What Is YMYL Content? How to Optimize Your Content to Meet Google’s Guidelines

In case you don’t have enough SEO-related acronyms to keep track of, here’s one more: YMYL.

That stands for “Your Money or Your Life.”

In this article, I’ll go over what you need to know about YMYL pages and how to rank for them.

What We’ll Cover:

• What is YMYL?
• How Does Google Rank YMYL Content?
• How to Improve YMYL Content
• YMYL Topics & Examples 
• YMYL Best Practices
• 5 Questions to Check YMYL Content
• FAQs About YMYL Content

What Is YMYL?

Despite the “M” in the acronym, YMYL sites are about more than just money.

According to Google, any page including content that can affect someone’s health, happiness, safety, or financial stability is a YMYL page. Subjects range from health and finance to legal and medical industries.

Here are a few examples:

• A website with pages offering stock tips
• A mommy blog that dispenses parenting advice
• A website that diagnoses ailments based on symptoms

Our Expert Insights into YMYL Content

Monique De Leon, our Senior Digital Strategist, says, “YMYL pages are some of the most valuable across the web. They have great influence over key decisions in people’s lives, potentially affecting them in significant ways. Because of this impact, you must ensure your pages provide accurate, helpful, and Google-compliant content that helps people make the right decisions. The right approach to creating and optimizing YMYL content can go a long way in helping you connect with your audiences and build your reputation.”

The quality of YMYL web pages greatly affects their performance. The quality of YMYL pages directly influences their Google ranking, especially under the E-E-A-T criteria.

Action Item: Make sure your YMYL content is of the highest possible quality to appeal to both users and Google. Keep all information accurate and up to date, well-written, and well-optimized for search engine optimization (SEO). Taking the right approach to this content will help you get and stay ahead of competitors in the long term while boosting your brand’s reputation.

How Does Google Rank YMYL Content?

The 2018 ‘medic’ update put a spotlight on YMYL pages, notably affecting health and wellness, and other industries like e-commerce and finance. While Google hasn’t confirmed this, evidence suggests these sectors were heavily impacted.

Google’s Medic update significantly affected YMYL pages, leading to speculations about increased scrutiny of site trustworthiness and authority. Since then, Google has released more core updates: 

• May 2022: Aimed to reward quality content creators and penalize spammy sites, with a focus on informational keywords
• September 2022: The goal was to clean up misinformation, but its impact was not as intense as the previous core updates
• March 2023: Significant SERP volatility, particularly affecting arts & entertainment, shopping, and gaming

According to Search Engine Land, the March 2023 core update produced a volatility increase that was 74% higher than the September 2022 update.

With AI tools like ChatGPT emerging, Google is expected to improve its algorithms and release more core updates to combat disinformation and spam. This underscores the importance for content creators, especially in the YMYL sector, to prioritize accuracy and value in their content to avoid penalization and possibly boost SERP rankings.

When creating YMYL content, Google makes certain specific recommendations. For example, according to Google’s guidelines, you should develop an ideal page experience for users by checking “if you’re providing an overall great page experience across many aspects” and staying focused on “creating people-first content rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search rankings.”

So, how do you get a YMYL site up to speed?

Let’s take a look.

How to Improve YMYL Content

If your content focuses on health & safety, financial security, society, public interest, or any other topic that could harm someone or their well-being, it’s considered YMYL content. 

To improve your YMYL content, always follow the E-E-A-T rules below. Make sure that your content is correct, credible, and helpful. 

In late 2022, Google significantly updated its Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG), expanding the E-A-T acronym to E-E-A-T. 

• Experience – does the author’s experience qualify them to write on the subject?
• Expertise – is the author of the piece an expert on the subject?
• Authority – is the author a well-recognized authority on the subject?
• Trustworthiness – is the content accurate?

The updated Guidelines aim to more accurately identify the author’s expertise, enhancing the reliability of search results. Google instructs raters to “Start by finding out who is responsible for the website and who created the content on the page… Then, look for information about the website and/or content creators on the website itself.”

This step is crucial for ensuring the legitimacy of sources and the quality of information shared, thereby helping Google maintain trustworthy search results for its users. In fact, the EEAT acronym appears 186 times in the Quality Rater Guidelines. So you know that Google takes it seriously when evaluating content on YMYL sites.

YMYL Topics & Examples

As I mentioned, there are plenty of topics to cover with YMYL web content, with subjects ranging from health and finance to legal and medical industries. 

Here’s information pulled directly from Google:

Shopping or Financial Transaction Pages

Web pages that allow users to make purchases, transfer money, pay bills, etc. online (such as online stores and online banking pages).

Financial Information Pages

Web pages that provide advice or information about investments, taxes, retirement planning, home purchases, paying for college, buying insurance, etc.

Media company Bloomberg is one of the leading sources of news and financial information, with data about the stock market and global financial trends, among other topics. The publication’s consistent accuracy and quality have led it to become one of the biggest sources of YMYL site content.

Medical Information Pages

Web pages that provide advice or information about health, drugs, specific diseases or conditions, mental health, nutrition, etc.

One of the best examples of high-quality and reputable YMYL is WebMD, which is the web’s largest source for health information. The website includes information about many types of health conditions, medications, health tips, and much more.

Legal Information Pages

Web pages that provide legal advice or information on topics such as divorce, child custody, creating a will, becoming a citizen, etc.

If you want to learn all things law-related, FindLaw.com is one of the web’s biggest sources of legal information. Among the site’s YMYL pages are legal forms, information about services, articles about all types of legal topics, from personal injury to immigration law, and details about specific lawyers and law firms.

News Articles or Public/Official Information Pages Important for Having an Informed Citizenry

Web pages that include information about local/state/national government processes, policies, people, and laws; disaster response services; government programs and social services; news about important topics such as international events, business, politics, science, and technology; etc. Please use your judgment and knowledge of your locale. Keep in mind that not all news articles are necessarily considered YMYL.

YMYL Best Practices

As you optimize your YMYL web pages, there are certain best practices to implement that can help you get the most from this content.

Here are some specific best practices that can help you get ahead:

1. Include an Author Name, Bio, and Byline

For the articles on your website, attribute them to a specific author, showing authority and that it’s not some anonymous uploader. 

Besides a specific name, consider including a short bio that gives the individual credibility and personality. 

2. Optimize Content to Improve Quality

If you have any low-quality content that doesn’t comply with Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, you can update it or remove it as needed. 

When content is salvageable and may benefit from some updated material, you can take the time to update and modify it to provide users with better information. Conversely, you may be better off simply deleting the content if you feel it’s entirely obsolete, such as an article that contains mostly inaccurate information around an outdated premise.

3. Establish Your Site With Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is another effective way to succeed with YMYL as you work to grow your website and improve its reputation.

As you build more high-quality pages with equally high-quality content, you’ll become a beacon of knowledge that appeals to your audience. Not only will Google begin to trust your site, but your visitors will, too, as you flourish online.

Eventually, more people will turn to you over competitors if you offer superior information that they find useful and reliable.

5 Questions to Check YMYL Websites

If you have YMYL content on your site, you need to ensure you’re putting your users first. Here’s a quick checklist you can use right now:

1. How often is the site maintained/updated?

Do you have out-of-date articles that likely won’t rank anymore? If so, go back and update them. Also, regularly browse your site on different platforms (desktops, laptops, tablets, phablets, and smartphones) just to make sure it always looks great.

2. Is there accurate, easy-to-find contact information?

If somebody who has questions wants to get in touch with you, is it easy for that person to find your contact info? If not, build a “Contact” page and include a link to it in your header and footer.

3. Can anything be perceived as deceptive?

Do you have anything on your site that tries to pull the wool over someone’s eyes? Have you optimized a page for a keyword that isn’t relevant? Are you stuffing keywords? Make sure you keep it honest with your visitors. They’ll thank you by coming back to your site again and again.

4. Who is responsible for the content and structure of the site?

Have you established points of contact for your website from a technical and content marketing perspective?

5. Is the content reputable and authoritative?

Put yourself in the shoes of a typical visitor to your website and read your articles. Do they come across as well-written? Will people think that you’re knowledgeable? Why should readers trust you?

FAQs About YMYL Content

1. What does YMYL mean?

YMYL is an acronym that stands for “Your Money or Your Life”. YMYL is content that can have a direct impact on a reader’s health, finances, safety, and, ultimately, happiness.

2. What is YMYL content?

Good YMYL content will be beneficial to a reader’s life but bad content will have a resoundingly negative impact on their lives.

This means that the information needs to be deemed as correct by Google.

For digital marketers, this is vital because Google takes the above responsibility quite seriously and presumes that only experts with experience will be authoring YMYL content.

Topics that fall into the YMYL category, according to Google, include:

• Shopping information
• Government, legal issues, social services, and other such topics
• Medical advice
• News and current events
• Information on people

3. What are YMYL pages?

YMYL pages are websites that provide content that relates to people’s health, happiness, and overall lifestyle.

4. What is a YMYL site?

A YMYL site is one that deals with any of the following topics:

• Groups of people
• Health and Safety
• Shopping
• Finance
• Civics, law, and government
• News and current events

5. How are YMYL pages treated by search engine crawlers?

Since YMYL pages tackle topics that are important for users, search engines like Google evaluate the value of the content with more scrutiny. One of the best-known rules that are applied to YMYL pages is E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. These rules are meant to provide users with only the highest quality and relevant content.

6. How do you optimize for Google’s YMYL criteria?

Analyze your content and answer the following questions: 

• How often is the site maintained/updated?
• Is there accurate, easy-to-find contact information?
• Can anything be perceived as deceptive?
• Who is responsible for the content and structure of the site?
• Is the content reputable and authoritative?

7. How do you create YMYL content for SEO?

Although YMYL may not be an explicit Google ranking factor, it does provide a framework for understanding how to create content for organic search when dealing with YMYL topics. Here are a few more tips that will help when writing YMYL content for SEO:

• In addition to following Google’s recommendations in the SQEG, make sure your content is relevant to your brand and services.
• Secure links to your own content and include external links to other authoritative sites to boost the credibility of your own site.
• Encourage your authors to include links to their social media profiles and guest posts on other sites in your niche in order to position them as industry experts.

8. What are examples of YMYL-friendly websites?

Experts and organizations with an understanding of YMYL criteria run the best YMYL websites.

Organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mayo Clinic, and the National Institute of Health are all high-quality YMYL websites. Other examples of good YMYL websites include Well, WebMD, and Greatist.

9. Why is YMYL Content Important?

YMYL content is important because it can have a direct and lasting impact on people’s lives. Google takes YMYL content seriously because it is vital to providing users with accurate and helpful information on matters that can affect their well-being, their finances, and their safety.

YMYL content has the power to influence decisions and shape the world around us. It is essential, then, that content creators adhere to Google’s guidelines to ensure that their content is both accurate and beneficial to readers.

Work With Ignite Visibility to Succeed With YMYL Content

When it comes to YMYL pages, you are what you E-E-A-T.

As we can see, these pages will be under increased scrutiny moving forward. If you own a site that offers this kind of content, make sure you follow the rules above to ensure top SEO rankings.

With the help of Ignite Visibility’s experts, you can:

• Develop and maintain top-quality YMYL content
• Incorporate SEO best practices for improved search engine rankings
• Build a strong content strategy that establishes you as a thought leader
• Get help with nearly every aspect of your digital marketing

Whether you need assistance with search engine optimization, content marketing, or another component of a complete digital strategy, reach out to us today and we’ll connect you with a team member to discuss your unique needs.

Want to learn more about our SEO marketing services? Contact us for a free proposal!