Why YMYL Content is Especially Important for Financial & Healthcare Industries
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Search engines are becoming more sophisticated, and the demand for credible, trustworthy content has never been higher - especially for topics that impact our health, safety, and financial well-being. This is where Google’s concept of “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) comes into play. YMYL is a term introduced by Google in their Search Quality Rater Guidelines that encompasses any online content that directly impacts critical aspects of our lives, from medical advice to financial guidance.
In life-altering industries like finance and healthcare, the stakes are high. One piece of misleading information can have severe consequences as it can affect people’s health decisions or financial futures. Search engines prioritize content demonstrating experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) for YMYL topics, which we will get into shortly.
In this blog post, we will dive into YMYL content, why it’s essential for financial and healthcare organizations, and how these guidelines shape the future of digital marketing for these industry landscapes.
What is YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)?
According to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics are any that “have a high risk of harm because content about these topics could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society”. For example, if you’re considering a significant investment or seeking medical advice, you need to trust that the information in search results comes from credible experts with relevant experience. To be a specific topic for YMYL, the topic must impact people’s health, financial stability, safety, or welfare of society.
What Falls Under YMYL?
The Search Quality Rater Guidelines outline four focuses for YMYL:
YMYL Health or Safety: This includes topics that could harm the mental, physical, and emotional health of people, or any form of safety (physical, online, etc.).
YMYL Financial Security: This focuses on topics that could damage a person’s ability to support themselves and their families.
YMYL Society: This includes topics that could negatively impact groups of people, issues of public interest, etc.
YMYL Other: This focuses on topics that could hurt people or negatively impact society.
The Role of E-E-A-T in YMYL Content
To excel in YMYL industries, consider the other major concept in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, E-E-A-T. The acronym E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These factors are used to assess whether a page or topic is high or low quality. Bolstering E-E-A-T signals can help improve the quality and credibility of your website, which in turn can improve rankings, organic traffic, and conversion rates.
Experience
Experience is the newest factor Google added, with a focus on firsthand or life experience. The writer must prove they know about the topic because they lived it themselves.
Expertise
This coincides with YMYL well, as expertise focuses on showing credibility. For example, you could include an author bio in the article that shows licenses, certificates, degrees, etc.
A NerdWallet article titled “5 Pieces of Investment Advice” has an author bio that provides background information on the writer and where their pieces have been published, showing her work has appeared in high-volume, credible sources. There is also a link to learn more about her background proving her expertise in the topic.
Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness is established by others recognizing you as an expert or a go-to source. For example, if other relevant sites link to yours, they are sending good signals to Google for your website.
Trustworthiness
Google marked trustworthiness as the most important aspect of E-E-A-T. This aspect focuses on whether the page is accurate, honest, safe, and reliable.
At the bottom of an article about Medicine and Pregnancy, the CDC includes a “Last Revised” date as well as a source for the information found in the post. By keeping the article up to date, users are reassured that the information they found is recent and can be trusted.
If a page is untrustworthy, it will have a low E-E-A-T rating regardless of how experienced, expert, or authoritative it may seem.
Impact of YMYL on Financial Industries
Since Your Money or Your Life focuses on topics that directly impact people’s lives, the financial industry has to keep E-E-A-T factors in mind when creating content. From providing guidance on budgeting and saving strategies to offering insights into complex investment options, content created with YMYL guidelines in mind serves as a valuable resource for individuals seeking to improve their financial literacy and secure their financial future.
Users are increasingly becoming more reliant on online resources for financial advice and information, which means there is high competition for the top spots in search results. Forbes Advisor states that 33% of millennials and Generation Z get their financial advice online.
Because of the increased competition and Google’s constant updates to provide the best search results, the quality and reliability of financial content are becoming increasingly important.
Impact of YMYL Content on the Healthcare Industry
On a similar note, it is important to create quality, up-to-date healthcare content to appear in search results and provide a satisfying experience for users. 58% of U.S. adults used the Internet to look for health or medical information, and 42% used it to communicate with a doctor’s office. So, not only can content bring in website traffic, but it can also bring in foot traffic.
Potential patients are most likely searching for a cure or fix for a specific health issue they are facing. For example, if you were searching for a cure for a sore throat and ended up reading an untrustworthy post, you could end up further harming yourself. Avoiding this type of harm is why trustworthy information must be presented in search results when it is related to someone’s health. This is why YMYL content is under more scrutiny when it comes to the various aspects of page rating.
YMYL and SEO: The Perfect Pair
You’ve written quality, relevant content that follows best practices for YMYL industries. So where does SEO come in? SEO focuses on providing users with the best results so its goals coincide with the objectives of creating E-E-A-T content for YMYL businesses. Your content may be ready to go, but have you included the right keywords? External links? An optimized page title? Following SEO best practices ensures that your content is aligned with Google’s content and ranking factors. Here are a few tips from an SEO Manager (notice the expertise plug?):
Find Demand for New Content
Understand where there is demand for new content. Don’t create a new piece of content where there are already a hundred other articles already saying the same thing. One way to find opportunities is through a competitor analysis or a content gap analysis, which are SEO staples.
Use Experienced Topic Experts
Use professionals with expertise in the areas you are writing about to boost your credibility. For example, if you are writing a post about mammograms, having a quote from a gynecologist who has years of experience with the procedure can prove trustworthiness.
Build Trust
Throughout any website content, you want to build trust with the reader so they believe your organization is trustworthy and the right choice. This could be through customer testimonials, reviews, awards, and more.
Follow Linking Best Practices
Link to credible, authoritative sources to reinforce E-E-A-T and verify the information in your content.
Wrapping Up
Creating content that adheres to Google’s quality guidelines is imperative, especially in YMYL industries. As users increasingly rely on online resources to guide vital decisions, you must rise to the challenge of delivering accurate, trustworthy content in search results for prospective customers or patients.
Let us help you! Learn more about our SEO services and how we can partner with you to create helpful YMYL content.
