Google seemingly adds new criteria to its SEO standards every week, but plenty have been lurking in the background for years. Content creators need to understand both the old and new rules to keep their SEO ranking. Even if your keyword strategy is flawless, are you paying attention to the proper algorithms?
In a 2015 document, Google outlined a variety of new guidelines it uses to raise or lower a website’s rating. Two interesting algorithms included in this document had rather interesting names: EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and YMYL (Your Money or Your Life). What do either of these have to do with SEO? Let’s take a closer look.
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YMYL
YMYL, “Your Money or Your Life”, refers to webpages that deal with the well-being of their readers. Anything related to medical information, safety, financial dealings, legal information, and a short list of related categories falls under this definition. The YMYL algorithm focuses not only on providing readers with the content most relevant to their search, but it also focuses on providing content that is totally accurate. Any page that fails to meet these criteria tends to get penalized. For instance, a law firm website with inaccurate information about divorce law could see its ranking plummeting if the error isn’t corrected.
To comply with the YMYL guidelines, double and triple-check your website’s facts. Keep your information 100% true and any pages dealing with finances completely secure. Don’t leave any room for error.
EAT
EAT, “Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness”, focuses on how much a visitor can trust your website. Google determines these aspects in the following ways:
- Expertise: Google analyzes your website to see if your content is not only accurate, but also provided by experts in your field. For instance, an article about diabetes published on a doctor’s website will get a higher rating than an article about diabetes published on a private blog, even if both have completely correct information.
- Authoritativeness: This measures how much others in your industry trust you. Google looks at how many other websites link to yours, as well as how often others mention you or share your content. You can think of this as something of a reputation analysis.
- Trustworthiness: This one is the trickiest of all three EAT categories. Does the public trust you? Unless your brand is well-established and a truly significant voice in your industry, you may have some work to do to meet this standard. The best way to improve your trustworthiness is to get plenty of positive reviews, ask for backlinks, and employ other strategies to make your brand more visible and more appealing.
Boosting Your Site’s Rankings
There’s no magic formula to getting phenomenal SEO and YMYL ratings overnight. However, there are several things you can do to rank higher on both algorithms:
- Make it easy for visitors to find a link to contact you. This helps improve your trustworthiness in Google’s eyes.
- Fill your bios and About Us page with your business’s accomplishments, awards, years of experience, and other information that proves your expertise.
- Build a mobile site (if you haven’t already) and make sure it loads quickly.
- Don’t be afraid to remove content that is no longer useful. Outdated or unpopular posts could be hurting your ranking without you realizing it.
Get Google’s Attention
Unlike many SEO standards, the EAT and YMYL algorithms are managed by humans. This could mean seeing results might take longer than you’d like. However, it also means that bots won’t overlook your hard work to boost your rankings. If you work to improve your rankings on these two critical algorithms, you’ll see an improvement in your SEO results with time.
Contact us to get started optimizing your website today.
