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This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 125. SEO is really just high school popularity. 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 90, 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 thinking about authority and how it relates to ranking can be a little bit difficult sometimes. So I'm gonna give you an example in this episode that I think will make everything transparent. So here we go. But before we do that, some reminders. New episodes come out on Wednesday at 9:00am Central Standard Time. That's for the podcast. If you're on YouTube, it's a little bit after that. If you leave a comment on YouTube, I try to answer it on Wednesday, but sometimes it's not until Thursday. If you like the podcast and you want to subscribe, that would really help us out. If you really like the podcast and want to support us on Patreon, you can do that@patreon.com grumpyseoguy and if you have something that you want to talk about that's more involved than like a simple email or something, and you want to set up a SEO advisory call on Zoom, we can do that too. And if you want to set that up, we. Or if you just have a question, you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com or if you have a question, you can join the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit at Reddit.com rgrumpyseoguy that's a lot of announcements. Okay, now we're going to talk about the topic of the episode. So. 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. This is the best analogy I can think of for authority, okay? Authority is basically like high school popularity. Okay? Now I feel like I am able to talk about this because I was not very popular in high school. I mean, and like most people who are not very popular, I always was wondering, what, like, how. Look at all the popular kids. How are they popular? Why are they popular, right? And so you come up with ideas and theories for things that might make you popular, but they actually bring about no results. Because the way most people think about popularity isn't correct. And just like authority in SEO, the way most people think about it is erroneous. So I'm gonna ask you a question, and then I'm gonna tell you what the response is, but I'm gonna ask you this question first, and I just want you to think about it, okay? What makes somebody popular? So we can talk about high school if you want. What makes somebody popular in high school? Do you know the answer? Let me tell you what the answer is not, because these are the normal answers, okay? And I'm honest right now. We are gonna talk about SEO in a minute, okay? So most people say things like, oh, you know, if you're good at sports, you'll be popular in high school, okay? Cause they're probably thinking, well, I knew some popular kids, and they were champions on the sports teams or whatever, okay? But that's not the reason that. That's not the reason you're popular in high school, okay? And the proof of this is the fact that if you think clearly back about high school, there were people that were good at sports that were not popular, and there were also people that were popular that were not good at sports, okay? So even though you are selectively recollecting those people that were popular and good at sports, that's not the reason they're popular, okay? So another thing people will say is, oh, well, you have to be funny if the popular kids, they're funny, okay? But that's not true either. And the reason you know that is because there were some kids that were funny that were not popular, and there were some kids that were popular that were not funny, okay? But again, you think of popular kids as being funny, so, yeah, that sounds like a good answer, but that's. That's not the right answer, okay? Or sometimes people say, you know, oh, well, if you want to be popular, you have to be smart, okay? But again, I'm sure you're aware of People that were smart, that were not popular. And there were probably some popular people that possibly weren't so smart. So again, seems like a good answer, but when you really look into it, it's not true. Okay, well, if you want to be popular, you have to be good looking. Well, there were some popular people that were good looking. But let's think about this. Can you think of anybody that was good looking and not popular? I'm sure you could. Could you think of anybody that was popular but not good looking? I'm sure you could. So being good looking is not the reason that people are popular. Here's the reason that you're popular in high school. Ready? The reason you're popular in high school is because other popular people like you, okay? If you are friends with the popular kids, you are popular. It doesn't matter if you're funny or good at sports or smart or good looking, okay? If you are friends with the popular kids, you are popular. Now, some people are like, that's wrong. Grumpy as you. Fine. You know what? That's fine. But that's how it works too. So anyway, so let's talk about SEO for a minute. What makes a website rank? Now, people that haven't learned SEO yet, they always say things like, oh well, you have to have a good website, or oh well, you have to have good content, or oh well, you have to have good dwell time, or all of these things that are not what makes a website rank, okay? The reason a website ranks is because it has authority, okay? It doesn't matter if it's a good website, it doesn't matter if it has good content. It doesn't matter if it has long dwell time or not, okay? What matters is that it has authority. Now, of course, of course there are other concerns that can keep a website from ranking even when it has authority. For example, if you have a penalty, okay, if you have a penalty, it doesn't matter how much authority you have, you're not going to rank, okay? But assuming everything is nice, right? Like it's kind of like in high school, if you have. If the popular kids like you but you, like, you know, I don't know, do something you probably shouldn't do, you're probably going to lose your popularity, right? That's like getting a penalty in SEO. But let's just forget about that for now, because that's not really what we're talking about. So look, the reason a website ranks is because it has authority. Yes, of course there are other things that you need and we Mention them regularly on the show. So technically, there are four things that you need to rank. One, no penalties. And by the way, these are in order. One, no penalties. Two, you need content. It doesn't need to be helpful or accurate, it just needs to exist. Three, you need relevancy. And four, you need authority. Most people struggle to get authority, okay? So the reason a website ranks, the reason a website has authority is because other authoritative websites link to that website. The only way to get authority is to have other websites linked to you. That is the only way to get authority. You can only get authority when other people link to you. Every backlink, which is a link from a website to your site, every backlink. No, that's not true. Most backlinks provide some of the authority from that website to your website, okay? That's how, that's, that's how you get authority. So people like to talk about other stuff, but they're wrong because the only way you get authority is with backlinks anyway. So it doesn't matter. Look, so if you ask somebody though, well, what makes a website rank? They'll say, oh, well, you need good content. Hey, don't you know content? Hey, hey, content is king. No, it's not. And just like the descriptions of the popular people that don't have those traits that you think are necessary. There are plenty of websites and I'm sure you, you have read some of them where it's ranking very high and you click on it and it's wrong or it doesn't answer your question or it's a, you know, some kind of a scam or something. And it's like, well, this website's ranking really high. But it wasn't a good website. It didn't answer my question. Maybe it took a minute to load. Maybe it's so terrible it has low dwell time, like whatever, right? It didn't meet any of the criteria that a website should meet, but it was still at the top of the results. And the reason is because it has authority. Okay? So all the things that people think matter don't really matter, like quality of content. Quality of content is excellent when you're writing for humans, okay? But you're not going to get humans to your site just because you have high quality content. You're going to get humans to your site because you have authority. And to get authority, you need links. Okay? But we have other episodes that talk about good backlinks versus bad back. And I'll put a link to those in the episode notes. But listen, it's it's very. This is. This is the best description that I can give because most people have been to high school and most people have dealt with popularity in high school, and they know that there's like, cool kids or like popular kids. And then like everybody else, and not everybody. Some people are, you know, too cool to even care about that. But. But some people were really wondering, why are the popular kids popular? And every time you think of a reason, like they're good looking, they're funny, they're good at sports, they're smart, whatever, those are not actually the reasons. Popular people may or may not possess those attributes, but that's not the reason they're popular. Just like websites that do or don't rank, a website that ranks may or may not have good content. It may or may not be a great website. It may or may not have good dwell time, it may or may not load quickly or whatever, whatever other thing people like to blame it on. But it does have authority. And it also has those other three criteria that we met, no penalties, content and relevancy. But it also has authority, and that's the reason it ranks. Now, it's a little bit distinct from high school popularity here because the way the amount of authority that you need to rank is based on what your competition is doing. And this is another thing that people sometimes fail to understand. And I've got another episode on this, and I'll put that episode down below in the description. But people think that SEO is just a checklist of things that they need to do in order to rank. Oh, I need good content. Okay, check. Oh, I need meta descriptions. Okay, check. Okay, I need this other thing. Okay. And then once they complete the checklist, they think they're gonna rank at the top of the results, but they don't because they're forgetting about authority. There are exceptions to that, but usually. Okay, so one of the exceptions to people that think content is the reason they can rank is because maybe they work for a website that already has a lot of authority, and literally all they have to do is write content and it ranks. But that's not the reason it ranks. The reason it ranks is because they already have authority. Okay, Anyways. But those people, like, those people I write. Good. First of all, they're probably not being honest when they're describing to you their process. They're probably not. Okay. But I could see a scenario where somebody gets hired in the SEO department and their job is to write content. And they write content and it ranks, and they actually think it's because they did a good job writing the content when it's not. When the reason it's ranking is because they got hired by a company that has an authoritative website. Okay, I could see that being the case. So, I mean, I don't know, they're. They're wrong, but they're not aware of the reason they're wrong. So whatever. That's how stuff occurs sometimes though. Anyways. But so you need authority and you need more authority than your competition in order to rank. Okay? That's why a lot of SEO is about competition research and not just writing really good content. Anyways, so like I said, a lot of people think that in high school if you want to be popular, you have to be, you know, smart or funny or good at sports or good looking or whatever. But that is not what makes you popular. What makes you popular is when you're friends with popular kids. Okay? What makes a lot of people think that the reason that the way you rank is by having a good website and, you know, correct content and a fast loading speed and dwell time. But a website that ranks may or may not have those things, but the reason it ranks is because it has authority. And the reason you get authority is because other websites link to you. Okay, so you want to be popular in high school, be friends with the popular kids, you want to rank on the Internet, get backlinks from the authoritative websites. That's how it works. I'm not sure how else to explain it. So if you want to be popular in school, you have to be friends with the popular kids. Okay? That's how it works. And if you want to rank, you have to get backlinks from authoritative websites. That's how it works now. So anyway, like I was saying, hopefully it's a little bit clearer now about what authority does and the way you get it. Let me know if you have any questions. You can either post them below or you can email me. 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 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.