YMYL · SEO GLOSSARY
Life Coach YMYL Content
YMYL content standards for life coaches — coaching vs therapy boundary, scope-of-practice statements, mental health referral recommendations, crisis resources, and named ICF/EMCC authorship on wellbeing content.
Definition
Life coach YMYL content standards: (1) **Coaching vs therapy boundary**: coaching supports psychologically well people who want to grow or achieve goals; therapy supports people in distress or with mental health conditions — this distinction must be explicitly stated on any page discussing emotional, mental health, or wellbeing topics; (2) **Scope statements**: "coaching is not a substitute for therapy or medical advice" — include on confidence coaching, anxiety coaching, burnout coaching, and any wellbeing-adjacent service pages; (3) **Mental health referral**: recommend consulting a GP or mental health professional before or alongside coaching if the client is experiencing clinical anxiety, depression, trauma, or other mental health conditions; (4) **Crisis resources**: on any page discussing anxiety, stress, burnout, or mental health adjacent topics — Samaritans 116 123, Mind 0300 123 3393, Crisis Text Line SHOUT 85258; (5) **Named credential authorship**: all wellbeing-adjacent content must be attributed to the named ICF/EMCC/AC-credentialled coach — anonymous wellbeing content fails YMYL quality assessment; (6) **Accurate claims**: do not claim coaching "treats" anxiety, burnout, or depression — frame as "working through presentation anxiety", "developing strategies for managing workplace stress"; (7) **Evidence representation**: coaching outcome evidence is largely practitioner case study level, not RCT — represent the nature of the evidence accurately.
Why it matters for SEO
Life coaching content touching mental health, anxiety, burnout, or emotional wellbeing is assessed with YMYL scrutiny despite coaching being outside the clinical domain. The coaching/therapy boundary is the most common quality assessment failure on life coach websites.
How DeepSEOAnalysis checks this
DeepSEOAnalysis validates named ICF/EMCC authorship in Article schema on wellbeing content pages, checks server-rendering of structured data, and identifies pages where YMYL-adjacent content lacks credential attribution.
Useful tools and resources
GLOSSARY
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