YMYL: your money or your life!

What are YMYL pages?

YMYL stands for "Your Money or Your Life". It covers content that can have a direct impact on a person's life, health, finances or safety. From financial advice to health information, from legal recommendations to safety guidelines, YMYL content carries a heavy responsibility for accuracy and reliability.

In the eyes of search engines, especially Google, YMYL content is therefore treated with an extra degree of scrutiny. The quality of such pages is assessed strictly, with a particular focus on factors such as experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, also known as E-E-A-T. This means that pages that fall within the YMYL category must maintain a particularly high standard of precision and reliability in their content.

Examples of YMYL pages

As mentioned, YMYL pages, or rather the content on them, can have a direct influence on a person's life, health, finances or safety. In concrete terms, this includes pages that deal with:

• Financial services and advice: Covers everything from banks, loans and investments to tax advice, pension planning and insurance.
• Health information: Covers websites that offer medical advice and information about illnesses, treatments, medicines, nutrition and mental health.
• Legal advice: Includes information about legislation and legal rights, as well as advice on matters such as divorce, custody, criminal law, wills and property law.
• Safety and safety recommendations: Advice on personal safety, home security, online security and fraud prevention. In other words, information that protects against real threats.
• Major life decisions: Information and advice on life-changing decisions such as buying a home, choosing an education, changing careers and making large investments. In other words, decisions that shape people's futures.
• News and current events: Covers important news about politics, the economy, natural disasters and international events that directly affect people's lives.
• Public and social services: Information about social welfare, healthcare, education and public programmes. In other words, information that is essential for navigating society's services.

Understanding the role and importance of YMYL is therefore vital for anyone who wants to create content that doesn't just inform and engage, but also builds trust and authority in their field. It's about delivering content that is not only valuable and useful, but also stands as a reliable source for people looking for guidance and answers in important areas of life.

How to navigate the YMYL landscape

A particularly important criterion for a YMYL page to be visible online is living up to Google's famous “E-E-A-T model”. It's one of the most important keys to success in the YMYL landscape.

In short, E-E-A-T is about being able to show:

• That you have loads of experience in your field, either by demonstrating hands-on experience or personal insight.
• That you are the expert, by showing your professional understanding through well-researched and detailed content.
• That you have the authority to talk about and offer services within your industry.
• That your business and your website are trustworthy and safe to use, through transparent, honest and responsible content, for example through source citations and updates.

You can read much more about E-E-A-T in my article on the 4 criteria.

→ Learn more about E-E-A-T

How to improve your YMYL website

Shall we get to the heart of the matter?

First and foremost, you can never go wrong by swearing by Google's guidelines for helpful content as if they were your bible. Their quality guidelines are about improving the user experience for their customers, so a thorough understanding of them always helps.

But beyond my introductory mainstream advice, below I'll give you concrete tips on SEO practices for YMYL pages.

Spray experience and trustworthiness all over the place

You need to show that you have complete control of both E's, the A and the T in E-E-A-T with a killer about-us page. In other words: spray experience and trustworthiness all over it! Already have an about-us page? Then see how many items you can tick off on my checklist:

• Show who is behind the business.
• Talk about your many years of experience in your industry.
• Link to the awards you've won and the publications or articles you've written about your field.
• Show that you're members of associations, membership organisations and what have you, demonstrating that you're an established part of your profession.
• Mention the glowing news articles that have been written about your business.
• Also touch on the story behind the business and how it started.

Service pages are nowhere near enough

A website needs to be more than a shop window for your services. It's about creating an overall experience that goes hand in hand with what you offer.

It's not enough just to have pages that describe your services. We're talking about adding something extra, something that leaves your visitors feeling enriched and informed. Think of it as giving a little extra without expecting anything in return. This is where you can really make a difference.

Imagine you own a dental clinic. Of course you'll want to offer information about how to book an appointment for a scale and polish. But why not take it a step further? How about offering advice to the cola-drinking customer on how to avoid yellow teeth?

It's that kind of valuable tip that shows you go the extra mile for your customers. It's not just about selling a service, it's about creating an experience that makes people feel comfortable and well informed.

Publish articles in respected trade journals and write guest articles

With relevant publications in respected trade journals and other types of online magazines, you can really show that you're an expert in your field.

If you have publications from your university days tucked away somewhere, you can also use them to shed light on your expertise.

Other options are to hire other professionals in the industry with a good reputation to co-author an article, or to experiment with guest blogging on other quality sites to spread your name and your company's name.

Make your contact information visible

What's less trustworthy than a sender you can't get in touch with?

So your contact details need to be as easy to find as a shining lighthouse on a dark night. They should be clearly displayed on your website, so your visitors can always navigate straight to them, wherever they are on the site.

There are also other ways to tell Google that your dental clinic has experience, expertise and authority and is trustworthy. You can use “structured data” in the form of Schema.org. It might sound a bit technical, but it really isn't.

Schema.org can be seen as a “vocabulary” in code, and it's a way of defining and presenting the content on your page to help Google understand what your content actually means.

With structured data, you can tell Google very quickly how long your business has existed, that it's a dental clinic and who owns it.

You can even spell out that your dental assistant, who appears on your “about-us page”, works at your clinic at Strandvej 63, trained at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Panum and is the same person who has a writer profile on tandlaegebladet.dk.

You do this by filling in some predefined “markups” with your information and inserting them into the code on your website. For example, you can use this Schema Markup Generator.

Guard your reputation like a bear guards its cubs

Get your company's reputation going and generate good coverage! One way to do this is by giving the press a nudge. But remember! … There's a difference between paid press coverage and a journalist writing an article because you've actually given them something to write about.

In most cases, Google knows the difference perfectly well and doesn't weigh the two equally.

Also put effort into getting positive reviews on Google, Facebook and Trustpilot, and not least into writing customer case studies on your website, just like we have on our success stories page.

Good coverage from sources other than the business itself is a sign of authority. If other people trust the business, it's also easier for Google to trust it.

Posts, tags, shares, likes, stories and so on

Yes, there's no getting around social media any more, but there's been a shift over the last couple of years. Social media is no longer just a platform for sharing content, but also a unique way for your brand to interact directly with your audience and build a strong, trustworthy presence.

You can do this, for example, through…

• Competitions: By running competitions on social media, you can encourage customers to share your post or story in order to take part.
• Hashtag: Create and promote a unique hashtag for your brand. It will make it easier for people to find and join conversations about your brand.
• Influencers: Working with influencers can help get your brand's message and values across to a wider audience.
• User-generated content: Encourage customers to share their own experiences with your product or service. This could be through reviews, testimonials or simply by sharing pictures of themselves using your product.
  Interactive stories and posts: Use features such as polls, questions or quizzes in your stories or posts to engage your audience and get direct feedback.
  Regular interaction: Reply to comments, and share and like content from your followers.

Get rid of anything that might seem shady

Think about it. Are there features on your site that might seem shady or spammy? For example, pop-ups that can't be closed, display ads that make your content jump and dance, or comment sections full of spam comments?

Get rid of the lot, and that's that.

Show your site's purpose!

There should be no question at all about the website's purpose. The purpose must be crystal clear, with no hidden agendas.

When Google's quality raters visit your website, they assess what your pages' purpose is, whether it's clear and obvious, and whether each page lives up to that purpose.

Keep creating value

Remember to publish valuable content on your website regularly.

By putting out plenty of relevant and useful new content in the form of blog posts, videos, landing pages and infographics, you show that you're up to date and trying to create value for your readers. Just like Amplify has done with this article.

For online shops: are your terms of sale, refund policy etc. clear and easy to find?

If you run an online shop, it's essential to be transparent about your terms of sale, shipping costs, refund policy, delivery information and so on.
Especially when payment cards are involved, transparency and security need to be top-notch.

THAT'S WHY (and for many other reasons) it's important that your site is, of course, SSL-certified.

Zoom in on every trust signal

Overall, you should keep asking yourself why people should trust your business when they come across your website. Are there enough trust signals?

Both internal and external links can be trust signals, for example. Internal links show how much time and effort you've put into your website, while external links show that you've done your homework. All of this is something Google's quality raters will notice and reward.

Zoom in on every trust signal

Looking for an SEO agency that can help you strengthen your website's YMYL? Then get in touch with Amplify.

You'll find our contact details right here.

THANKS so much for reading!