For years, every content creator has been trying to keep up with Google’s ever-changing algorithms. This is to ensure their sites stay at the top of the search engine ranking. However, it became even more difficult for sites surrounding a viewer’s finances, health, government, and laws. These sites were named YMYL (your money your life) sites and required a new set of rules.
Luckily for content creators, this new algorithm was explained in Google’s SQEG (Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines) in 2019. The algorithms are still ever-changing. It requires a lot more work to keep up when creating YMYL sites. We are going to discuss just what the guidelines laid out. Moreover, we’ll suggest making sure your sites get to and stay at the top of the rankings.
YMYL (your money or your life) sites can directly influence a user’s future. With that, Google demands that they are informative, accurate, helpful, and trustworthy. Fortunately, there are several successful strategies to ensure your site adheres to these stipulations.
When designing any YMYL pages, it’s essential to follow the guidelines of E-A-T.
YMYL articles and posts have a higher success rate if experts with credentials create them. Expertise can lie in a number of topics. However, it is extremely important that the page displays confidence. Moreover know-how about whatever subject it is focused on.
An interesting addition to this algorithm occurred when Google added a clause that confirmed “life experience”. It is now a valid form of expertise. It means that the content creator could be recognized as an expert. This is even if it wasn’t through academic or professional avenues, but instead through personal understanding and experience.
In order to create a page that successfully shows expertise, it’s important to create clear content. It includes identification of the purpose of the page. Moreover, as well as fact-checking and creating external links to citable sources. Articles should be well written without error, and of course, extensively researched.
While similar to expertise, the authoritativeness aspect of E-A-T deals more with the creator themselves. It’s essential to ensure the author has a background and extensive knowledge. Basically in the topic being discussed and shared. They should know what the readers want and are displaying accurate information.
To prove a site’s authoritativeness, avoid any form of deception and ensure the information is authentic and specific.
Of course, trustworthiness goes hand-in-hand with the other two aspects. It proves to Google and the user that your information is accurate, comes from a reliable creator. It should use legitimate sources and will not mislead them in any way.
E-A-T content is especially important when creating content based on medical advice, news articles, financial and legal guidance, and a variety of other topics that should require expertise.
The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG) explicitly expressed that YMYL pages with high-quality content would absolutely succeed over those with low-quality content. Follow these steps to ensure your site meets the high-quality requirements:
The main goals of YMYL algorithms are to protect Google users from false and deceptive information, and by addressing each of these steps, you can ensure your site does not fall into those categories.
Interestingly, Google claims that YMYL requirements aren’t directly correlated to their SEO algorithms. So while all of the requirements necessary to ensure your site follows YMYL guidelines are important to follow, you still need to focus on the site’s SEO to ensure it remains a top result in the search engine.
If you have enough on your plate to create a website that adheres to all the YMYL guidelines, reach out to us at No to the Quo and we can help with the tricky SEO details!
As we have learned, Google is adamant that they are in the business of sharing quality content that is informative, helpful, accurate, and ultimately, user-friendly.
User-friendly content refers not only to the accessibility of the site, i.e. how easy it is to navigate and use, but also that it has a beneficial purpose for the user.
In fact, Google admitted in 2019 that having a specific beneficial purpose and creating the best possible user experience on your site is what they are truly searching for in YMYL sites.
Those sites that are only created for financial gain, and not to assist users in their search for information, are of the lowest quality, and therefore the least likely to be recommended.
Of course, Google wants their users to be happy with their recommendations, it’s what keeps people coming back to their site for more. More importantly, they want to be sure that their patrons are receiving safe, accurate, and helpful information.
Google’s addition of specific requirements for their newly defined YMYL (your money your life) sites have certainly been the topic of conversation amongst content creators, marketing specialists, and SEO experts over the past two years, but it seems we have finally deconstructed the regulations.
Thankfully for everyone, although we can never know what Google is going to come up with next, we finally have a reasonable understanding of what they expect when publishing YMYL sites and how to make sure all content follows the current guidelines.
If you observe the suggestions we have listed here, we are sure your website will make Google and all of your users and viewers happy, which consequently makes you and your site successful,
If you want to learn more about SEO, please feel free to contact us today.
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