On This Week’s episode of The DiGi Files, we speak to SEO Expert & CSO of Sandstorm Digital, Omar Kattan, about the importance of E-A-T for YMYL Sites where he provides useful SEO tips specific to YMYL sites.  This is a trending technical SEO topic after Google’s John Mueller emphasized E-A-T are of the utmost importance when it comes to ranking YMYL sites, in a recent Google SEO Hangout session.  

→ What are YMYL and E-A-T?

We are diving into technical SEO today, this topic is extremely important for your ranking.  These SEO acronyms stand for:

• E-A-T [expertise, authority, trustworthiness] and three factors that Google uses to measure how much trust it should place in a brand or website

• YMYL [Your Money, your life] which is basically any page that includes content that can affect your health, happiness, safety, and financial stability. 

→ Why is E-A-T Important?

We’ve been stressing the importance of E-A-T for YMYL for a while. It was mentioned in a  public speaking event I did over a year ago at DiGiMarCom User-Centric Approach to Better SEO. 

In a nutshell, Google cares about the result they provide their users, and they want to ensure that you are giving them the best possible, timely, and most accurate results. In a way, Google is vouching for a  website that presents its user, so their algorithms are sifting through misleading information in important issues such as financial and health to provide the user with timely, accurate information. 

→ Can you include YMYL and Non-YMYL content on the same page?

We know that categories that fall under YMYL are not just an algorithm, but you have human raters that analyze the content as well  [Search Quality Evaluators Guidelines]. In his latest Google SEO office-hours hangout, John Mueller suggested separating YMYL and Non-YMYL content on the same page, so for example, If you are providing advice on a health issue for example, then you should not by selling your product on that same page as well. 

It is, however, more important to focus on your content. It is possible that the algorithm may devalue sites that have outdated or factually incorrect content, so you need to ensure high standards of content on your site. 

→ How to Improve E-A-T Ranking Score

Google distinguishes high-quality content from low-quality through E-A-T.  High-quality content is important for your brand as it makes you more authoritative.  If you want to excel in E-A-T, you need to have a plan and be consistent. A proper system in place with procedures in terms of content creation, planning, and updating outdated information. Should you not provide timely and factual information it could potentially backfire on your brand. 

Have content management in place that includes a well-planned content calendar, and updating important content will help you rank higher.  A current example would be in relation to the pandemic, let’s assume you have a travel site on it you have travel regulations, should a guideline of a certain airport/airline change, you will need to immediately update that information otherwise you will risk not being ranked. 

So, E-A-T, is the trust that no user comes to your site and gets wrong information or non-timely information.  So, content is a crucial component of E-A-T and should be handled by experts ideally professionals who have previous editorial experience. 

The bottom line, the higher quality E-A-T is for YMYL the better you will rank for Google. John Meuller also suggests separating both YMYL & non-YMYL and focus on your E-A-T so that you make it less challenging for Google Algorithm to understand how to treat the site and thus rank higher.