YMYL content?
YMYL content includes topics that could have a significant impact on a person’s financial and physical wellbeing. For example, medical advice, financial advice, legal advice or mortgage information would all be considered YMYL content.