Grumpy SEO Guy (0:00)

This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 52. Is this lower authority website actually outranking a higher authority website? 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 sometimes people get a little bit unsure of how authority works. I'm gonna give you an example. In this episode, I'm gonna give you an example of specific keywords and two of the webpages that are ranking for those keywords and why one of them is outranking one, even though it doesn't necessarily look like that one has more authority. 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. Okay, let's get started. So this episode is actually happening because somebody on Reddit. Okay, we're having a discussion, and this person said, I'm curious how you interpret sites with a very minimal link profile that outranks sites with a legit, impressive profile. I replied to that person and I said, can you give an example of this? And the reason I ask that is usually. Usually when somebody makes a claim like that, the conversation stops. Somebody will say something like, oh, you know, this website with no authority is outranking this other site with lots of authority. And then the response will be, oh, can you show me an example of that? And then they never show an example because it's not actually happening. They're just posting nonsense for the sake of posting nonsense. Or something else that you see quite regularly is somebody will say, well, I rank without backlinks. Or they will say, our website's ranking without backlinks. And then you say, oh, that's very interesting. Can you show us? And then of course, they never rely respond, because that's not actually happening. Let's just. Let me just clarify this really quick. There's one or two exceptions when people make the claim that they're ranking without backlinks, that it's not a lie, okay? It's usually a lie. It's usually a lie by people who aren't actually doing SEO, okay? And they're just. They're just being argumentative because it's a hobby, okay? Or it's by a content writer who's trying to sell you their content writing services, and they're trying to get you to believe that their content is wonderful and the content itself will make the search engines rank you higher when that's not how search engine optimization works. Okay? But there's like two exceptions to that. Let me tell you what these exceptions are really quick, and then I'm going to get into the remainder of this episode. Okay? Exception number one. The person has no competition. If you have no competition, and we just talked about this on the last episode, if you have no competition and you're the only website that is relevant for your terms, of course you're gonna rank. Given that you're indexed, of course you're gonna rank. Of course you're gonna rank because there's no competition. You do not need to build backlinks if you don't have competition because you don't need authority to outrank nothing. So obviously you don't need backlinks in that case. Okay? But that's not often the situation. Most people have competition. The other people that say we rank without building backlinks are people that are writing content for already authoritative websites. If your website already has a ton of authority, you don't need to build backlinks to every single article because you already have tons of authority. You're not disproving that backlinks matter. All you're saying is you are not building backlinks. You are failing purposefully to mention the fact that your website has authoritative backlinks. Okay? So you not building backlinks by yourself does not mean your website is ranking without backlinks. It just means you are not making backlinks. Okay, so technically, your comment of I only write content and I don't make backlinks and my content ranks. You forgot to mention that your domain has bunches of authority already. Come on. Anyway, there's, I think, maybe one more exception to that. Like, I feel like if you have a TLD, like if you're a.gov site or a.edu site. But come on, I've never had a client with a Edu. I've been doing this for like 14 years. Probably 15 now. I should probably change the intro where I say 14 years, because I feel like it's been 15 years now. Anyway, I've never had a client with a edu site or a.gov site or a MIL site. So I assume the rules are different for those. But I don't know. I've never had a client with those sites. But if somebody says they're ranking without backlinks, they're almost assuredly lying or trying to sell you something. Okay, we're clear. Let's proceed to the rest of the episode. So I asked this person, remember, he said this website has a very minimal link profile and it's outranking website with a better link profile. How do you explain this? And I said, can you give me an example? And they did. So here's the. I'm gonna tell you what the keywords were. I'm gonna tell you what the websites were. I don't think there's any problem with revealing this keyword and website. Cause it's not a client. It's nothing like technical or anything. It's just. It's like video game stuff. So, okay, so the person wrote back and they gave two websites. And I apologize because I am probably gonna say these words wrong. Okay, but the first website is Pridewin gg. Okay, I'm just gonna spell this for you. It's P R Y D W E N G G. I am probably pronouncing this wrong, but it looks like Pridewen to me. So in the event I'm saying it wrong, I spelled it for you, so I don't know. Okay, so the first one is Pridewen. P R Y D W E N G G Prydwen GG and the second website is pocketgamer.com. okay? Now the keywords are Eversoul E V E R S O U L one word. Eversoul tier. T I E R list. L I S T Eversoul tier list. Okay, now to be fair, this was two weeks ago that this conversation happened on Reddit. I don't know who's ranking where anymore. Let's find out right now. Eversoul tier list. Okay, so PrideWind GG is number one. And scrolling down, Pocket Gamer is number one. Two, couple YouTube videos. Three, four, five. If you ignore the YouTube videos, we'll say it's number five. So PrideWind GG is number one and PocketGamer.com is number five. Okay? So so far I'm glad that these are still in the same place, so you guys can look at them if you want. Okay, so Eversoul tier list and the claim of this member on Reddit was that Eversoul tier list gives you PrideWind GG, which is ranking higher than pocketgamer.com, which is correct. But they said pocketgamer.com has a higher legitimacy of backlinks. So I said, okay, let's find out what's going on. So I posted this long reply. I'm gonna tell you what I said. I'm gonna explain this to you. But my reply didn't even show up because I put links to the websites in the reply. And I didn't know that you can't do that sometimes on the SEO subreddit, nobody saw it. And then this person wrote back. They're like, they told me that they never saw it. And I was like, oh. And I posted a link and then they told me that replies don't show up sometimes if you have URLs in them. So I don't know. I didn't know you couldn't do that. Anyways, here's what I said in my reply. So if all of these keywords and URLs and like TLDs that you've never heard of, like GG, are confusing you, basically. Just to summarize the question again, a person on Reddit said, how do you explain the fact that this website with a lower quality backlink profile is outranking this other website with a higher quality backlink profile? So that's where we're at. So in my response, I looked at the ranking pages, okay? Because it wasn't the root domain that was ranking, it was a page on each of the sites. By the way, I looked these up in ahrefs. I didn't do like a complicated analysis. I spent a couple minutes looking this up in ahrefs. You can do the same if you want. I'm gonna tell you what I looked at. We're gonna look into it further. But before we do that, I need to remind you that UR and doctor and TF and CF and PA and DA and everything else that people use are estimates. They are estimates, okay? They are not the official rank that is used by any search engine. They are estimated estimates. And the reason they are estimates is because the real rank that is used by whatever your favorite company is is hidden, and nobody's allowed to know. So therefore, all of these other apps made their own analogs of the ranking, because nobody knows what the real one is. So people are approximating it. Okay? So what I did was I looked into the backlinks linking to each of these pages, and this is what I found. Pridewin GG has fewer backlinks to that page, which again, aligns with what we've been mentioning. And pocketgamer.com has more backlinks, which again, tracks with everything we're saying. Now, I looked at these links specifically. So pridewin GG for the ranking page, okay? The page that's appearing in the search results has 15 backlinks, okay? And with pocketgamer.com, the ranking page has 60 backlinks, okay? So pocketgamer.com has more backlinks to the ranking page, and PrideWind GG has fewer backlinks to the ranking page. But PrideWind GG is ranking higher. Why is that? Let's take a look. So, if you look in Ahrefs, you will find that Pridewind GG, even though it only has 15 backlinks to that page, their doctor is like 50. Okay? And if you look@pocketgamer.com those 60 backlinks, okay, it literally has four times more backlinks to the ranking page, okay? But the doctor is about 18. So it becomes a choice. Which do you think ranks better? 60 backlinks with Dr. Of 18 or 15 backlinks with Dr. Of 60? Okay, but if you want to keep going, let's look at Pridewin GG. Again, Pridewin GG, the ur of the linking pages is like 3.3. Okay? And if you look@pocketgamer.com, the ur is like 1, okay? It's like 1. So the ur is better on linking pages for Pridewind GG. So again, that makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense why PrideWind GG would rank better even though it has fewer backlinks. So this question from the Reddit user of why is PrideWind IGG ranking better when PocketGamer.com has a more legitimate backlink profile? The answer is PocketGamer.com does not have a more legitimate backlink profile. It has more backlinks. And like you've learned from grumpy SEO guy, more backlinks does not mean higher rank. It does not mean better. All it means is more backlinks. Okay? Pridewin has fewer backlinks, but they are better backlinks. And I went through and I explained how that was the case. Okay, Pocket Gamer has more backlinks. Absolutely. No question they have more backlinks, but their backlinks are not as good. That's why Pride Win outranks Pocket Gamer. I hope this answers the question. I thought this was such a good question from this Reddit user that I literally responded to them and said, I'm going to make a. I'm going to make a podcast episode out of this. So I'm very appreciative that they replied with this question and actually replying when I asked for an example. Thank you. By the way, I wish more people, especially the people that claim I rank without backlinks, would give examples, but they won't because that doesn't transpire ever. Unless you're in one of the cases that I mentioned earlier, which is one, you have no competition, two, you do not build the backlinks, but somebody else does, or you already have lots of authority, or three, you're lying. Anyway, thank you again to this person for actually giving an example to substantiate their claim. And I hope my answer explained it well. This is why it is important when you are doing SEO analysis, to look into who is linking to you and where their links are from and not just use the numbers. Well, this doctor is. Whatever. It must be good. I don't know, is it? Go look at it. Look into it. Ahrefs has all these tools that tell you all these things, right? And I'm not promoting Ahrefs. Like, you can use them or not use them, I don't care. But there's a reason they have all these tools, and it's so you can find out information like this. And while we're on the topic, like, everybody always complains that tools cost money. And I agree with you. Like, okay, just to be clear, I totally agree with you, but that data is expensive. Do you think Ahrefs can get this data for free? I don't think they can get it for free. Okay, so of course they're gonna charge people to use their tools. Like, maybe I disagree with pricing structure of certain SEO tools, but nobody's gonna give you data for free because that's called losing money. So, I don't know. But people charge for their time and their data and their knowledge and their expertise. So it makes perfect sense that Ahrefs or any other backlink checking tool costs money. And my last comment about this, everybody says that backlinks don't matter. Oh, I need the content. The backlinks don't matter. You just write really Good content? First of all, no. Just no. But anyway, if backlinks didn't matter, why would backlink tools exist? Like, do you think it's a giant scam? And like all these backlink tools are like, haha, suckers are paying for our data and it doesn't even matter because you just need to write really great articles and then you will rank. No. If backlinks didn't matter, if people didn't care about backlinks, companies like Ahrefs and SEMrush and KeySearch Co and all these other companies that provide excellent backlink checking tools, by the way, would not exist because nobody would care. And they'd just be like, oh, we just need to write content. Backlinks don't matter. Guess what? Backlinks do matter. Which is why you spend like 90% of your time looking at backlinks and maybe like 10% of your time doing everything else combined, including content writing or content changes or I don't know, whatever. Maybe takes a long time to write content. Like, I don't know, I don't want to say 10%, because maybe you do a lot of research and maybe you got to go edit it and maybe the amount of time that it takes is longer than 10%, but you get the point. Bad content ranks just as much as good content. It has nothing to do with the content. It has to do with the authority of the website. Okay, rant over. I hope I answered the question adequately of why sometimes websites with fewer backlinks or whatever, not as good link profiles can outrank websites with what people might say to be better link profiles. If you have a question, you can email me at hellorumpyseoguy.com you can post on the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit, which is Reddit.com r GrumpySeaGuy. Or you can post it on my YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com sign Grumpy SEO Guy. By the way, subscribe to my YouTube channel. I hate to be that person who's like, subscribe. Click. Like, but like, honestly subscribe because it helps me out. Makes me feel good about myself too. Like, literally. Not kidding. I like to see that I'm getting subscribers, but I like to know that it's helping too. I think my SEO podcasts are the most helpful SEO content that exists anywhere. Like, do you think I should end this episode or do you think I should just rant for a little bit longer? I think I'm just gonna rant for a little bit longer. I literally have messages in My inbox from people who say, grumpy SEO Guy, I spent thousands of dollars on courses from other people, and I learned more from you for free. Of course you did. Because I've actually done SEO. I'm gonna do an episode on this in the future. But I actually think that most SEO consultants, and let's say gurus, I don't know what to call them, but you know what I'm talking about, have never actually done SEO. There is an entire culture, and I'm gonna talk about this. There is an entire culture, okay, that exists as part of the Internet of people selling services that they have no experience actually doing. It's ridiculous. Would you ever go to, like, would you ever hire a painter to paint your house that has never painted before? No. Would you ever go to a mechanic who has not actually ever worked on a car before? Of course not. Well, I hope not. Would you ever go to a doctor that wasn't actually a doctor? I would bet you wouldn't. But there's, like, a million SEO people that have never actually done SEO that are selling SEO services and selling SEO courses. It's super ick. And it makes me, like, cringe when I think about it, because it's such. It's not surprising at all, because the SEO industry is gross. Just like Internet marketing in general is a pretty gross industry. Okay? I think it's pretty clear if I listen to someone talk at all, if they have experience doing SEO or not, but somebody with no experience with SEO, somebody who's trying to find a good agency or a decent consultant to help them, how would they know the difference? And it's not their fault, and they are not to blame. Okay? If you need to learn SEO and you don't know how to do SEO, and there's somebody who's like, buy my SEO course, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And it's like, thousands of dollars, you might think it's a good deal. I don't know. It might. You might think so, but you should probably just listen to Grumpy SEO Guy instead, because I have more experience, and I feel like I actually teach things that work instead of just giving you a long, long, long explanation. That content is king, which doesn't even make sense. I don't know. So my point is, I really appreciate all my listeners. Thank you for listening. 52 episodes, which is awesome. And I get emails from people, and I love getting emails, and I get questions from people, and I love getting questions, and I love hearing from you guys, and I love getting Messages from people that said, hey, I did the thing you said, and it worked. I just got a message from somebody who showed me a SERP chart of their money site. I hate that term money site, but whatever. The website that you're trying to rank, they show me a SERP chart of it. They said, here's what happened. When we built backlinks from our portfolio that we built based on how you taught us. And it went from like, the top of page two to the top of page one. I was so happy. Like, you're actually doing SEO now. Great job. Like, forget all the other nonsense that people have told you. That's how it works. You're doing it. Great job. I was so happy. I was so happy. Like, and my inbox is full of people that are like, I've been writing content for six months because somebody else told me that it's all about the content, and good content will give you good rankings and it doesn't work. And what am I doing wrong? Well, you should probably listen to episode 21 if that's your question. Episode 21 will give you the answer to that question. It's called everything you need to know about SEO in 38 minutes. But I was so happy. Like, I'm so happy. And then I had another. Another person email me and they're like, hey, check out these portfolio sites we're building. Are we building them correctly? And I looked at them and they were awesome. Like, they were spot on awesome. And I was so happy because it makes me think that I did a good job explaining things and providing specifics about how it works. One of the things that I can't stand is when somebody claims to be a teacher and they give you ambiguous, vague guidance that doesn't explain anything. It's dumb and annoying. And I strive to be everything that is not that. For example, have you ever read a book on how to get rich? Like, probably. Like, that sounds silly, but I almost bet that everybody listening to this has probably done that, because most people that are interested in SEO are entrepreneurs in one form or another. And everybody has read those books. Okay? Some of them, like, very, very few of them. Okay, are acceptable. Most of them are full of fluff and nonsense. And there are books, for example, on Internet marketing that boil down to this. Like, one, build a website. Two, put affiliate ads on it. Three, buy a mansion because you just made so much money. It's like, you forgot to explain how to do the thing. Like, great job being a dumb scammer. You forgot to explain the thing that you were supposed to be teaching anyway. When I get messages from people that are like, hey, we did this. We built a portfolio and it worked. Look, look at our SERP charts. By the way, SERP charts, as you know, is the only SEO metric that even counts. I even have an episode on it. It's episode 35, and it's called, if you're not tracking your SERPs, you're not doing SEO. This word, SERPs, by the way, S E, R, P means search engine results pages. It just means what position are you in? So a SERP chart is a chart that lists your position. It's like a chart and it shows your position every day. And you can see, like, how is your rank altering every day. And it's good. SERP charts are the only thing that matters. By the way, I'm gonna do another episode on this maybe. Cause this annoys me too. But like, everybody talks about traffic. No. Traffic is a function of SERPs. Traffic is a function of your SERPs and number of monthly searches. It is not a primary SEO metric. Ooh, I can hear people clicking unsubscribe right now. Doesn't matter. They're wrong. Traffic is a way of looking at how many people get to your site. But traffic is not an SEO metric. Traffic comes from your position in the SERPs. The number one position receives roughly 30% of the monthly traffic for a keyword. Some people are going to say 20, some people are going to say 36%. I don't care. It's different. People conducting the studies get different numbers, but it's about 30%. Okay, so look, if there's. Let's use a small number. If there's 100 searches per month and you're in the number one position, you're gonna get 30 visitors nearly. Okay, like, from that keyword. Okay, but I'm getting off topic because now I feel like my rant is over. My point is, email me if you have questions or message me on Reddit or on YouTube or whatever. I don't know, but probably just email me because it's easier if you email me. Whitelist my email address. Because I get a lot of emails from people and I respond and I don't think they get my responses. Because when you say things like SEO and backlinks, your email will get categorized as spam. Because your email's probably full of spam from spammers that are spamming you with their SEO and backlinking services anyway. So just FYI, please whitelist the email address. I don't know how to do that for you and your mail client, so Google it or use whatever search engine you like, but say, how do I whitelist an email address? It's literally what I had to do because I don't know. Anyway, I hope this episode was helpful and I hope my ranting was fun and I will talk to you later. 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 seoguy. 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 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 Seoguy 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 answers to questions from Reddit users in the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit.