SEO Glossary: YMYL

 

What is YMYL (Your money your life)?

YMYL is a term for individual pages or complete websites whose content is

 

1. are related to the user's finances ("money") or life ("life") and
2. are relevant for the financial stability or security as well as the health of the users.

 

A website that offers investment tips and information on the financial market is a classic example of a YMYL website. Apart from complete websites, individual subpages of a website can also be classified as YMYL pages if they contain YMYL topics. The following example explains this:

 

• An advice magazine for women and/or men contains tips on several areas of life.
• One category contains book and movie tips for entertainment purposes.
• Another category contains advice on medical topics.
• The pages in the medical category are typical YMYL pages, as they relate to the health of users. The pages with book and movie tips, on the other hand, do not contain any YMYL content.

 

Operators of YMYL websites or individual YMYL pages must be prepared for a particularly strict evaluation of their content. This makes the creation of SEO content more challenging. In the context of YMYL topics, the E-E-A-T model is of great importance in content creation, which is why we will make a brief digression in this glossary.

 

Excursus: Specifications for E-E-A-T from the Quality Rater Guidelines

We go into the E-E-A-T model in detail in our glossary entry "Google SEO with E-A-T and E-E-A-T" (internal link to the new text). At this point, we will only provide a brief summary so that we can quickly return to the main topic of this glossary entry.

 

• Experience: Ideally, experience on the topic should be shared in a text.
• Expertise: The author of a page should have knowledge or skills in the subject area.
• Authoritativeness: Ideally, the website as a whole has a high level of authority and is known as a top source on the topic.
• Trust: The website is trustworthy if it fulfills the first three factors and is also secure according to technical criteria.

 

The requirements for the quality of website content according to the E-E-A-T model can be found in Google's Quality Rater Guidelines from page 26. The Quality Rater Guidelines are quality guidelines according to which special Quality Raters are to assess the quality of pages that are displayed in the search results on various topics. Google uses the feedback from the Quality Raters to optimize its algorithm.

 

Compliance with the quality guidelines and the E-E-A-T model is very important when building a website and creating content. The E-E-A-T model is particularly important for YMYL topics. This is because content that concerns the financial stability or safety and health of users is very sensitive. Providing false information could pose a high risk to users or even cause them direct harm.

 

 

Stricter E-E-A-T requirements for YMYL topics

If you want to do content marketing with a your-money-your-life website, you have to meet stricter requirements for the quality of the content, especially in the areas of expertise and experience. Here is a quote from Google's Quality Rater Guidelines:

 

"YMYL-themed pages can be created for a variety of purposes. If the purpose of a YMYL-themed site is to provide information or advice, a great deal of expertise may be required for the site to be considered trustworthy.

 

Sometimes pages on YMYL topics can be created to share personal experiences related to difficult life challenges. [...] Fact-based information from experts and sources with authority may not meet users' needs [in these cases]."

 

In the latter case, the author of a page would not necessarily need expertise for their content to be classified as trustworthy. It would be sufficient for them to share their experience and maintain a trustworthy website according to other criteria, whereby their content should at least be in line with the assessments of experts.

 

Examples of requirements for YMYL pages

To clarify the requirements for pages in the "Your money your life" section, please refer to the examples on page 28 of Google's Quality Rater Guidelines. There, Google lists which YMYL pages must be written by authors with expertise and in which cases it is sufficient for authors to share their experience on YMYL topics.

 

YMYL topic: Treatment of liver cancer

 

• Concerns the health and safety of users
• When sharing experiences is enough for the quality of websites on this topic: in a respectful forum discussion where people describe how they deal with their liver cancer treatments
• When it is necessary for the quality of websites on this topic to demonstrate expertise: in an article on different options for treating liver cancer and on the life expectancy associated with each treatment

 

YMYL topic: Completing tax returns

 

• Concerns the financial security of users
• When sharing experiences is enough for the quality of websites on this topic: a humorous video by an author without expertise about the frustration of filling out tax returns
• When expertise is required for the quality of websites on this topic: for instructions on how to fill out tax returns correctly

 

 

 

 

Tips for creating SEO content for YMYL topics

For content marketing, it can be deduced from the above that operators of websites with YMYL topics and also authors of individual web pages with YMYL content should pay more attention to the SEO aspects of the E-E-A-T model than for websites and web pages with other content. Summarized and translated into practical advice for action, this is what it all means:

 

• Let experts or professional authors write for you. Ideally, you should create an author profile on your website and link to this or an author profile outside your website to prove the authors' expertise. You can also link to articles by your authors.
• As an alternative or in addition to the author profiles, you are free to create an "About us" page on which you can introduce yourself, your authors and/or other people involved in the development of the website and the creation of the content.
• Always keep your page content up to date to ensure that it is correct. This is one of the key criteria in content marketing anyway.
• It is best to use videos or photos to document your experiences on the topics. One example is videos with a product that you have tested (reviews, instructions, etc.).
• From the area of on-page SEO, internal links are recommended to refer to other content on the topic and show comprehensive expertise. Careful technical SEO (e.g. SSL certificate), which is also part of on-page SEO, is a good way to build trustworthiness. External links to third-party websites with professional articles are also useful. The external links help you to build authority and trustworthiness as trust links.
• An important part of off-page SEO is building backlinks. Alongside the quality of the content, they are one of the most important ranking factors. Therefore, use suitable strategies to generate as many backlinks as possible in order to gain authority and trustworthiness.