YMYL (Your Money Your Life) Google Algorithms with Example Sites

Websites with YMYL (Your Money Your Life) topics are having their Google organic search ranking strongly affected by the E-A-T ranking factors.

E-A-T is Expertise (E), Authority (A), and Trust (T).

In Google’s YMYL guidelines, high quality content is expert, user-focused content.

• Each page must have a purpose.
• Each page must have the appropriate expertise behind it.
• YMYL pages must have the highest E-A-T possible.

For your local website to do well with Google SEO, not only your site should work towards the mobile SEO best practices, it should comply with YMYL guidelines as much as possible.

• How is a YMYL Site Being Affected by E-A-T in Google’s Algorithms?
• How does Google Determine EAT for Web Pages?
• What Websites are Considered to Have YMYL Pages?
• What Can YMYL Sites Do to Get High EAT Rating with Their YMYL Pages?
• Expertise
• Authority
• Trustworthiness
• Google’s Expectation on YMYL Sites
• Do EAT and YMYL Guidelines Apply to AMP Pages?
• Conclusions

Google adjusts the weight of the search algorithms depending on the types of user queries.

Google applies the adjustment to YMYL sites that are in adult industry, health industry, pharmaceutical industry, finance industry, legal industry, and several other industries.

Google increases the E-A-T signals in expertise (E), authoritativeness (A), and trustworthiness (T) when your website falls under one of the industries of YMYL sites.

Google uses PageRank and other signals to algorithmically determine authoritativeness and trustworthiness of a web page.

In Google’s YMYL guideliness, it requires certain topics (or niches, or industries) to comply with E-A-T. Especially websites (or pages) that contain the below YMYL content, the content is required to be written or produced with the appropriate expertise.

• Medical advice
• Financial advice, legal advice, tax advice
• Information pages on scientific topics
• Journalistic news articles
• Advice pages on home improvement/remodeling, parenting
• Pages on hobbies (that require some expertise or experience)

The examples are:

• Medical information sites with web pages that provide advice or information topics involving health, drugs, nutrition, mental health, some specific diseases or conditions, etc are considered as YMYL sites.
• Financial information sites with web pages that give advice or information about taxes, investments, retirement planning, home loans or mortgages, car insurance, personal insurance, college loans, etc are seen as YMYL sites.
• Legal information sites with web pages web which offer legal advice or information on topics such as divorce, child custody, creating a will, becoming a citizen, etc are regarded as YMYL sites.
• Ecommerce stores or shopping websites that are operating with transaction pages webpages which let their customers to make online purchases of goods (or items) are considered as YMYL pages.
• Websites (such as banking sites, online money wallets, etc) that allow people to transfer money online, pay bills online, or more are regarded as YMYL websites.
• Local information sites that have pages with topics on local government policies and processes, government programs, social services, disaster response services, etc are seen to have YMYL pages.

In short, the YMYL websites must comply with the Google algorithms that determine Expertise (E), Authority (A), and Trustworthiness (T) for web pages.

After a person has been working for several years in an industry, one or a few specialized skills are developed through increased experience. The person becomes a specialist in his/her work in his niche/industry.

Becoming an expert requires another step. A person needs to position (or establish) himself/herself as the expert of the specific subject/topic matter. To move up the one step, the specialist has to produce the content that can show he/she is indeed knowledgeable and has the expertise in his/her industry.

As an example, the person/specialist has launched a personal blog, website, or a LinkedIn profile. On his blog, website, or LinkedIn profile he/she should:

• Mention who he/she is.
• List his/her past experience.
• Explain what he/she can do.

Especially for specialists who are in the YMYL industries (e.g. finance, medical, legal, etc), they should have certifications, college (or university) degrees to establish themselves as experts.

With authority, an example is that a person can be an expert in SEO, but may not be an authority.

This SEO expert may not have a social media account on Facebook (which seems unlikely nowadays), may not have a personal blog, may not have a YouTube channel, and may not have spoken at any SEO or internet marketing conference.

This means the SEO expert does not possess the authority to influence the industry.

To start increasing the influence in the search engine optimization industry or internet marketing industry, the SEO expert should reach out to the community by attending and speaking in conferences (or events) that matter, blogging about the latest updates of Google search algorithms, publishing videos and podcast on SEO topics.

A website can become trustworthy (or gain trust) from users by focusing on the items below.

• Build a quality website. Improve the design and user experience of the website. Remove broken links or 404 errors whether they are internal links or outbound links.
• Create quality content. Produce in-depth content for a topic that covers everything about the topic.
• Update the content. Make sure the information is not out-of-date and is always accurate.
• Eliminate careless errors in the content.
• Link out to other expert pages when it is appropriate. This will give users other good options when learning a specific topic.
• Include an author bio, address, and phone number (when they are available).
• Avoid placing distracting banner ads on the prominent spots of the page.

For YMYL sites or pages, Google expects:

• High E-A-T medical advice and information to be written and produced with professional style and be edited, reviewed, and updated regularly by individuals or companies with appropriate medical expertise or accreditation.
• High E-A-T information and advice on financial, legal, tax, etc be written and created by trustworthy sources and be maintained and updated on a regular basis.
• High E-A-T home improvement or remodeling advice and information be written and provided by experts or experienced sources that target audience can trust, as it may cost a property owner thousands of dollars and impact a family’s living situation.
• High E-A-T parenting issues and advice be offered by experienced parental care consultants because it may impact the future happiness of a family.
• High E-A-T scientific topic pages on be produced by scientists or organizations with corresponding scientific expertise and who can represent well-established scientific consensus on issues where such consensus exists.
• High E-A-T hobby pages (including photography, learning of guitar play, guitar, yoga training methods, etc) be written and taught by experts with the required experience.
• High E-A-T news articles to contain factually accurate content presented in a way that helps readers to understand the truth of events, and be written by professional journalists who work with news sources that have published through established editorial policies and robust review processes.

Expect E-A-T and YMYL guidelines to apply to pages (or websites) that have Google AMP implemented (or enabled).

All the websites especially YMYL sites should be created to help or benefit users because Google applies expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (i.e. E-A-T) when organically ranking YMYL pages.

Websites in niches or industries of finance, medical, law, news, certain hobbies, shopping, etc fall into the categories of YMYL pages.

Implementing proper SEO on the site can certainly help the YMYL pages to improve organic search ranking on Google, but webmasters, content writers, and internet marketers must ensure the YMYL pages fulfill the intended purpose for the users.

The intended purpose should be user-centred whether it is to sell the users any items, provide advice to the users, or teach the users a hobby.

Web traffic, SEO best practices & algorithms:

• Mobile SEO Best Practices
• Local SEO Best Practices
• Subdomains SEO
• Hong Kong Search Engines

SEO tools:

• Bing Webmaster Tools Tutorial
• SEMrush Tutorial
• Ahrefs vs SEMrush
• Google Search Console Tutorial
• Google Keyword Planner Tutorial

WordPress website development:

• Install WordPress
• OceanWP Theme (for WP Sites)
• Woocommerce Setup Tutorial