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This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 81, how to tell whether or not something is likely to be a ranking factor. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because I regularly get asked the question or I see questions that are. Something along these lines, hey, is this a ranking factor? Hey, what about this? Hey, does this thing matter? Okay, I'm going to tell you how to answer all those questions. Well, I'm going to tell you how. I'm going to tell you my way to answer them. I'll be truthful with you. I don't know if this is right, but it seems to be right. So. Okay, let me give you an example of some of these questions. Okay, let me give you examples of some of these questions. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. People will say things like, hey, does number of clicks matter? Hey, does dwell time, meaning how long you stay on the page matter? Does dwell time matter? Hey, does number of impressions, does that matter? Hey, does site speed, does that matter? Hey, do all these other things. Okay, so you get what I mean, right? Because I talk about authority a lot. Authority matters. We all know authority matters. But what about all these other things? I'm going to tell you how to. I'm not going to tell you the answer to these questions. I'm going to tell you how to answer these questions. Okay, let's talk about page loading speed. Okay, let's talk about. I'm going to use some of These as examples. Let's talk about page loading speed. Does page loading speed matter? Is a fast page going to rank higher than a slower page? Okay, this is how I answer every question I ask myself. Sometimes I ask you, how hard is it to fake this thing or to do this thing? How hard is it? And if this doesn't make sense now, don't worry, it's going to make sense. Okay, now that doesn't necessarily fit nicely with the topic of page speed, but don't worry, it's going to make sense. Let's talk about page speed for a second. Page speed means how long does your website take to load? If you load it, I mean, if you see it in the search results and you, you know, go to that website, how long does it take to load? Does it take seconds or does it take minutes? Everybody makes a big deal out of page speed. They're like, well, if you make your page load faster, oh, hey, look at this. Here's my page loading speed time. Here's my page loading speed score. Okay, let's talk about if that's an important ranking factor or not.
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Okay?
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How easy is it to make a fast webpage? If page loading speed was a big deal, people would just make web pages in Notepad. They would make HTML files in Notepad with no images and they would load very quickly. They would load almost immediately and they would be at the top of the search engines. And all those fancy web pages with pictures and, you know, dropdown menus and all the fancy things, right? No, those, nope. Those webpages take too long to load. They would not rank. They would be outranked by very basic HTML webpages with no pictures. Obviously that's not the case. Obviously page loading speed is not a concern to the extent that people make it. Now I'm just gonna give you like a little side note here, okay? We had a client once who their domain took over a minute to load. It was ridiculous. The reason for that is they had a lot of images on their site and these were enormous images, okay? And none of them had been resized, so they all required a bunch of time to load. Okay, but the images were being resized. But they were being resized as they were being displayed.
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Okay?
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Like the source files themselves had not been resized, by the way. The way to fix this problem is to resize the pictures. Like actually resize the files and then load those instead. But anyway, it was loading all these full size pictures and it was taking forever. It was taking like a minute to load and they weren't ranking very well and we fixed that problem and they did rank better. But even fixing that, it still took their website a long time to load because it had other problems. But I don't know, you remember like back in the day when before there was broadband, right? And like you would load a website and you would just wait and the picture would display a little bit at a time, like that's how their website was loading. So if your website is so slow it takes a minute to load, like maybe your rankings might be affected. Okay, but if your website takes like five seconds and then you reduce it to like three seconds, like that doesn't. Doesn't matter. It's fast. Okay, but if website speed was a big deal, it would just be done in notepad and everybody would make the fastest loading websites in the world. Obviously that's not really how it works. Web page loading speed therefore is not really a big ranking factor. What's another one? Let's talk about dwell time. Everybody loves to talk about dwell time. Does dwell time matter? So that means if somebody clicks on your site and then they're like on it for a while because they're like scrolling through your site and searching for stuff or whatever, like the amount of. Okay, so the thinking, the thinking behind this makes sense. The thinking is that a better quality website would have people spend more time on it, right? If you click on a website and it's bad, you're going to immediately click back. So you have a low dwell time. But if it's a good website, you might spend a few seconds on it, you might spend a few minutes on it, you might spend a few hours on it if it's a really helpful webpage. So maybe, maybe dwell time is a ranking factor. Maybe, maybe. Now hold on for a second. Let's think about it. Is that difficult to fake? Do you think somebody could write a program that would search for keywords, scroll down and find your website, click on it, randomly scroll around and spend a lot of time on it. Now I don't know how to do that, but somebody does. That would be relatively easy thing to do. It would be relatively easy to fake or to spoof dwell time. Therefore it's not really a ranking factor. Or you could just click on it, you know, open the webpage and then just like leave and just leave it up there for hours. Oh, long dwell time. Let's make the site rank higher. No, it doesn't work that way. Okay, what's another thing? Number of clicks. Does number of clicks matter? Does a Website that gets more clicks. Meaning from search. Meaning like from the search. Right. Does a website that gets more clicks rank better? Is that a ranking factor? Does that matter? Is that going to do anything? Okay, let me ask you a question. Do you, do you think somebody could write a program that would search for your keywords, click on your website and then do that from multiple IPs? Yeah, somebody could do that. So it's probably not a ranking factor. It's probably not. That's something that you can fake. So it's probably not going to count for much, if anything. Now let's talk about another thing that people ask about. People ask about impressions. Alright, let's define impression. What is an impression? If you search for something and like your website appears in the results, it doesn't matter if somebody clicks on it or not. Just appearing in the results on somebody's screen, that's an impression.
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Okay.
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Does impressions matter? Well, let me ask you a question. Do you think somebody could write a program, okay. Do you think somebody could write a program that would search for your keywords, give you some impressions and then do it over and over again? Yeah, somebody could do that. Therefore, number of impressions probably is not a big ranking factor. Do you remember episode 33 which was called SEO things you can't do anymore because spammers ruined them. And some of the things we talked about were forum profile links and blog comment links and EMDs. Even though people disagree with me about EMDs, that's fine, you're welcome to disagree with me. By the way, EMD is exact match domain. So like bluewidgets.com if your keywords were blue widgets, okay? The reason you can't do these things anymore is because spammers ruined them. Why did spammers ruin them? Because they're easy to do. Blog comment backlinks. It's easy to write a program that goes out, finds blogs with available comments and posts comments with a link to your website in them.
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Okay?
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That's easy to do. Therefore it's not going to carry much link juice.
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Okay.
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It's not going to do a lot for you because it's easy to do. Okay, here's another thing that people love to say is a ranking factor. And it's not a ranking factor. Eeat. Eeat. I'm sure you've heard about this. It was very popular a year or so ago. I have an episode, episode 46, which is called EEAT is not a ranking factor. But you can go listen to that particular episode if you would like to know the entire story about why EEAT is not a ranking factor.
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Okay?
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But let's just give a little example right here, okay? What do people say? People say eat is a ranking factor. By the way, EeAT stands for Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
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Okay?
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Anyway, look, people say EEAT is a ranking factor. And so one of the suggestions that people have for eeat, which just let me reiterate, is not a ranking factor, okay, is they say, well, you should get really, really knowledgeable, really qualified people to write articles for you. And because the people are really qualified, they will rank better. Okay? Like so many things wrong with what I just said. But let's just, let's just. Let's just look at it from a perspective of why it's wrong in this context.
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Okay?
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So an example of EEAT would be getting a. Getting a doctor to write an article for you. Now, anyone in the world can write an article about anything, but if you have a doctor writing the article for you, it would be a good article because doctors understand things better than, you know, average people. Okay, fine, fine. Let's say that's true. Okay, now hold on for a second. People are gonna say, well, how do I get a doctor? Or it doesn't have to be a doctor. It could be a professor. It could be a famous person. Like, it literally doesn't matter. The thinking is that somebody who is known to be an expert will somehow be able to write content that ranks better just because they're an expert. Okay, let's. Let's think about that. So how would you get a doctor to write an article for you? Well, you probably contact them, offer to pay them. I don't know. That's not the point, because it doesn't matter. Let's. But let's say you get a doctor to agree to write an article for you.
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Okay?
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How would the search engine know that it was written by a doctor? Well, you could say this article author is Dr. So and so. Okay, that's cool. But hold on for a second. How would the search engine actually know that the doctor actually wrote it and you're not just saying the doctor wrote it? Well, you could link. This is the answer. The fake answer, right? You could link to, like, to, like, the doctor's website or to the doctor's LinkedIn page. Because if you link to the doctor's LinkedIn page, then it proves that it's an actual person. Okay, so hold on for a second. You're telling me you couldn't make a fake LinkedIn profile that says Dr. Whoever. And then like, really? Okay, look, here's the point that I'm getting at. Everything that I just said is easy to fake. Therefore it does not count for very much, if anything, in the SEO field, okay? You could all day long post articles on your site written by Dr. So and so with fake linkedins and fake websites and fake biographies. And is that supposed to fool the search engines? Here's the thing. Search engines know that you could fake this, therefore that doesn't count. It's not a ranking factor. And if you listen to that episode, okay, it even tells you how to find on Google's own website their own document saying that EEAT is not a ranking factor. So if you don't believe me, listen to Google. But then somebody's gonna say, well, I don't trust Google. Okay, fair point. But in this particular case, I presume you should trust them because it makes no sense that EAT would be a ranking factor. It doesn't. It just doesn't. So on that note, okay, there are people selling EEAT content. They are scammers. Do not buy from them. There are people offering EEAT audits. They are scammers. Do not buy from them. EEAT is not a ranking factor.
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Okay?
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Now let's talk about something that is a ranking factor.
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Okay?
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Did you think I'm going to say authority? Because I am. But let me explain to you why authority is a ranking factor. Is authority easy to create? So can you just. If I told you to build lots of authority, could you do that? If I gave you 24 hours to go build lots of authority, could you do that? No, like, not. Well, not without backlinks. But just hold on, we're coming to this in a minute. You couldn't just. You could go buy a new website, but it wouldn't have any authority because it's a brand new website. You could put whatever content you want on it, but it wouldn't have any authority because content doesn't make authority. You could do all the things you want. You know, like you could make it load really quickly, you know, site loading speed, whatever. But guess what? That doesn't create authority. None of those things would give you any authority. The only way to get authority is to get backlinks from authoritative websites. Now this is the most important part of this episode. Why? Why is that the important part of this episode? The reason authority counts is because it is very challenging to obtain. You cannot just go create authority.
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Okay?
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You either have to put forth a lot of effort to get it or you have to Buy it.
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Okay.
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It is not easy to go out and build a portfolio of authoritative blogs, by the way, if you want to know how to do that, listen to episode three, I explain how to do it. But even if you fully understand it, it's still not easy. It still takes time. You're still competing against other people to even buy those domains in the first place.
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Okay?
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The reason authority is useful and is the biggest SEO ranking factor there is is because it's challenging to get authority. Anything that is easy to do or easy to fake does not count. You cannot fake authority. You can't get author bios. Yay. I have more authority now. No, it doesn't work. That's not how you get authority. You can't have amazing content. That's not how you get authority. That doesn't work. You can't have a really fast site loading time. No, because that's not how you get authority. You can't get a bunch of bad quality backlinks from forum profiles and blog comments, because those are easy to get. Therefore, they do not count. Okay, if you still haven't understood this concept, let me give you one more example. What do you think is the reason? Look, the reason authority matters is because authority is very challenging to get. It either takes time or money or both.
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Okay?
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All of the other things do not take time and money because they're easy to get. Site loading speed, easy. EEAT easy. Or you can fake it, right? It's either easy to get or you can fake it easily. Look, I really, really hope that you guys understand this, and I really hope that this, like, stops some of the questions. Is this a thing? Because this is. This is like, okay, this is. This is how I handle this stuff. Whenever somebody asks me a question, is this a ranking factor, I ask myself this question. I say, is it easy to fake? Is it challenging to get? If the answers. If it's easy to fake, no, it doesn't have any value.
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Okay?
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No. Eeat. That's yet another reason why EEAT is useless and is not a ranking factor. Because it's easy to fake.
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Okay?
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Site loading speed is site loading speed easy to do? Yeah. Make a website in notepad and it will load almost instantaneously. So because it's easy to do, okay? It's not going to be very useful. All right? Authority is authority easy to get? No, authority is not easy to get. Like, half of my podcast episodes are about how to get it. Because it's very hard and I want to make sure you understand it. Authority is not easy to get that is the reason authority matters.
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Okay?
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All this other nonsense does not matter. I mean, I don't want to say it doesn't matter. Like, you know, but like, I would say of. Okay, I think I've said before, like, Authority is like 90% of SEO, right? If I had to estimate, I would say it's between 90 and 95%. Yes, those other things might matter a little bit. But I tell you what, you should focus more on getting authority than caring about dwell time. Well, you know what? I think about that. So you guys do whatever you want. I ultimately don't really care. But, like, I'm just telling you how to do SEO from my experience. Okay, if you disagree, cool. Feel free to disagree with everything I say. If you're at the top of the search engines, you're doing it, right.
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Okay.
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You're doing it correctly. But most people are not at the top of the search engines. And no matter how much eeat they pay for and how much great content they get and how fast their website loads, they're still not at the top of the search engines. And I'm telling them why. It's because you don't have enough authority or because you have a penalty. But probably because you don't have enough authority. Probably the answer to your problem is authority. Unless you have a penalty. Like, that's pretty much the case. Like, what's the number one rule? Have you heard the episode where I tell you this? I forgot which episode it was, but I think I've said it in multiple episodes. What's the number one rule in SEO? All right. Don't get a penalty. Everything after that is also important. But that's the first rule, because it's the most important. If you have a penalty, all the other stuff you're doing doesn't matter.
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Okay.
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It's like, what's the. What's the number one rule in. Well, I have two number one rules. Right. But they're different. Number one rule in doing SEO is don't get a penalty. Right. But the number one rule of doing SEO. I hope you understand why those are not the same. The number one rule of doing SEO is. Does this look natural? Don't do anything without asking the question, does this look natural? And answering yes. Let me try to explain this one more way. What makes something valuable in life? In anything?
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Okay.
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Two things make something valuable. One, how hard is it to acquire? Okay, scarcity. Right. Number two, does it have a use?
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Okay.
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If something applies to both of those criteria, it is probably valuable, like money. Does money have a use? Yes, it does. Is money hard to acquire? Yes, it is. Therefore money has value. What about now? You could come up with lots of examples for things that meet one of those requirements, or neither of those requirements, but they wouldn't be valuable. Okay, let's talk about SEO. Ready? Let's just talk about SEO really quick.
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Okay.
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How about.gov backlinks? Are they hard to obtain? Yes, they are. Do they have a use? Yes, they do. Therefore.govbacklinks are pretty beneficial, aren't they? What about Edu backlinks? Do they have a use? Yes, they do. Are they hard to acquire? Yes, they are. Therefore, Edu backlinks are pretty valuable. Okay, what about authority in general? Does authority have a use? Yes, it does. Is authority hard to acquire? Yes, it is. Therefore authority has value. Okay, what about backlinks from some low quality website? Okay, do they have a use? Yes, they do. Are they hard to acquire? No, they aren't. Therefore they are not valuable. You understand the difference? I hope that makes sense. This is the reason, by the way, for authority being so worthwhile in SEO. It is the most important thing. Like I've said, it's like 90 to 95% of SEO. Why? Because it has a purpose and it is not simple to do. 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 grumpyseoguy. You can visit the grumpyseoguy subreddit or you can email me at hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address 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 clap. 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 grumpyseoguy 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 when we talk about Are expired domains really devalued? What is everybody talking about?