B (4:46)

Okay.

A (4:47)

An impression is a time that your website shows up in the results. It has nothing to do with if anybody clicks on you or not. It has to do with if you show not. So let me give you an example. Let's say you're on the first page, okay? And let's say, you know, a hundred people search for your keywords and you're gonna show up because you're on the first page. You're gonna show up for each of those hundred people, okay? That's 100 impressions has zero to do with if anybody clicks on you or not. That is impressions is just how many times did you appear in the results, okay? That's all it means. So if your impression now immediately. Hopefully you guys already understand what the problem might be here. If your impressions are dropping. Well, actually, it could be one of two things. If your impressions are dropping, it means maybe your rank dropped and you're not on that page anymore. If you're not on page one, if you're on page two, you're not going to get as many impressions as if you're on page one, are you? So if your impressions are dropping, maybe your rank is dropping. Wait a minute, there's another option. And by the way, this option can additionally be true. What if monthly searches decreased? If monthly searches decreased, you're not going to get as many impressions, are you? It doesn't matter where you rank. So by the way, if your position drops, that is an SEO problem. If monthly searches decrease, that is not an SEO problem anyways. And so, and we're going to get back to what the response was and why it was not really a great response in a minute. But first impressions is kind. It's kind of like traffic, right? And I say that in the sense of. Obviously the definition is different. Traffic is the number of visitors you get to your website. Impressions is the number of times your website exists in the search results. Okay? Anyways, look, so I say it's kind of like traffic because people seem to. People don't understand where traffic comes from. Maybe I shouldn't say it that way. People don't understand what traffic has to do with SEO because the other most common, not the most common question, but one of the most common questions I see is my traffic fell. What do I do? But they don't understand why their traffic fell. Luckily, we have an episode called 4 reasons your traffic decreases or something like that. I'll put a link to it in the description, which, by the way, answers the question. Oh, it's. I just remembered, it's a two part episode. It answers the question and tells you how to determine what the cause is. Okay, Anyways, so. But you're. Okay. So really quickly. Traffic is a function of two things. Your position, meaning what position you rank in, and monthly search volume. So here's an example. If you're in the first position, okay, the first position gets about 30% of the visitors. Okay, so what does that mean? That means for the number of monthly searches for your keyword, if you are in the first position, you get 30% of those visitors.

B (7:36)

Okay?

A (7:37)

So if there are 10,000 searches for a term and you are in the first position, you will get about 30% of those, or 3,000 visitors, okay? If there's 10,000 searches, you will get 30% of those, which is about 3,000 visitors, if you are in the first position. So if your traffic falls, and again, maybe you guys already know the answer to this because I've kind of just given you the answer. But if your traffic falls, it means one of two things happened, or both of them, but one, it means monthly search is decreased, in which case, even if your SEO stays the same, you're gonna get fewer traffic. You're gonna get fewer visitors because monthly searches fell. Okay, if it dropped to 2,000, if it dropped from 10,000 to 2,000, okay, your visitors are going to drop from 3,000 to 600. No, that's not right. Is that right? What's 30% of 200? 600. Yes. So there you go. That's one reason that your traffic can decrease. The other reason is because your rank drops.

B (8:41)

Okay?

A (8:41)

If you're in position one and then you're not in position one anymore, you're not going to get as many visitors. Number one position gets the most visitors and it decreases mostly as the rank goes down. So if you're in position one and then you're in position three, you're going to get less traffic because you're in position three instead of position one. Assuming monthly search volume stays the same. I mean, monthly search volume could go up by a lot. And then you might get more traffic even if your position falls. But you get the point. Possibly. So anyways, look, so the question that I always. And we're going to get back to this in a minute. The question that I always Ask when somebody has this problem or when somebody has this question is, what are your SERPs? SERPs? S E R P Search engine results pages. It means, what is your rank? What are your SERPs? And like, usually they're not even tracking their SERPs. And I don't know why, because that is the main thing you have to do in SEO. If you're not tracking your SERPs, you can't tell anything about anything because you don't know if you're being successful. You don't know if you're getting results. You don't know anything about anything. If you're not tracking your SERPs, you're literally doing SEO wrong.

B (9:46)

Okay?

A (9:47)

So if you're not tracking your SERPs, you're literally clueless about what you're doing with SEO. So you should start monitoring your SERPs. And there are many tools that do this. We use one called serpvox, serp fox s e r p f o x.com first, 10 keywords are free, I think. I'm not sure. Anyways, start tracking your SERPs. So anyways, look, so obviously. Well, it doesn't matter. You probably know how to answer that question now. But anyways, so here's why I'm making this episode. Because this person, one of the responses was like, well, you should focus on your eeat because whatever. I kind of stopped reading right then. Not really. I did read the whole response, but it was unhelpful. So look, E, E, A T, right? Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. Okay, now let me, let me be extremely clear about this, all right? And then I'm going to provide sources. Well, one source, EEAT does not make a difference at all in where you rank, okay? Or put differently, it is not a ranking factor. Now, if people are still listening to this episode because all the SEO influencers talk about EEAT and they charge you money for EEAT audits and for E eat content and all these other things that, by the way, are unable to help you at all because EEAT is not a ranking factor. Okay, here's what I have to tell you about that. I'm gonna provide a link in the description to Google's own website where they say, EEAT is not a ranking factor.

B (11:19)

Okay?

A (11:20)

So in this document, I want you to scroll down to the end because it's almost. It's almost. It's pretty far down this thing and it's got question and answer, or it's got a list of, like, classifications and stuff. And it says in bold thinking, E E A T is a ranking factor.

B (11:39)

Okay?

A (11:39)

And hold on, before we get to what the answer is, Google's answer, I just want, in case that you're searching for it in this document, it says E E A T. Okay? So you need to put the dashes in if you're trying to find it in here, if you're doing. If you're doing like a search on it. But if not. Cause I don't want you to search for E, E, A T. And it's not there. And you're like, you lied, grumpy SEO guy. It's not there. They literally put dashes in it. Just. Just so you know.

B (12:03)

Okay?

A (12:03)

Like, that's how the format is. Just so you're aware of that. Okay? So look, thinking EEAT is a ranking factor, and then the answer says, no, it's not.

B (12:15)

Okay?

A (12:15)

EEAT is not a ranking factor. So people that are making you pay them money to do an EEAT audit are scamming you. People that are making you pay them Money to do EeAT changes on your website are scamming you. People that are telling you to even care about EEAT at all are making you focus on something that isn't important because eat is not a ranking factor. What is the purpose of SEO? To get to the top of the search engines. So we should focus on ranking factors, things that will or have the possibility to get you to the top of the search engines. E A T will not get you to the top of the search engines.

B (12:53)

Okay?

A (12:54)

And Google's own website mentions this. So you, I don't care if you believe me. Hopefully you maybe put a little bit more trust in what they say than what I say. I don't know. But anyway, let's talk about some other things that are not ranking factors. Okay, ready? Site loading speed. Okay, Everybody says site loading speed is ranking factor, as if your website is not ranking. And then you make it load faster and suddenly it will rank higher. No. Well, let me actually change that answer for a minute. Because if your website is really taking a while to load. Yes. Okay, don't quote me on this, but if Your homepage takes 30 seconds to load, you probably might have some problems with that, but you also will have other problems because Nobody's gonna wait 30 seconds for your page to load. Okay, but here's the thing. If Your website takes 3 seconds to load and then you spend a lot of time changing it, so it takes only two seconds to load, it's probably not gonna do anything.

B (13:54)

Okay?

A (13:55)

And by the way, if site loading speed was a Ranking factor. Everybody would just make. They would just make HTML pages in notepad that would load very quickly, and then they would rank at the top of search engines. But I noticed. Hold on. I noticed that people aren't doing that. Hmm. Maybe it's because site loading speed isn't a ranking factor unless you're taking a very long time to load. Okay, how about dwell time? Everybody likes to talk about dwell time as a ranking factor. Now, let me explain what dwell time is. Dwell time is how long people spend on your site. Okay, now this concept kind of makes sense that it might be a ranking factor, but we have another episode where we talk about why it's not a ranking factor. And I want to cover that again really quickly here because I think that maybe if you understand this concept, it will help you understand other SEO concepts. Okay, so dwell time is how long people spend on your site. And it makes sense that that could be something that might affect your rank, right? Because besides making money, what does a search engine try to do? It tries to give you good quality results. So you keep using that search engine.

B (14:56)

Right?

A (14:57)

So it could be said that the longer people spend on your site, the better quality your content is.

B (15:04)

Right?

A (15:04)

Because if the content was bad, people would leave, and if it's good, they would stay. Okay, but wait a minute. What if your website is so well written and so well organized that as soon as somebody gets to the website, they find exactly what they're looking for and they can leave? Would you say that's good content? Yeah, that sounds like good content to me. But wait a minute. That would be a low dwell time. Now, conversely, what if there was a website that was such a massive pile of garbage that it took you a long time to find what you were looking for? Okay. And then you finally found it after minutes of looking for it? That would be a big dwell time, wouldn't it? But is that good quality content or is that a bad website? That's a bad website. So there we have an example of low dwell time on good quality content on a helpful, great website and high dwell time on a bad quality website. Dwell time cannot possibly be a ranking factor. Okay, what about website design? People think that website design is. Is a ranking factor. Nope. Are you telling me that, like, if you put, like, your content on the left and your menu on the right, that's somehow worth, like, more value than if you have, like, your menu on the left and your content on the right? Like. No. Come. Well, I actually think I read an argument once in favor of one of Those versus the other. But I don't think. I don't think it was based on actual or legitimate data, so we're going to ignore that for now. But anyways, here's my point, though. If website design mattered, okay, people would figure out what the ideal website design is, and then everybody would use exactly the same website design because that would provide you the highest SEO value. Nobody does that because it's not a ranking factor.

B (16:52)

Okay?

A (16:54)

So somebody's gonna be like, maybe it is, and they just haven't discovered the best website design yet.

B (16:58)

Okay.

A (16:58)

Okay. You let me know if you determine it.

B (17:01)

Okay.

A (17:01)

So anyways, website design, not a ranking factor. User experience. No, same thing. I don't even know how you would check that. But user experience. User. User experience is an opinion anyway, so it can't possibly be a ranking factor.

B (17:16)

Right?

A (17:17)

Like, you might think a website is good, someone else might think it's bad. Who's right? Okay, so let's talk about things that are ranking factors. Now, as you know, hopefully from listening to other episodes, there are four main things. Now. I think technically there's like, 200.

B (17:34)

Okay.

A (17:35)

But we only, you know, bother with, like, these four, basically. And I'm kind of blending some of them together right here. But that's okay. I think if you take this mindset that I'm going to present you, it will maybe help you, or maybe not. I don't know. Anyways, you probably know what these four are already. One, avoid penalties. Two, have content. Doesn't have to be good, doesn't have to be bad. It just needs to be on your site. Three, have relevancy. Four, have authority.

B (18:05)

Okay?

A (18:06)

Those are the ranking factors that you need to worry about.

B (18:10)

Okay?

A (18:11)

So that's what you need to do. So let me. Let me give you another example just to kind of like, I don't know if this is gonna make any sense or not. Let's say, for example, you're like a running coach. All right, so we're not talking about SEO for a minute. Say you're like, you're a. The leader of, like, a running team, right? And your job is to, like, get everybody to run as fast as possible.

B (18:32)

Okay?

A (18:32)

So let's create a term here and call it running factors, right? Or things. Things that help. Okay, let me take a step back. What's the purpose of being in a race? To win the race. How do you win the race? By having the fastest time.

B (18:45)

Okay.

A (18:45)

Just like the purpose of SEO, right? What's the purpose of a race? Okay, so you could say that Anything that helps you run faster is a running factor. Sounds silly, but whatever. And anything that has no effect on how fast you run is not a running factor. Okay, so what would be examples of things that would be running factors? Nutrition? Yes. Training? Yes. Recovery? Yeah, those are. Those sound to me like running factors. Like, if you, if you have those correct, you will probably get faster.

B (19:21)

Right?

A (19:22)

What are things that are not running factors? How about what color socks you wear? It's probably not a running factor, right? You know, I don't, I don't, I can't think of. You get the point though, right? Like, so when people are like E A T, that's like telling somebody that's like, that's a non issue, like it's not going to help them. You know, what if, what if. I hope this analogy is clear. Like I'm gonna return to describing SEO right now. But like, you get the point. When somebody's like, when people post questions and they're like, you know, I'm having this issue, how do I fix it?

B (19:54)

Right?

A (19:54)

And people are like, you know, like dwell time. E, E A T. Like, no, those are not ranking factors. Those are not ranking factors. And I hope people aren't paying money for this advice, honestly, because like, well, I'm sure they are. So if you're doing SEO, you need to concentrate on ranking factors. What will make a difference in my rank? That is a ranking factor. Okay, so things like most of the stuff that people talk about are not even ranking factors. Like, it's very interesting if you read like the forums, okay, so I don't want to quantify the percentage, but a large percentage of the things that people are talking about aren't even ranking factors. And honestly have no place on an SEO forum outside of saying, hey, don't focus on these things because they're not ranking factors. I don't know how else to say it. Like, I'm not really sure. But anyway, if you're doing SEO, focus on ranking factors. Does this thing have an effect on the rank of the website? If the answer is yes, you should focus on it. If the answer is no, you should not focus on it.

B (21:08)

Okay.

A (21:10)

Avoiding penalties, having content, having relevancy, and having authority are giant ranking factors. Okay, People are gonna disagree with that because I don't know. I truly, I truly don't know why people disagree with that. Because those are the things that work. I guess they want to sell you something or I don't, I'm just, I'm really not certain. But I'm be honest with you those are the four things. Why do you think I mention those all the time? Because those are the four most important things. And if you forget them on this episode, that's fine because we're probably gonna mention them again just like we mentioned them on the other episodes. Let me say them again for you. Don't get a penalty highest priority have content by the way, this is in order. Don't get a penalty highest priority have content on your site second highest priority not because it matters about the quality, but because you need content to have a website and to create relevancy. Three have relevancy so that there is a topic of your website.

B (22:08)

Okay.

A (22:08)

By the way, listen to the episode right before this one. I will put a link in the description. It talks about relevancy, authority, and how the algorithm ranks you. Okay, and authority. And authority is. After you have the first three things, authority is the next most important thing. But it's also going to be a big deal because once you have those three things, you need as much authority as possible. Okay, so you don't want to get authority without those other things, but there's a good chance ranking your website will use a lot of time and effort getting authority. Anyways, authority comes from backlinks, in case you were uncertain. So anyways, I hope this episode was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. 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 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 clash. 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 for another episode. Sam.