Grumpy SEO Guy – Episode 126

Relevancy, Authority, and How The Algorithm Ranks You

Host: Grumpy SEO Guy
Date: September 17, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode tackles the often-confused concepts of "relevancy" and "authority" in SEO and explains, based on 14 years of agency experience, how these two factors fundamentally determine your website’s ranking in search results. Grumpy SEO Guy strips away common misconceptions, emphasizes practical realities, and provides both a logical breakdown and memorable analogies for listeners who want real, actionable SEO understanding.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Four Requirements for Ranking

[02:22]

• No Penalties: “A penalty is when you do something that you shouldn’t do. ...if it has a penalty, it will not rank.” [02:25]
• Content: “Content does two things. One, it places content on your site... Two, it creates relevancy.” [03:16]
• Relevancy: The topic of your content and backlinks.
• Authority: The strength and trustworthiness of your site via backlinks.

“If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet.”
— Grumpy SEO Guy [00:43]

Why Quality Content Is Not a Ranking Factor

[03:30]

• The host reiterates that quality alone doesn’t rank you higher: “Quality is not a ranking factor... If somebody is telling you, ‘just write really good content and you will rank,’ that person does not comprehend how SEO works.” [03:42]
• Many high-quality sites do not rank, and their lack of visibility has little to do with content quality.

Relevancy: What Are You About, and How is it Established?

[04:52]

• Definition: “Relevancy... means what is the topic of your website?”
• Two ways to earn relevancy:
  • Backlink Anchor Text: “If somebody links to you... and they use the words ‘blue widgets’ in the backlink, then you are gaining relevancy for the term ‘blue widgets’.” [05:07]
  • On-Site Content: “If your content talks about blue widgets, then you have relevancy for blue widgets. That’s how you get relevancy.” [05:24]
• Relevancy is a filter: “Why would you rank for something that you are not relevant for?” [04:54]

Authority: What is "Power" Online?

[06:29]

• Definition: “Authority is trustworthiness. Authority is strength. It is power. It is clout. It is popularity. Authority just means how does your website compare in terms of trustworthiness to the other websites on the internet?”
• How to Earn Authority:
  • “Authority comes from backlinks. ...The only way to get authority is by getting backlinks from another site to your website.” [06:49]
  • Not all backlinks are equal—some help a little, some a lot, some not at all.

How the Algorithm Ranks Websites

[08:08]

• The search engine first sorts sites by relevancy (does the content and/or its backlinks align with the searcher’s keyword?).
• Search engines then rank relevant sites by authority (more trustworthy/popular/linked sites rise higher).
  • “Of all the websites that are relevant for your keyword that you searched for, the one with the most authority will be number one, the one with the second most authority will be number two, and so on.” [09:44]

Tools and Authority Estimation

[09:56]

• Popular tools (like Ahrefs with their “Domain Rating” metric) can only estimate website authority: “DR is an approximation. It is a guess of authority. It is not actual authority. ...The real value of authority, which by the way is referred to as PageRank, is hidden by Google.” [10:19]
• Rely on these numbers as directional, not definitive.

The “Record Store Analogy”

[11:37]

• The host uses a memorable analogy to explain how ranking works:
  • If someone enters a record store wanting jazz, you first filter to the jazz section (relevancy).
  • Then, you recommend a popular jazz album (authority).
  • “You take them to the jazz area... and then you recommend to them a popular jazz album. ...That’s basically how the results work when you search for something.” [13:19]

Memorable Quotes

“If somebody is telling you, ‘just write really good content and you will rank,’ that person does not comprehend how SEO works.”
— Grumpy SEO Guy [03:42]

“Authority comes from backlinks... The only way to get authority is by getting backlinks from another site to your website, okay? That’s how it works.”
— Grumpy SEO Guy [06:49]

“Of all the websites that are relevant for your keyword that you searched for, the one with the most authority will be number one, the one with the second most authority will be number two, and so on.”
— Grumpy SEO Guy [09:44]

“DR is an approximation. It is a guess of authority. It is not actual authority. ...The real value of authority... is hidden by Google.”
— Grumpy SEO Guy [10:19]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:22] – The four things you need to rank
• [03:30] – “Quality” is not a direct ranking factor
• [04:54] – Two ways to get relevancy (content & backlinks)
• [06:29] – Only way to get authority is through backlinks
• [08:08] – How search engines filter by relevancy, rank by authority
• [09:56] – Why SEO tools estimate authority but don’t know it
• [11:37] – Record store analogy for ranking process

Final Takeaways

• Focus on building both relevancy (content + relevant backlinks) and authority (strong, quality backlinks) and don’t get distracted by myths about content “quality” or manipulate metrics.
• Use SEO tools as guides, not gospel–real PageRank is a secret.
• Always think about SEO as a process of filtering for relevance, then sorting by authority—just like picking the most popular jazz album from the jazz section.

For questions or episode suggestions:

• Reddit: r/GrumpySEOGuy
• Email: hello@grumpyseoguy.com

“You’re listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn’t waste your time with nonsense that doesn’t work.”
— Grumpy SEO Guy