Listener (4:35)

Okay.

Grumpy SEO Guy (4:35)

First of all, hopefully you know by now that quality of content is not a ranking factor, but we're gonna talk more about that in this episode. But understanding the fact that content cannot be good or bad is vital, because if you understand that, you immediately understand that ranking cannot possibly be directly influenced by quality of content.

Listener (5:00)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (5:00)

But don't worry. If you're new to this, we're gonna take a little bit of time and explain this. So before we talk about content, though, I want to talk about songs, okay? Like a song. So I want to ask you a question. Is there such thing as a good song? Okay, so somebody's going to tell you a song they like, and they're going to say, this is a good song, which. Well, just because you like that song doesn't mean someone else will like that song, because everybody is different, okay? What you think is a good song is not going to be what someone else thinks is a good song. So then they're gonna say, well, this song got a million downloads, therefore it's a good song. Well, no, that means it's a popular song.

Listener (5:41)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (5:42)

Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good. But keep this in mind. This is important for SEO. Or they're gonna say, well, it's number one on the charts. Well, again, that just means it's popular. That doesn't necessarily mean it's good.

Listener (5:57)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (5:58)

Same thing with art. If you have a painting or something and you show it to somebody and you say, is this a good painting? They might say it's a good painting. Someone else might say, it's not a good painting. That doesn't mean they're right or wrong. It means it's art. And there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Most content is very similar to that. Now, let's talk about content for a second. Content can be correct or incorrect. And I would concur that correct content is good.

Listener (6:26)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (6:27)

But not everybody is looking for, like, data and facts when they're searching for something on the Internet, okay? Sometimes they want to know what somebody thinks about a thing. And opinions and editorials and such cannot be good or bad, okay? They're just thoughts. They can't be good or bad necessarily.

Listener (6:43)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (6:44)

So if you're searching for something that you know is factual data, Right. Then yes, you probably want something that's correct. But usually that's not what people are wanting to find.

Listener (6:54)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (6:54)

So anyway, look, here's an example. So let me ask you a Question. Have you ever searched for something online and you click the first result and then you start, like, looking at the page and it's not what you were looking for. Okay, so you click back, maybe. I'm not saying it's not helpful, but it wasn't helpful to you.

Listener (7:10)

Okay.

Grumpy SEO Guy (7:11)

It wasn't good to. To you. Okay, so does that mean it wasn't good? Well, not necessarily. It might be what somebody else wants, but it wasn't good to you. Okay, I think I told the story once before in another episode, but I had a video file and I wanted to extract the sound from it. I wanted to be able to listen to it later but not have, like a big video file, right? And so I don't remember what I searched, but I searched for something and it was like. And there was some result that was ranking that said, here's how you do it. Find the video on your computer, rename it as an MP3, and that's how you save the audio from a video. Like, no, that's. That's. First of all, that wasn't even correct. That's not how you do it. But that was ranking. So must be good, huh? Of course not. Of course not. Obviously. Anyway, so, like, I mean, that's not how you do it, but that website was ranking. So by the logic of the people who say good content ranks well, that must be good. Anyways, look, content can be correct or incorrect. It can be helpful or unhelpful. It can be relevant or not relevant. It can be ready, popular or not popular, but it can't be good or bad. So I've mentioned this before, but I think this is a good question to think about because it will help you understand how search engines work. So I want you to imagine somebody asked you to write a program that will tell you if a song is good or not.

Listener (8:42)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (8:43)

Now obviously you can't write a program that will listen to the song and then tell you an opinion because it's a program. Okay, well, maybe at some point you'll be able to do that, but I don't think that technology exists presently. Anyway, look, so how would you do it? If you had to write a program that would tell you if a song is good or not, how would you do that? One thing you could look at would be number of downloads, okay? You could reasonably argue that if a song has more downloads, it's probably because it's a better song, okay? If it has more downloads, more people probably like it. It's probably a good song. Now, this doesn't mean that all the people who listen to the song like it.

Listener (9:24)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (9:26)

But probably it's a pretty good song. If it's got a lot of downloads, okay? It's probably good enough that a lot of people want to listen to it.

Listener (9:33)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (9:34)

That would be one way to write a program that would tell you how good a song is. Okay, now let's think about search engines for a second. Search engines can't read your content and know if it's good or not, okay? They can tell what the topic is, okay? They can tell what it has relevancy for, but they can't tell if it's good or or not. So one way that they can check to see if they think it's good is by using authority.

Listener (9:57)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (9:58)

Now let's continue with the thought. If a website has a lot of authority, that's because it has good backlinks, okay? If it has good backlinks, that's probably because a lot of people like it and it's probably fairly good, okay? Now that doesn't mean it's good. It means it's probably good because search engines have to use things like authority, which is basically just popularity, as a proxy for good, okay? Just like the program you wrote to determine if a song is good used downloads to tell if it's good or not, it used downloads as a proxy, okay? When a search engine is trying to determine how good content is, they are using authority. Because if a website has authority, it has a lot of good backlinks. And if it has a lot of good backlinks, there is a good chance if it has good content, okay? That's how it works. So all these people that are telling you that good content somehow ranks by itself. Not only are those people telling you stuff that is wrong, but it can't possibly be true, because search engines can't tell if content is good or bad. They have to do it this other way. They have to. That's how they work, okay? So you got all these people saying, content is king. Just write really good content. But those people are lying to you because that's not how SEO works. That's not how search engines determine rank. It doesn't work that way. I don't know really what else to say. But let me tell you what I really think about this, okay? Because look, you've got all these people that are saying, content is king. Just write really good content, okay? And then you've got me, and I'm saying, no, it's about authority and not about how good your content Is because content literally can't be good or bad, okay? It's just content. And you're ranking based on relevancy and, you know, authority, which is basically popularity. So that's how SEO works. But then you've got all these people that are telling you that content is king, and they're selling courses, and the courses basically just tell you to write really good content. And there are agencies and businesses and consultants that are telling you, oh, we will do SEO for you. We will write really good content for you, and it will make you rank better. And my inbox has many dozens of messages from people that said, hey, grumpy SEO guy. We worked with some agency. All they did was write content. It didn't do anything. Then we worked with a different agency, they wrote content, it didn't do anything. Then we worked with another agency, they wrote content. It didn't do anything. Then we found your podcast and the stuff that you say makes sense, and now we're doing it, and our rank is increasing. Well, first of all, I'm very happy that your rank is increasing. I'm very glad that you told me this. But of course your rank is increasing, because what I teach is SEO. Many people who are teaching SEO don't have any experience doing SEO. It confuses me how somebody could do SEO for six months and still think content is king. There is no way you can do. Because, look, everybody starts with content is king. Because that's the first thing you hear. Write good content and you will get to the top of the search engines. But it doesn't work. There's no way that anyone has ever written really good content and somehow ranked, with very few exceptions, One, if you have very small competition. Two, if you're writing for a website that already has bunches of authority, okay, if you're writing content for an established website, yes, you can write content and it will rank, but it has nothing to do with how good your content is, and it has everything to do with your domain's authority.

Listener (13:45)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (13:46)

So anyway, look, look, nobody, nobody can do SEO for more than six months and think content is king. Nobody could do that. They are. They are lying to you and they are scamming you because it does not work that way, okay? There is no such thing as good content. There is no such thing as we're going to write content that's going to make you rank better. But there are lots of people who will take your money and deliver content to you, and it will not improve your rank.

Listener (14:14)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (14:15)

So I actually. I actually think, like, this is. This is. This is honestly what I think. I think a lot of people understand that authority is a thing, but they are intimidated by it, and they don't want to modify their business strategy, okay? Which is to write SEO content for people. And because, by the way, there's a lot of people paying the money to do this, right? But. But even though the people selling content and telling you it will make you rank higher are scammers, okay? They are scammers because quality of content is not a ranking factor, okay? But they don't want to invest in a private blog portfolio because it costs a lot of money to do it, okay? Takes a lot of work. It takes months and lots of money to do it. So it's not like you can just start doing it now. It takes a while to build it up. I explain this in episodes where I explain how to build a private blog portfolio. And so they don't want to do that. So here's what they do instead of saying, because, okay, so you got to think about it like this. Somebody who really wants to do SEO, right? They're going to eventually realize that writing content does not rank anybody. It does not rank anybody, okay? Everybody. Not everybody. Many websites have good content, okay? I would say that in most cases, the quality of your content is not the reason you're not ranking, okay? Like, I can. I can think of a very, very tiny number of cases. I actually. I can't. I can't even think of any cases where the quality of it. Now, look, there are. There are on site factors that can keep you from ranking, okay? But quality of content is not one of them. So, look, I can't picture a scenario where somebody who tries to help people do SEO would continue to peddle the lie that content is king, because it's not. After six months, they would realize that it's not. When none of their clients ever rank better because they're writing really good content, they would realize it, okay? But for some reason, there is an industry around this, and if people are paying you a lot of money to write SEO content, you're probably gonna keep writing SEO content, but you're also gonna lose your clients because they're all gonna email me and say that all that content you wrote didn't do anything for them. So, like, whatever. Anyway, look, but when somebody. Look, here's the thing. When somebody's beliefs are challenged, okay, what they often will do, okay, is double down on their beliefs, okay? So when somebody who actually thinks, or maybe doesn't think, but says that content Is king.

Listener (16:57)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (16:57)

When they hear, oh, no, it's about authority, they aren't going to say, wait a minute, maybe I should look into this authority thing. Maybe there's something to that. Or what they are going to do is say, oh, no, no, that's wrong. It's not about authority. It's about content is king. Look, this person says content is king, and this person says, content is king, and therefore, it's right. And I don't know what anyone's talking about. Talking about authority. It's all about content. They're gonna double down because it is a threat to their livelihood. Okay, so this. This kind of reminds me of Ultimate Fighting Championship when it first started. So I've talked about this before, but I'm gonna talk about it again because I think it's related here. Okay? So when. When ultimate fighting championship, UFC, when that began, and this was, like, in the mid-90s, the reason they created UFC was to find out what is the best martial art. And what happened was the. The people who did Brazilian Jiu jitsu consistently won. Now, yes, there were some other people who won, but in the beginning years of ufc, the Brazilian Jiu jitsu people consistently won. And so the people who did other styles of martial arts. Right, like kung fu and Taekwondo and karate, and. Look, I'm not. I'm not disrespecting any martial arts. I like martial arts. But I'm just telling you what happened with ufc, okay? The people who did these other styles, they would constantly lose. And so what do you think happened? Do you think these people said, hey, guys, wait a minute. We keep losing to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu people, we should study Brazilian Jiu jitsu? Or maybe if we don't want to learn the whole art, at least learn how to defend against it. Or do you think they just made excuses for why they kept losing and doubled down on how their art was better? It was that one. Okay, that kind of doesn't make any sense, but that's what happened. So you. I'm gonna explain why that happened, because I. This is also kind of related to SEO. But one thing that you have to understand is that, like, in the up until UFC happened, there were lots of arguments about what was the best style of martial art. But, like, nobody knew what Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was, so everybody did, like, a regular martial art.

Listener (18:58)

And. Right.

Grumpy SEO Guy (18:59)

And so everybody was, like, arguing, oh, this one is the best, or that one's the best, whatever. And then they created Ultimate Fighting Championship to find out what actually was the best. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit now about why these people had this reaction.

Listener (19:14)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (19:15)

So if you've been studying a martial art for your whole life, okay, Actually, I actually want you to imagine you've been studying a martial art for your whole life, and then suddenly, like, you lose and other people who do your style lose, and other people who do this other style keep winning, okay? There's. There's a little bit of ego there. There's probably a lot of ego because, like, even though martial arts are kind of about not having an ego, like, it's also about being physically powerful and able to defeat somebody. So if you are losing consistently, that's gonna be a little bit bad for your ego. And what's really weird is if you have been thinking that you're really great at something for a really long time because you've never actually fought against somebody who knows what they're doing, and then you fight somebody who knows what they're doing and you lose, that's also going to be difficult, okay? So that's. That's part one. Part two is a lot of these people probably also ran their own martial arts schools, okay? So I want you to imagine you are a martial arts teacher and you have a lot of students, okay? And you're teaching a certain style of martial arts, and then suddenly it becomes. I don't want to say common knowledge, but it becomes popularly known that there is another style of martial art that is consistently beating everybody.

Listener (20:33)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (20:34)

And so I want you to imagine going to your students and saying, hey, guys, I know I've been teaching you this stuff for years, but there's actually this other style. We need to go learn that style instead.

Listener (20:48)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (20:49)

What's going to happen? You're going to lose your business, okay? So not only is your ego involved, but there is incentive for you to not lose your business. So instead of saying that, what you would say is, those guys are wrong. They don't know what they're doing. UFC is rigged. Blah, blah, blah. Like, those are. Those are. Those are just excuses. Anyway, it's very interesting now if you've been following ufc, I'm not really like that into it anymore, but, you know, in the last year, 15 or 20 years, everybody pretty much trains the same way. They all. All the fighters pretty much look the same. Their styles are pretty much the same because they have found out what works, okay? In the beginning, it was very different. You had a guy from this style, a guy from that style, these other styles, whatever, that's fine. But now they Found out what works and what doesn't work. So they all train in one very certain way, okay? Which again, makes sense. It makes sense to do it that way. Anyway, let's talk about SEO for a second. If you've been teaching people that content is king, quality of content is a ranking factor, and all this other stuff, you probably. Okay, a couple things. One, you probably have a lot of customers, okay? So you don't wanna lose your customers cause they're paying you. You probably have a lot of, I don't know, students or whatever. Maybe you're like an online SEO teacher or something, whatever, that's fine. And you don't wanna tell them something else because then they're gonna lose respect for you and they're gonna go somewhere else, right? And you're gonna lose your money, you're gonna lose your income. So what do you do? You double down on the fact that content is king. And then you say, oh, authority. Oh, that's manipulation. You can't do that. That's black hat methods. But ultimately, what you're doing is making excuses for why something that's not what you do is wrong, okay? So I tell you that quality of content is not a ranking factor, because it's not.

Listener (22:41)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (22:42)

And if quality of content was a ranking factor, I would tell you that it is. If quality of content suddenly became a ranking factor, I would tell you, hey, guys, you should write really good content and forget about all this authority stuff, okay? But that's not how SEO works, so I'm not going to tell you that, okay? Like, I don't. And also this podcast is free, so I don't even care, you know, like, whatever. I'm not. I'm not losing. I'm not losing any. I'm not losing any, like, income from, like, people buying courses, because I don't have any courses. I just teach for free on this podcast. But it's very. It's very similar. And by the way, let's talk about martial arts again, because I know if somebody's wondering. For my whole life, I had studied traditional martial arts on and off, on and off. And then one day I was sparring with a Brazilian jiu jitsu person who, by the way, was a beginner, okay? And he wiped the floor with me in like 30 seconds. It was sad and awesome. And I was like, hey, I need to learn this. And I started training with them so that I was. I was like 22 at the time. And nobody really knew what Brazilian jiu jitsu was at the time. Everybody had Just studied like a, like a, like a regular martial art, right? And then like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu comes onto the scene and start, like beating everybody all the time. And so anyway, I have said before on a different topic that, that and I truly, I truly think this. If somebody has had one week or perhaps one month of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lessons, they will probably be able to beat somebody who has been training a regular martial art for a year. I'm actually not joking.

Listener (24:24)

Okay.

Grumpy SEO Guy (24:26)

I'm actually not joking. Like, of course anything can happen. But I would say that the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu person with one week or one month of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lessons would probably win. Okay, now let's talk about SEO again. If you understand backlinks, okay? If you understand backlinks for like a couple. If you've been studying backlinks for like a couple months. Cause it's kinda. There's a learning curve.

Listener (24:50)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (24:51)

If you've been studying backlinks for a couple months by listening to this podcast, by the way, you will probably outrank somebody who has been writing high quality content for years.

Listener (25:01)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (25:01)

Because that is not a ranking factor. But backlinks are a ranking factor. Good quality backlinks are a ranking factor.

Listener (25:08)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (25:08)

So same thing, kind of. Like one thing is very effective and you should focus most of your time and energy into it, and the other thing doesn't really work the way people think it does. Best example I can think of, I have probably just bothered half of my martial arts doing listeners. So sorry, guys, but agree or disagree, that's basically what happened with ufc. Again, I think all martial arts are cool. I would never say anything bad about anyone's martial art, because I think I actually do really like all martial arts. But UFC went in a certain direction. People who were losing consistently had a whole bunch of excuses. Just like the people who say that content is king come up with all these excuses when they can't rank, or actually they don't. What they usually do is disappear and never come back to that discussion because they know that they're wrong on some level, but they still have paying customers who are buying content from them. So, you know, they're probably gonna keep writing content for people anyway. This made sense to me. I don't know if it actually makes sense to you, but I hope it did. I understand the, the, the saying that content is king. Let me. I understand it. I think to some extent. It's very. I think it's taken extraordinarily out of context. Somebody heard somebody say Content is king. I could probably do another episode on this topic, but somebody heard somebody say, content is king, and they maybe purposefully misinterpreted that to mean, like, well, if you write good content, you will rank better. That's not what it means at all. That is not what it means at all.

Listener (26:52)

But.

Grumpy SEO Guy (26:53)

But there's a ton of people that are scamming you, selling you content, writing services, telling you that it's gonna make you rank better, and it's not. So I am comfortable saying they are scammers because they are scammers. I'm not sure that all of them understand that content isn't king, but I'm sure that some of them do, because, look, if you're making a lot of money selling SEO courses and you've got a lot of followers on your social media and you're telling people content is king and they're eating it up, you're probably not gonna change and go, hey, guys, wait a minute. I was wrong. Cause then you're gonna lose all the money that you're making. But as I said, you guys know the truth. Cause you listen to grumpy SEO guy, and what's awesome is, if you don't believe me, I don't even care. Go write really good content. But please bookmark this podcast, because in six months, when you're not ranking any better, because quality of content is not a ranking factor, I want you to come back and listen to this podcast, because I teach for free how to actually rank in this podcast.

Listener (27:57)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (27:57)

You might want to start with the episodes called the four things you need to rank. Okay, here's a preview. I'll tell you what they are right now. One, we just did an episode on this, like, a couple of weeks ago. One, no penalties. You need to make sure you do not have a penalty. Your highest priority in SEO is avoiding penalties.

Listener (28:16)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (28:16)

Number two, you need content. This has nothing to do with how good the content is, but it has everything to do with. You need something on your website. Next. Content also helps create relevancy, which is, you know about. What is your website discussing? You know, are you talking about dishwashers? Are you talking about washing machines? Like, what are you. What. What is the. What is the purpose of your website? That's relevancy. Which brings us to number three. Relevancy. Your website needs to have a focus, okay? It is relevant for some keywords, and it is not relevant for other keywords. That is determined by two things. One, content. And two, backlinks, specifically anchor text.

Listener (28:57)

Okay?

Grumpy SEO Guy (28:58)

And Also, specifically, the kind of websites that you're getting backlinks from. And number four, you need authority. Authority is provided with backlinks. Okay, you need all four of those. You do not need three of them. You need all four of them. One, no penalties. Two, three, Relevancy. Four, authority. Those are the four things you need to rank. It has nothing to do with how good your content is or any of the other nonsense that most people are trying to tell you or teach you in courses that you paid too much money for. Because if you paid even $1 for a course that tells you to write good content, unfortunately you were tricked into buying something that you shouldn't have bought anyway. It's great because you can think whatever you want. And I'm just telling you, this is how we do it. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on the Internet that teaches real SEO. Most people either don't teach it or they say content is king. Or they tell you other stuff like dwell time or user experience or other things that aren't even really. Ranking factors might have a small role, but ultimately it's not worth concerning yourself with at this point. Okay, we talk more about that later if you want to, but I don't know. I don't know what else to say. Quality of content is not a ranking factor. And to drive the point home, because content cannot be good or bad. If content cannot be good or bad, it cannot possibly be a ranking factor. That doesn't even make any sense that anyone would say it is. I think the Internet would be awesome if quality of content was a ranking factor, but it's not. Okay, authority is. And authority is basically a popularity contest. Again, remember music and songs? What's a good song? Can a program tell if a song is good? No, but it can determine how popular a song is. And the assumption is that popular songs are good. Okay, that's not always true, but it's a safe assumption if you have to write software to determine how good a song is. Okay, is authority the ultimate marker for how good content is? No, of course not. But since search engines can't tell how good content is, they have to use authority instead. I don't know what else to tell you. I hope you don't think content is king, but if you do, like I said, give it a couple months. And if you're still not ranking and you won't be, please come back to this podcast and learn how to do real content SEO. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe. And if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday for another episode.