It’s been a challenging few years for SEO – whether it’s the introduction of Google’s AI Overviews rollout or the sheer volume of algorithm updates we’ve had to contend with, it’s no surprise that for most marketers it has been quite the year of fluctuation – and we’ve seen this more than ever in the YMYL space.
If your website falls into a YMYL category and as a result gets held to a higher standard of guidelines by Google, then chances are that it has been a time of change and has pushed more than ever for you to showcase the key signals of trust, expertise, experience and authority to help Google to understand why your website should be at the top of the SERPs. So if you are trying to tackle SEO for a YMYL website, this article will discuss exactly what you should be looking at.
What Is YMYL And Why Does It Matter To SEO?
YMYL or “Your Money Your Life” is a term that was coined by Google to highlight websites that could have an impact on someone’s money or someone’s life – as these websites were deemed to have the potential to create a serious issue if they weren’t to the highest standards, in most instances, they have a tough set of guidelines to follow to showcase why they are a reputable source for information.
As SEO’s, having a website in the YMYL space means that we have to go that extra mile to showcase key E-E-A-T signals and highlight that the website is a trustworthy source overall – but this can also benefit your on-site conversion rate as many times when you improve the conversion signals on your website (a by-product of a strong SEO campaign) you will also enhance customer trust which can help them to better convert on the website – so a bonus.
Either way, if you have a website that finds itself in the YMYL space then we’ve listed below some of the most popular approaches to improving your SEO performance.
On-Site Foundations
Laying good on-site foundations plays a key role in enhancing your SEO visibility across YMYL websites. In particular, a solid technical structure and content foundation not only helps Google to crawl and index your website, but also to truly understand what it’s about and why it should trust you. Key elements of good on-site SEO for YMYL websites are:
User Intent Match:
User intent is a critical part of YMYL SEO – after all, we want to ensure that the information provided to the user matches what they are looking for. Matching the user intent involves researching to understand the relevant queries that a user might be looking for, creating content that answers these and also producing semantically linked and topical content clusters that help to build out expertise and trust around the topic. It also means looking at the structure of the page – do you answer the question a user has early up in the page, does it have a clear definition? You can use tools like AHRefs intent analysis to understand common themes across websites and also use Google’s Natural Language Processing to understand what your page is currently “about” to see if you need to make any updates accordingly.
Additionally, when we are creating content we want to ensure it’s in the format that a user might be looking for – an example an accountant looking to complete a tax return would be looking for a step-by-step guide written by an expert on how to do so, by contrast, if they were looking for tax accounting software they would more likely be looking for a reviews page comparing the software or some user-generated content describing their experience with the software and how easy it is to use – so have a think about the format that you put your content in and how useful this is to the user.
Defining Purpose:
It’s important to have a clear purpose for the content that you are sharing – can the user easily get to where they need to be and more importantly, do they have enough information to make a fully informed decision? Does the website and the content on it serve the purpose of giving information to the user, or making it easy for them to convert and get what they need?
Showcasing E-E-A-T:
Perhaps the most utilised acronym in SEO, E-E-A-T or experience, expertise, authority and trust play a big role in the performance of YMYL websites with Google itself even saying that websites that fall into this space have E-E-A-T held to a higher standard.
There are a lot of ways that you can showcase E-E-A-T on a website, from authoring your articles to showcase expertise, to building authority from external links, to showcasing trust through on-site reviews and testimonials – but combining each of these elements plays an important role in building the overall reputation of your website which in itself can build a more trusted platform for your customers
Creating Clear And Satisfying Information:
Returns information? About Us? Know how to contact someone if something goes wrong? Clear and satisfying information is important to websites in the YMYL space, especially if the website takes payment, as users need to know and understand that if something does go wrong they have a clear and concise way of contacting someone to rectify it.
Think a clear ‘Contact Us’ or explicitly showcasing returns and delivery information, even giving some background behind the brand can help to build trust here – don’t be afraid to tell people as much as you can about this, the more they know the easier it is for them to make a trusted decision.
Showcasing Trust Signals:
Make sure that you have plenty of trust signals on your website – and these can come in different formats, tying back to the point earlier about choosing the right format for your audience. Testimonials, case studies, reviews on trusted external websites, or even user-generated content showing your product or service being used – these are all great ways to showcase trust signals on your website and to allow humans to sell to humans.
Be Aware Of Your Reputation:
Reputation means a lot in SEO, in fact when we review Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines we can see that they specifically say to review the reputation of the website and its creator meaning that they want to understand who is behind the content and what expertise or credentials they have for writing it. Be aware of what your reputation looks like, Google yourself to understand how others (and Google) see you externally – awareness is key to ensuring that you’re putting across the type of reputation that you want.
…And Build On It (Digital PR)
Digital PR plays an important role in off-site SEO and reputation building – it can help to showcase your E-E-A-T signals externally and also build valuable links back into your website for topically related content – a win-win from a PR perspective.
Digital PR can be used in several different ways to enhance SEO performance, whether it’s through thought leadership showcasing your brand’s expertise to a wider community, or newsjacking where you put your brand at the centre of a conversation, or even using data-led campaigns and reports to analyse something that is trending within your industry and offer expert insight into it.
This is a great way to build your external E-E-A-T signals, while also building brand awareness within the community – in turn this can lead to a better conversion rate.
Regardless of your approach, if you are undertaking SEO in a YMYL space then you need to ensure that E-E-A-T stays at the heart of your campaign throughout.
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