YMYL and E-E-A-T for Therapy Websites: What They Mean and What to Do
Agencies use these terms to worry you. The ideas are simpler than that, and the fixes are things a good therapy website does anyway.
Key takeaways
- YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life, Google's label for topics that can affect health, safety or finances.
- Mental health is in that group, so Google looks for stronger signs of who wrote a page and whether to trust it.
- E-E-A-T is a way to judge quality. It isn't a switch or a score you can turn up.
- The fixes are practical: real authorship, visible credentials, honest claims, current details and clear contact information.
- There's no hidden penalty for ignoring YMYL, but anonymous, generic pages have little reason to rank.
If you've talked to an SEO agency lately, you've probably heard "YMYL" and "E-E-A-T" in the same breath as "your site might be suppressed." It's meant to worry you. The ideas behind the words are simple, and they mostly describe what a careful therapist's website should do anyway.
What YMYL means
YMYL is short for Your Money or Your Life. Google uses it in the guidelines it gives its human search quality raters, for topics where bad information could hurt someone's health, safety or finances. Mental health falls squarely in that group.
Those raters don't rank your page. Their scores help Google test and improve its systems. But the guidelines show what Google's systems are trying to reward, which makes them a useful guide.
What E-E-A-T means
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. In Google's guidelines, trust is the most important of the four. Google describes E-E-A-T as a way to judge quality, not as a single ranking score or a setting. You can't turn it on.
What you can do is make it easy for a reader, and for Google, to see who wrote a page, why they're qualified, and whether to believe them.
What this looks like on a therapy site
- A real name and photo on your About page and your articles
- Your license type, regulator and number where your rules allow, plus your training and affiliations
- Bylines on blog posts, with a published date and an updated date
- First-hand detail, like "In my work with couples...", rather than textbook summaries
- Claims you can stand behind, with no promises of cure or guaranteed results
- Links to reputable sources when you cite research
- Crisis information somewhere easy to find
- A clear way to contact you, and an address or service area
- Current fees, hours and policies that match your Google Business Profile
- A privacy policy and a secure (https) site
For more on building trust without client quotes, see Can you put testimonials on a therapy website?.
What you don't need to worry about
There's no hidden penalty for "ignoring YMYL." Nothing flips on your site. What happens instead is quieter. A page with no author, no credentials and generic advice gives Google little reason to choose it over the many others on the topic, and gives a nervous reader little reason to call.
Be wary of anyone who sells "YMYL compliance" as a product. It's a lens, not a certification.
AI-written content and trust
Google has said it cares whether content is helpful, not how it was made. Even so, text that could have been written about any therapist by anyone adds nothing. Your clinical experience is the part nobody else can copy, so put it on the page. If you use AI to draft, edit it until it sounds like you and is accurate, and never publish a clinical claim you haven't checked.
A one-hour audit
- Open your About page. Can a stranger find your name, license, training and photo in 30 seconds?
- Open three blog posts. Is there a byline and a date on each?
- Search your pages for promises like "cure," "guarantee" and "always," and rewrite them.
- Check your contact page for a phone number or form, and a location or service area.
- Add a crisis line to your footer.
- Make sure your fees, hours and policies match your Google Business Profile.
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