What Wellness and Nutrition Brands Need to Know About E-E-A-T and YMYL

How to optimize your wellness and health content for E-E-A-T

Wellness and nutrition brands must put a priority on content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust (E-E-A-T).

As a YMYL or Your Money Your Life website, Google holds your website and content to higher standards than non-YMYL websites. Websites that sell products or provide services or information that can impact the happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users are categorized by Google as YMYL.

Wellness, nutrition, health, and supplement websites are examples of YMYL sites. As the owner of such a website, you need to make sure your content and website meets Google’s expectations for quality, research, and authorship. It is important as an YMYL site, your content clearly demonstrates E-E-A-T.

What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust:

Experience:

To truly demonstrate experience, your content needs to feel like it’s coming from someone who has lived the topic. This goes beyond a simple bio.

Experience To Do’s:

• Go beyond the bio. While a detailed author bio is crucial, weave the author’s personal experience directly into the content itself. For example, instead of just saying “a certified nutritionist,” a blog post might say, “As someone who has personally struggled with managing blood sugar, I’ve found that incorporating [specific food] into my daily routine has made a significant difference.” This makes the content more relatable and authentic.
• Feature case studies and testimonials. Use anonymized case studies or success stories from clients (with their permission, of course) to demonstrate how your advice or products have helped real people. This provides tangible proof of your experience and impact.
• Show, don’t just tell. Include photos or videos of the author preparing healthy meals, demonstrating a workout routine, or using a specific supplement. Visual proof adds a layer of authenticity that text alone cannot.
• Highlight product experience. If you’re a brand selling a product, have the author share their personal journey with it. Discuss the formulation process, the reasons for choosing certain ingredients, and the personal benefits they’ve experienced.

Expertise:

Expertise is about proving your knowledge and credentials. This isn’t just about a one-time bio; it’s about consistently showcasing why your content is trustworthy.

Expertise To Do’s:

• Display professional credentials prominently. Don’t just list certifications; provide links to the professional organizations that issued them (e.g., Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American Medical Association). This allows users and search engines to verify your qualifications.
• List academic degrees and relevant education. Clearly state the author’s educational background, including their degree, university, and field of study. For example, “John Doe, Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from [University Name].”
• Showcase affiliations and memberships. If the author is a member of any professional bodies or associations (e.g., a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, a Certified Personal Trainer), list these affiliations. This shows they are actively engaged in their professional community.
• Make contact information easy to find. As you noted, this is critical. A dedicated “Contact Us” page with a physical address (if applicable), phone number, and professional email address builds trust. For businesses, a clear “About Us” page detailing the company’s mission and team members is essential.

Authoritativeness:

Authoritativeness is about being recognized as a go-to source in your industry. It’s built over time through consistent, high-quality content and external recognition.

Authoritativeness To Do:

• Create a dedicated author profile page. Beyond a short bio, have a full page for each author. This page should include a professional head shot, their full credentials, a list of their published works (on and off your site), and links to their social media profiles (especially professional ones like LinkedIn). This establishes them as a real, accountable person.
• Use schema markup. For your author pages, use author and person schema markup. This helps search engines understand who the author is and associate their content with their profile.
• Publish content regularly and consistently. A consistent publication schedule signals to both users and search engines that your site is a reliable source of fresh, relevant information.
• Engage with the community. Have your authors participate in Q&A sessions, webinars, or social media discussions related to their field. This extends their authority beyond your website and builds a following.

Trust:

Trust is the ultimate goal of E-E-A-T. It’s the cumulative result of demonstrating experience, expertise, and authority, but it also has its own unique components.

Trust To Do’s:

• Focus on high-quality, well-researched content. This is the foundation. Every claim, especially on a YMYL site, must be backed by evidence.
• Use endnotes and citations. As you mentioned, this is crucial. Link directly to peer-reviewed studies, reputable health organizations (like the CDC, WHO, or NIH), and academic journals. Avoid linking to other blogs or anecdotal sources as your primary evidence.
• Make your policies transparent. Have clear, easy-to-find pages for your Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and Refund Policy. This is a baseline requirement for any trustworthy e-commerce or informational site.
• Display security and trust badges. If you have an e-commerce component, feature SSL certificates and secure payment icons prominently on checkout pages.
• Manage user-generated content. If your site has a comments section, forum, or product reviews, actively moderate them to ensure the information is accurate and helpful. Address any negative feedback professionally and promptly.
• Consider a medical or editorial review board. For health and wellness content, having a panel of qualified professionals who review and approve content before publication can significantly boost trustworthiness. Display their names and credentials on your site.

What is YMYL?

YMYL stands for Your Money Your Life. Websites that sell products or provide services or information that can impact the happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users are categorized by Google as YMYL.

Google categorizes the following websites as YMYL sites:

• News and current events
• Civics, government, and law
• Finance
• Shopping
• Health and safety
• Groups of people
• Other (fitness and nutrition, housing information, choosing a college, finding a job, etc.)

While Google expects all websites to have a beneficial purpose – it’s extra critical for wellness and nutrition websites to clearly prove the purpose or reason behind every page on the website.

Here is what Google says in section 2.3 of the Quality Rater Guidelines about YMYL sites:

Important: For pages about clear YMYL topics, we have very high Page Quality rating standards because low quality pages on such topics could potentially negatively impact a person’s health, financial stability, or safety, or the welfare or well-being of society.

And this table from Google explains experience and expertise in YMYL content:

How Wellness and Nutrition Brands can Optimize for E-E-A-T

Wellness and nutrition brands can optimize for E-E-A-T with these 9 steps:

1. Review your content for quality – make sure you can answer yes to these Google content and quality questions:

• Does the content provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?
• Does the content provide a substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?
• Does the main heading or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the comment?
• Does the main heading or page title avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature?

2. Review your content for expertise – make sure you can answer yes to these Google expertise questions:

• Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s About page?
• If someone researched the site producing the content, would you come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic?
• Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?

3. Make sure it’s clear who wrote your content. Every single blog or article on your website needs an author bio.

Here is my bio, it clearly communicates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust:

Jane Phelps is the CEO and co-founder of Know Agency, a specialist in organic search for leadership for health and wellness brands. Jane started Know Agency in 2010 focused on the nutritional supplement space. With her hands-on experience working in the health and wellness space, Jane is a public speaker and conference presenter at industry trade shows, networking events, and conferences on search and digital marketing strategies for wellness and nutrition brands.

4. Update your About Us Your About Us page should clearly explain what you do, why you do it, and why you’re qualified to do it.

Include reviews and testimonials from customers and clients.

5. Make it easy for people to contact you. Include your contact information, including email address and phone number in the footer of every page. Include a Contact Us link in your main menu.

6. Prove trust with endnotes or inline links to your research and content sources. Every statement about health, wellness, or nutrition needs to have a research reference.

This Pure For You blog, is a great example of how to use endnotes.

7. Audit your content for information quality and helpfulness. Remove filler content, pages with thin content, and misleading page titles and headings.

In section 7.0 of the Google Quality Rater guidelines, this sentence stands out:

High quality pages serve a beneficial purpose and achieve that purpose well. High quality pages exist for almost any beneficial purpose you can imagine, from providing information to selling products to making people laugh to artistic expression.

Use our Helpful Content Quality Checklists to make sure your content meets Google’s standards for content helpfulness, expertise, presentation, layout, and quality.

8. Refresh and update your content for search intent and keywords. Google likes to rank and trust content that is up-to-date and relevant.

Search intent is the problem, question, or query a person wants solved. This determines what they ask Google and the type of device they use to ask their questions. Create content that meets search intent – remember this can change based on the season, trends, and news cycle.

Read Your Complete Guide to Search Intent to learn how to optimize for search intent.

9. Create content hubs or topic clusters to demonstrate expertise. A content hub is a collection of blog posts about a specific topic.

This Ahrefs article explains how to create content hubs.

As a wellness or nutrition brand, your priority is on creating informative helpful content that demonstrates E-E-A-T.

Our team is here to help you with this. At Know Agency we specialize in organic search and paid search marketing expertise and leadership for health and wellness brands.

Contact Know Agency for help or any questions you may have.  We are here to help!