SEO is never easy, but it’s especially difficult for anyone working in financial services or the health and wellness space, including everyone from nutritionists to personal trainers to doctors. Google is constantly trying to improve their algorithm so they can reliably help their users find answers to the questions they’re asking.
As we all know, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and it’s not hard to find it, even with search engines like Google doing their best to prevent them from rising to the top of searches (yes, social media is a major factor, but that’s a discussion for a different blog post). This is why Google created their EAT standards and incorporated them into just about every aspect of their algorithm: to help their users find information they can trust.
But you can Google “best coffee near me” and if you end up going with one of Google’s top results and it turns out to not, in fact, be the best coffee near you, the worst thing that can happen is your coffee is doesn’t live up to your expectations – or maybe it does live up to your expectations, but it could have been even better had you known about the cafe that actually serves the best coffee in town. The point is, the stakes are pretty low.
Contrast that with looking for advice about the best diet for someone with diabetes. If Google directs you to the right information, you could successfully get your blood pressure under control, and maybe even scale back on your insulin. If Google directs you to the wrong information, the results could be disastrous or even fatal, and Google really does not want to be responsible for that.
The same could be said of looking for advice about whether to invest in the stock market and/or which companies to invest in. If Google directs you to valuable information, you could get rich. If Google directs you to misinformation, you could lose your life savings, and again, Google does not want to be responsible for that.
These industries are often referred to as YMYL, which stands for Your Money, Your Life. The stakes for directing you to misinformation when your money or your life is at stake is too high, which is why Google makes it especially difficult for websites with content covering those topics to rank on the first page, which is not to say it’s impossible. It’s just going to take some extra strategizing, so let’s go over some ways you can improve your SERP (search engine ranking position) even if your industry could be categorized as YMYL.
Table of Contents
- Show Your Credentials
- Implement a Blogging Strategy
- Make Good Use of Online Reviews
- Generate High-Quality Backlinks
- Conclusion
1) Show Your Credentials
Not only do visitors to your website want to see your credentials to make sure you’re the real deal, but Google also takes that into account. Linking back to the websites of the schools where you got your degrees and/or the institutions that issued your certificates is a great way to tip Google off to the fact that you’re linked with them, but even just naming your credentials and where you got them will do the trick. Google knows all, so if you specify the credentials that make you an expert in your field, Google will eventually crawl that content and use it to improve your rankings.
2) Implement a Blogging Strategy
I’m always talking about blogging as a great way to improve your SERPS, but only if you do it right. You can’t just publish the occasional blog post about whatever comes to mind and expect that to improve your rankings.
Instead, you need to do some keyword research to find out what search terms your target audience is using and what content could you create to answer the questions they’re asking with those search terms. By answering the questions you’re audience is already asking and strategically using keywords throughout your content, you’ll have a better chance of showing up in online searches.
Remember that part of your blogging strategy should include writing long, in-depth blog posts. Google prefers longer content, and it will help establish you as an authority in your industry if you can provide a comprehensive answer to every question your target audience is asking. It’s also a great way to fit several related keywords into one piece of content without resorting to keyword stuffing.
3) Make Good Use of Online Reviews
Have you ever researched a restaurant or a product online and gone straight to the reviews? There’s a reason customer reviews are prominently placed on websites like Amazon (and Google, with certain search terms). It’s because people will take everything you say about your own work with a grain of salt, but show them a glowing testimonial from someone like them and they’ll be much more likely to buy, especially if the testimonial describes how you solved a pain point.
Google is the same way. Get good reviews, and Google will know about it and your rankings will improve accordingly.
I know this is easier said than done, because if you make it easy for people to leave good reviews, it’s also easy for them to leave bad reviews, and people are much more motivated to leave a review after a negative experience than after a positive (or even an adequate) experience. Just try to get as many good reviews as you can by actively asking your satisfied customers to leave reviews for you.
4) Generate High-Quality Backlinks
One of the ways Google establishes whether you’re considered an authority in your industry is whether other websites are linking back to yours, but keep in mind that there’s much more to it than just getting any old backlink.
Google assumes like hangs out with like, so if a low-quality website links back to yours, that could actually hurt your SERP. On the other hand, if a high-quality website links back to yours, that will improve your SERP because it will provide that social proof that other people know about the services you provide and trust you as an expert in your field. Plus, it’s a great way to organically drive traffic to your website. Don’t forget that it’s not just Google, but real, live people who are seeing that link, and when they see that link back to your website from a site they already trust, they’ll trust you right away because you’ll have gotten that buy in from the website they already know and trust.
It is possible to buy backlinks, but you can’t control the quality of those backlinks and it’s not a good SEO practice, so don’t do it. Instead, to get quality backlinks, do a search of some content related to your most recent blog post and use the Check My Links browser extension to check for any broken links within the post. If you find any, you can reach out to the author of the post and say something along the lines of, “Hey, I was just reading your post on XYZ and noticed you have a broken link. Would you like to replace it with a link to my blog post on the same/a similar topic?”
There are a variety of tools you can use to keep track of the quality of the links back to your website (my favorite is Serpstat). You can’t delete the links without deleting your content, and you don’t want to do that because it could do more harm than good to your SERP. Instead, you can use your backlink tracker to tell Google, “No, I’m not associated with this website, please don’t follow the link.” The link will still work, but it won’t hurt your SERP.
Conclusion
These are all SEO best practices everyone should be including in their digital strategy, but if you work in a YMYL industry, it’s especially important that you follow these guidelines to earn Google’s trust (and the trust of your readers) and convince them their money is safe with you.
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