What You Should Know About YMYL in SEO

 

What does YMYL mean when improving a business’s SEO?

Google crawls and indexes millions of different business pages every single day of the week. This can range from a page explaining the best fishing rods to buy in 2025, through to the best hypercars available right now. Therefore, the amount of content marketing indexed by Googlebot is colossal.

 

Some of these pages indexed by Googlebot might be about celebrity gossip, thus deemed as low-importance pages that won’t significantly impact your life. These pages are often considered enjoyable reading, such as articles about the latest celebrity wedding.

YMYL pages, however, are entirely different. The abbreviation stands for “Your Money, Your Life”. This basically means there will be pages on Google that you use to make life-changing decisions. For example, advice about the divorce process, which mortgage to choose, or which pension pot is best suited for you.

These decisions are pivotal to your life; they shape your future and influence your life significantly. Therefore, many of the best SEO agencies globally believe that Google applies far more scrutiny to ensure the accuracy of these pages. Google therefore uses Google E-E-A-T and YMYL updates to check if the page is of high quality or not. Additionally, Google wants to ensure the information is up-to-date and accurate. Many SEO companies believe Google employs the semantic web for this purpose.

Google is thought to use its Google Knowledge Vault to check the accuracy of facts.

Valuable, Trustworthy, and Relevant Information

 

Google simply wants to provide the best possible answer to any question asked, whether it’s about the best local Greek restaurants or the best dentist in a particular area. Google’s algorithms assess how relevant, trustworthy, and accurate an answer is. Google uses E-E-A-T alongside over 200 ranking factors to determine the quality of a page. If a page falls into the YMYL category, Google applies additional scrutiny to ensure the content is accurate.

In short, Googlebot crawls and indexes countless different pages daily, providing a wide range of business advice. However, certain pages are more important, especially when shoppers make significant life decisions based on the information provided—such as selecting the best mortgage. These pages fall under the YMYL category.

These pages are therefore much more closely scrutinized by Google’s algorithm to ensure all the information is accurate. Hence, Google uses not just the Google E-E-A-T update to assess page quality but also applies additional YMYL considerations.

aims to provide the best possible answer to any question asked, whether it’s about the best local Greek restaurants or the best dentist in a specifict is YMYL?

“Your Money or Your Life” was an important update rolled out by Google.

Spam

 

There will always be businesses trying to persuade you to buy their products or services, even though their content marketing may be inaccurate or misleading. Google has become very efficient at removing these pages by eliminating them from its index.

Google is constantly battling spam and has used updates like Google Panda, for example, to remove numerous spam pages. Part of this involves removing pages that provide misleading information. Google is now better equipped to check facts and ensure all information is accurate, using the Google Knowledge Vault and Google’s algorithm.

Which Types of Pages are Thought to be Impacted by Google’s “Your Money or Your Life” Update?

 

  • News and current events
  • Pages providing health advice
  • Finance-related topics
  • Government pages

 

Why Does YMYL Matter in SEO?

YMYL matters because if an SEO agency is working for a client operating within the YMYL sector, they must ensure their content marketing is written to a very high standard. This is because Google scrutinizes the accuracy of content marketing using Google E-E-A-T. If the content is inaccurate or poorly written, it simply won’t get indexed. Therefore, marketing companies and copywriters must ensure their work is accurate and well-written.

Misleading content published by businesses is likely not to get indexed at all. For example, some businesses may try to mislead consumers by exaggerating a product’s effectiveness, such as a hair growth product. If these claims are inaccurate, the page might not get indexed.

Additionally, Google’s E-E-A-T makes it challenging for a business to build authority and obtain backlinks if the information provided about a product is misleading or false. Without quality backlinks, the page won’t rank highly in Google’s search results. Thus, incorrect or misleading information could prevent indexing due to the YMYL update and further limit rankings due to insufficient backlinks.

How Can You Use E-E-A-T to Improve Your YMYL Content?

You must use E-E-A-T to improve content marketing as well. Your content marketing needs to demonstrate real-life experience and expertise. You also need to enhance authority by building backlinks and obtaining quality business reviews.

 

Good Quality Copywriters are Needed

When you speak to digital marketing agencies, they’ll often tell you the top marketing companies employ the best copywriters. Even though artificial intelligence can now write a blog post in seconds, journalists and high-quality copywriters are still essential for creating original, high-quality content, which typically ranks better on Google.

 

Cite Your Sources

Similar to writing a dissertation at university, Google’s algorithm evaluates how accurate and well-researched a page is. Therefore, linking to your sources is an excellent way to improve the quality of your business’s content marketing.

 

Come to One of the Best SEO Agencies in Bristol

We have been around for a very long time, and have helped many businesses reach the first page, whether they are based in Bristol or Bath.

We always use the best white-hat methods, and our content marketing is consistently high quality. Regardless of the sector your business operates in, we can help improve your search engine optimisation.

Fee quotes start from £1,000. Bristol businesses often choose us because we offer high-quality SEO services at affordable prices throughout the South West of England.

Do not hesitate to contact us for a quote today.

A Guide to Technical SEO for Ecommerce Websites

 

 

A quick guide on how your business can improve its technical SEO.

 

 

What exactly is Technical SEO?

 

A core component of technical SEO is simply ensuring your website is indexed.

Helping your website to get indexed can significantly improve your search rankings. For example, there could be a problem with the indexation of the main page. Once this has been identified and resolved, that page can then appear in the index.

 

Why is Technical SEO so Important?

 

You might spend an entire day improving the on-page SEO for main pages, such as the homepage. However, if the page can’t get crawled and indexed, it will never appear in search engine results.

 

This is why technical SEO is so important. Good-quality marketing tools, such as Screaming Frog, can help detect indexation problems. Once these issues are fixed, you can request search engines to crawl and index that page. Appearing in the index can therefore increase the number of organic visitors to your website.

 

Fast Load Time

 

Another important aspect of technical SEO, whether you run an e-commerce business or a service-sector business, is ensuring your website is as fast as possible.

 

UX designers and technical SEO consultants should work together to improve the speed of your company website. Even shaving milliseconds off your company’s website load time can significantly help improve your organic rankings.

 

Just as boats rise as water comes into a harbour, making your website faster across all main pages and blog posts can help improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation.

 

Internal Linking

 

Are you making good use of internal links?

 

You should add internal links to main pages and blog posts, as this can help shoppers and also bots find pages more easily.

 

For example, let’s say you’re selling a product such as electric bikes. Somebody might want to buy a new bike saddle at the same time. Therefore, you should add an internal link using anchor text like “bike saddle.” By doing this, you effectively add internal links to your website.

 

Search engines use links as a way to navigate the web, crawling and indexing pages. Additionally, powerful backlinks leading to your website can transfer link equity to other pages through internal links.

 

Therefore, ensure you use internal links effectively, which also means writing anchor text in a white-hat way.

 

Sitemaps

 

Do you have a sitemap?

 

For those who don’t know what a sitemap is, it’s simply an up-to-date list of all pages and blog posts on your company website. Often referred to as an XML sitemap, this list of pages and blog posts usually has its own URL extension.

 

This allows bots to crawl and index the sitemap. It’s like giving bots satnav directions to the pages that need to be crawled and indexed.

 

Without a sitemap, bots might not find and index all pages. For example, orphan pages—pages without internal links—might not be crawled and indexed by bots. A sitemap ensures all pages and blog posts on your website get indexed.

 

Breadcrumb Navigation

 

Have you added breadcrumb navigation?

 

This is about creating a better user experience. For instance, have you ever shopped for products on an e-commerce website with thousands of products?

 

It can often feel like you’re going around in circles, looking at a product you might have seen before. To improve user experience, you should make it as simple as possible for users to navigate your website so they can browse the different products and services you offer.

 

For example, someone looking at bathtubs might want to return to copper bathtubs. Having breadcrumb navigation allows them to know exactly which section of the website they’re on, and easily navigate back to previous product sections.

 

Therefore, breadcrumb navigation makes navigating your company website simpler.

 

Conclusion

 

Are you looking for the best SEO agencies around?

 

We simply know our stuff. We only implement white-hat SEO and provide top-quality technical SEO. We have encountered content management systems that have indexation problems and were able to resolve them effectively. Many agencies concentrate solely on links and content, overlooking technical aspects like indexation, which can cause major SEO issues as highlighted in this article. For example, what’s the use of a 3000-word article if it can’t get indexed?

 

Our team wants to solve any technical SEO problems you might have.

 

We offer local and national SEO fixed-price packages starting at just a thousand pounds per month, making them affordable for small and medium businesses. We take care of improving all aspects of your business’s organic search engine optimisation, including link building, content marketing, and improving technical SEO.

 

If you’d like a quote, please contact us today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How exactly do search engines work?

 

Table of Contents:

 

  • How exactly do search engines work?
  • How do search engines use bots (Googlebot) to discover pages and blog posts?
  • How do search engines determine page rankings?
  • How do search engines identify the best possible answer to appear at the top of Google’s search results?
  • How can an SEO agency like ours improve a business’s ranking?

 

Introduction

Search engines are powered by highly sophisticated mathematical algorithms and artificial intelligence. When you enter a website query, you’re presented with a page offering a highly relevant answer. But you already knew that, right?

 

Businesses across the South West of England, especially in areas like Bath and Bristol, will be interested in how search engines rank pages, how their company can reach the first page of Google, attract more customers, and ultimately generate more sales. We are experts in helping businesses across the South West achieve this.

 

How exactly do search engines work?

 

Crawling:

This involves discovering new pages and blog posts on the internet.

 

Without crawling, search engine indexes would become outdated as no new information would be included.

Crawling is therefore essential, and businesses must ensure that pages can be crawled.

For example, if a “noindex” tag is accidentally left on, search engines can’t crawl that page.

 

Indexing:

When search engines find well-written content marketing, they index it.

Businesses must remember that not all pages get indexed. If the content is poorly written or of low quality, it won’t be indexed.

For example, if you sell products like e-bikes, you’re competing against thousands of other businesses, making high-quality content essential for indexing.

 

 

Ranking:

Ranking is complex as pages are evaluated based on over 200 SEO ranking factors.

For instance, a comprehensive, well-written article without quality backlinks may never reach the first page of search results.

 

If you’re competing against global brands, these brands produce high-quality content marketing written by experts and typically have extensive backlink profiles, sometimes over 30,000 links.

Such businesses have a higher chance of ranking well.

 

Thus, ranking requires a combination of high-quality content marketing, technical SEO, and strong backlinks.

 

How do search engines discover new pages and blog posts?

Search engines use bots, also called spiders, which follow backlinks to discover new websites and content marketing. Once a page is found, internal links help crawl additional content.

Crawl depth depends on your website’s crawl budget.

Important websites receive extensive crawling, while less critical websites get less crawling.

 

What prevents search engines from crawling and indexing a page?

 

Sometimes, a “noindex” tag might be accidentally left, preventing indexing entirely.

 

Crawl Budget:

The crawl budget refers to the amount of time and resources a search engine spends crawling your business’s blog posts and pages.

Businesses often preserve crawl budgets by placing “noindex” tags on pages they don’t want indexed, like CMS login pages.

This ensures that crawling resources focus on valuable pages, such as newly written content marketing.

 

The two main factors influencing crawl budget are:

 

Crawl demand: How popular is your website? Popular sites, such as the BBC, have high crawl demand.

 

Crawl capacity: How quickly your website responds to crawler requests.

 

Site Maps:

Create a detailed flow diagram explaining how having a sitemap enhances business SEO, specifically for companies in Bristol. Every Bristol business aiming to improve its SEO should have an updated sitemap, essentially a “shopping list” that indicates the pages and blog posts the business wants indexed.

 

How do search engines determine a page rankings?

After crawling and indexing, search engines use SEO ranking factors to determine page positions.

Pages with quality backlinks and strong on-page SEO typically rank highly.

Conversely, pages lacking backlinks, or having thin content rarely rank well.

 

Are there any other factors that can prevent a page from getting indexed?

Search engines don’t crawl and index every page.

Pages deemed spam or containing thin content won’t be indexed.

Indexed pages require high-quality content and a strong E-E-A-T score (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Businesses publishing spam or low-quality content risk not being indexed.

 

HTTP Status Code Errors:

Pages returning HTTP errors (4xx or 5xx) prevent indexing.

For example, broken links causing 404 errors can’t be crawled and indexed.

 

The “noindex” tag:

A “noindex” tag left on a page prevents crawling and indexing.

 

Submitting your Site for indexing via Google Search Console:

You can manually submit URLs for indexing, speeding up crawling and indexing compared to waiting for natural crawling.

 

How Our Agency Can Help:

We have partnered with South West businesses for years, employing knowledgeable SEO consultants in Bristol with over 10 years of experience.

We know how to get companies on the first page.

 

Prices for local and organic SEO services start at just £ 1,000 per month, making them affordable for SMEs.

SEO is a slow process requiring long-term investment.

Even medium-competition industries can sometimes take over six months to rank on the first page of the search results.

 

However, we have a 100% success rate—every business we’ve worked with has achieved first-page rankings. For a no-obligation quote, call us today.

 

 

Organic Traffic: What It Is & How to Increase It (6 Ways)

 

Organic Traffic: How can our business improve our organic traffic/SEO?

 

Table of Contents

  • What exactly does organic traffic mean?
  • Why is organic traffic an important part of SEO?
  • How can you check the number of new visitors your website is obtaining each month?
  • How can our business improve organic visitor numbers?
  • Why is it important that we only implement white hat SEO?

 

Introduction

Regardless of what your business sells, you want more shoppers to visit your website. This is why businesses track their organic SEO performance. It basically tells you whether you’re getting one or a million visitors per month.

 

What exactly is organic traffic?

Simply put, organic traffic is the visitors that land on your main page or SEO blog post directly from the organic search engine results. Businesses want this traffic because it brings customers to the website, and a lot of it is also free traffic when done right. This is why businesses fight so fiercely to rank high on Google.

High-quality content marketing is key

Writing and creating high-quality content marketing to help customers is really important. The reason this is such an important part of the SEO process is quite simple: in order to rank highly in search engines, you need to supply good quality answers to questions.

For example, let’s say your company sells bikes—potentially thousands of businesses sell the same product. However, the page that ranks highest on Google’s organic results is the one that offers the best-quality answer in terms of expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

However, businesses need to understand this clearly: to rank highly for search terms with high search volumes, your content marketing must be of extremely high quality. You are literally sometimes competing against tens of thousands of other businesses to be ranked number 1 on Google. This is what makes search engine optimisation difficult, challenging, but also really interesting at the same time.

 

Why do businesses want to rank highly organically?

It’s a bit like finding a free car parking space outside an office in the city centre which you need to visit. It’s something you want—everyone prefers the free option if they can get it.

Businesses around the world, whether large or small, want to rank on the first page of Google in the organic results, because it can bring in free visitors to your business.
You can never underestimate the power of this because it can significantly boost your business.

Businesses can generate more online sales via social media advertising, increase brand awareness to get more direct traffic, and obviously pay for traffic through ads as well.

However, whether you’re a multinational company or a sole trader, generating more free traffic and visitors to your website is highly desirable if possible. This is why so many companies in Bristol pay us to get them ranked on page 1 of Google’s organic results.

Builds Authority

A business needs to build authority. You can achieve this through writing high quality content marketing, but you won’t succeed in the search engine results without building powerful backlinks as well. Links must have good domain authority, come from relevant sources, and be built in a white-hat way.

Increasing organic visitors to your website isn’t just about good-quality content marketing—there are hundreds of other variables at play that must also be improved, such as technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.

 

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) signals

This is a massive part of search engine optimisation. Basically, this is a framework that Google uses to assess how authoritative your blog posts, main pages, and evergreen content marketing are on your website are.

For example, with expertise, search engines know your author’s expertise—perhaps because you have linked to their LinkedIn profile?

Citations and backlinks, for example, improve your authority: how many links has the page obtained?

Real-world experience involves offering helpful advice and demonstrating that you’ve actually implemented what you’re talking about. For instance, a plumber talking about how to bleed a radiator would give helpful tips from recalling on an actual experience of doing this.

 

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness includes adding company policies, contact information, whether the domain has been live for a long period, and whether the company has been trading for a long time. Many SEO consultants also believe trustworthiness is tied to how many positive reviews the business has received.

 

How to Check Organic Traffic

The problem with organic SEO is that it can take a long time to build authority, trustworthiness, experience, and expertise.
Getting onto the first page through local SEO is typically easier than national SEO but can still take six months or more.

Therefore, there’s a long lag between when you start paying an SEO agency and when you start seeing results. Paid traffic, however, brings immediate results and customers but requires ongoing investment, unlike organic SEO.

 

Google Analytics

Monitor your organic traffic using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is amazing—it allows you to track organic visitors coming to your website in real time. It also lets you see how many organic visitors you received last month and to compare it to this month, to see if things are improving.

Google Analytics is brilliant, and businesses all across Bristol should use it because it helps analyse the bounce rate. The bounce rate shows how engaged or disengaged the visitor is.

For example, someone spending a long time browsing your site suggests an engaged shopper.
However, a disengaged shopper who spends only a few seconds on your homepage indicates you may need to redesign it to reduce the bounce rate.

 

What can cause organic traffic issues?

Crawlability problems

These could be crawl errors or issues with your website. For example, your main page could have a “no-index” tag, blocking search engines from indexing it. If the page is blocked, it won’t appear in search results, meaning no organic visitors.

 

Internal linking errors

Broken internal links can prevent people from visiting additional pages. Someone who enjoys reading a blog post and wants to continue reading more may leave if a link is broken, increasing the bounce rate.

 

Performance issues

Performance issues, such as slow loading speeds or glitches with the design, can increase your bounce rate. A higher bounce rate sends signals that visitors aren’t interested in your website, potentially lowering your organic ranking and reducing visitors and sales.

 

Keywords

When optimising your website, regardless of your business, some keywords have much higher search volumes than others. For instance, selling ladders might get thousands of searches per month, whereas niche products such as wooden ladders may receive fewer searches.

Optimising for high-volume keywords is harder, takes more time, and is costlier. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for but might bring fewer visitors and sales. Therefore, it’s a balancing act to optimise your site for both high-volume keywords and lower-competition terms to generate immediate and long-term traffic.

 

What could be causing our website not to get many organic visitors?

Many reasons can cause low organic visitor numbers. Generally speaking, the main factors are low-quality backlinks and poor quality content marketing.

However, any good SEO expert knows there are hundreds of factors to optimise for improved search engine results. Link velocity, keyword stuffing, and overly optimising your site can all harm rankings and result in penalties.

 

Why does SEO take so long?

SEO takes time because businesses ranking at the top of search engines can potentially get millions of visitors per month, significantly boosting sales. Companies invest heavily to maintain these positions, creating fierce competition.

SEO is a constant battle to rank highly, stay on the first page, and maintain a competitive advantage. If competitors improve while you slow down, your rankings can quickly fall.

 

Why should you pick Digital Tailors?

Digital Tailors have been around for a very long period. We only work with businesses that fully appreciate that organic SEO is a slow process. However, as the old Guinness saying goes, good things come to those who wait. Once businesses get a taste of ranking on the first page, they tend to stay with our agency long-term.

In our humble opinion, SEO is more effective than any other form of marketing SMEs could invest in because it targets customers actively searching for your products or services. We have extensive experience helping businesses in Bristol and the South West rank highly on search engines using white-hat SEO techniques. Don’t hesitate to contact us today.

What is link equity? (And what does it mean for SEO?)

 

What exactly is link equity? How can link juice be used to improve a business’s SEO

Introduction

Businesses globally, if they want to appear on page one of Google, typically need backlinks.

Additionally, the backlinks that need to be built must be of high quality and come from a relevant website.

The links should also pass “link equity” or “link juice,” which is the more powerful links, such as backlinks from leading brands and well-known companies. These will typically have a high DA score. This means that if your business obtains a do-follow backlink, it can send more link juice through to your website.

 

The most important ranking factor

For most businesses to be ranked on the first page of Google, they must improve their ranking factors. Backlinks are widely considered by SEO agencies globally as the most critical ranking factor, which Google and other search engines take as the most crucial factor when deciding how strong a business’s SEO is. Now, not all links are beneficial; some will help improve your SEO, while others will damage it.

The backlinks you want are do-follow and some no-follow, with well-written anchor text that is written in a white-hat manner and comes from a relevant website.

The links your business should avoid are spam links.

 

What does link equity mean?

Link equity is simply the strength of a backlink that’s linking to you.

For example, if your business has, say, 100 high-quality links linking to you, these are all beneficial links; they come from well-known brands and companies, which can significantly help improve the business’s search engine optimisation.

For example, what you will often find is that companies currently occupying the number one spot on Google are typically there because they have several high-quality backlinks. Some businesses, some global brands, can have thousands of quality links. This is what gives those businesses a higher Domain Authority (DA) score.

Google PageRank

Ever since Larry Page and the co-founders of Google created PageRank, links have been an essential way of deciphering how vital a company website is. For example, if it has good links, it will rank higher. Scott Hassan is the person who first programmed the initial code for Google, and it was thought from the start that backlinks were the key factor in determining how strong a business’s SEO is.

 

 

How is link equity determined?

The backlinks your business wants are quality links. These need to come from companies which have a high DA score.

 

Relevance

You will want to build links from businesses that have a high Domain Authority (DA) score. The links should also be relevant.

 

How do you obtain backlinks?

We believe the best way for any business to obtain high-quality links is to earn them. Businesses, therefore, need to publish well-written articles and content marketing, which has a very high Google E-EAT score. When this work is helpful, and the reader finds it useful, they may offer a link.

For example, a blogger may link to you. The best way to earn links is to remember that businesses should only seek to obtain quality links. If your business accumulates spam links, you need to talk to an SEO agency so that they can resolve the issue.

Should you buy backlinks?

The simple answer to that question is no.

Businesses should never buy links, as they are often spam.

 

Spam links can damage your SEO.

Therefore, your business needs high-quality links with a high DA score. Don’t build spam links, as this could mean the company receives a penalty.

What is a Google Penguin Penalty?

Businesses that build spam links, or low-quality links, can sometimes result in a business obtaining too many spam links, which can lead to a link penalty. A link penalty can tell the website is de-indexed, which means it’s removed from Google altogether. This is because Google doesn’t want websites to use spam links. The only links which should be built are quality links.

 

How does your SEO agency build links?

We have worked for several businesses in Bristol. The way we build links is always the same; we use Moz Pro to look for link-building opportunities. We may then approach the company, ask if we can write a piece of content marketing or offer our expertise in an upcoming article, in return for a link. Yet we do not buy links.

We believe that the best way for any business to build links is by creating content marketing with a high Google E-EAT score. The work must be original, well-written, and helpful.

These pages can then attract quality links if your business offers helpful advice.