There Are 4 Things You Need to Rank. These Are What They Are With Examples - Episode 105

Summary

Podcast Summary: Grumpy SEO Guy – "There Are 4 Things You Need to Rank. These Are What They Are With Examples" (Episode 105)

Release Date: April 23, 2025

In Episode 105 of the "Grumpy SEO Guy" podcast, the host delves deep into the foundational elements required to achieve and maintain high rankings in search engine results. Drawing from his 14 years of experience running a successful SEO agency, Grumpy SEO Guy dismantles common misconceptions and provides actionable insights to help listeners navigate the often convoluted world of SEO.

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1. Understanding the Four Essentials for Ranking

Grumpy SEO Guy begins by outlining the four critical components necessary for a website to secure and sustain top positions in search engine rankings:

1. Avoid Penalties
2. Have Content
3. Relevancy
4. Authority

He emphasizes that mastering these elements is paramount for SEO success and warns against common pitfalls that can derail even the most well-intentioned strategies.

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2. Avoiding Penalties

Definition and Impact

Penalties are enforced by search engines when websites violate their guidelines, resulting in significant drops in rankings. Grumpy SEO Guy illustrates this with a relatable example:

"Maybe you are in position seven, okay. And you're on page one, you're in position seven, and then you get a penalty, and now you're in position 90 or worse." (00:00)

Types of Penalties

He categorizes penalties into three main types:

• Over Optimization (00:02:49): Occurs when a website has an excessive number of backlinks using the same anchor text. For example, if numerous backlinks to a site use the phrase "blue widgets," it can trigger an over optimization penalty.

• Keyword Stuffing (00:03:00): Happens when keywords are overly repetitive in the website's content. For instance, a page repeatedly mentioning "blue widgets" to the point of redundancy can be penalized.

• Spammy Backlink Penalty (00:04:00): Involves obtaining backlinks from low-quality or spammy websites, which can harm a site's authority and ranking.

Negative SEO

Grumpy SEO Guy briefly touches upon the concept of negative SEO, where competitors may attempt to harm a website's rankings through malicious tactics. He refers listeners to Episode 2 for a more in-depth discussion on mitigating such threats.

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3. The Role of Content

Contrary to popular belief, Grumpy SEO Guy asserts that content quality is not a direct ranking factor:

"The quality of your content is not a ranking factor." (05:13)

Purpose of Content:

• Presence: At its core, content is necessary to provide substance to a website. An empty site has nothing for users or search engines to evaluate, making it unable to rank.

• User Engagement: Content serves as the primary medium for user interaction, offering information, entertainment, or services that attract and retain visitors.

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4. Relevancy

Definition:

Relevancy refers to how closely a website's content aligns with specific search queries or topics. It determines whether a site should appear in search results for particular keywords.

"Relevancy means what is your website about? What is the topic of your website?" (06:06)

Achieving Relevancy:

1. Content Focus: Producing content centered around the target topic ensures that the website signals to search engines its relevance to related queries.

2. Backlink Anchor Text: Obtaining backlinks with anchor texts that include relevant keywords reinforces the website's topical alignment. For example, backlinks with the phrase "dishwashers" bolster a site's relevancy for that term.

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5. Authority

Definition:

Authority signifies the trustworthiness and credibility of a website in the eyes of search engines. It's a pivotal factor in determining a site's ranking potential.

"Authority is a measure of power or trustworthiness for a website." (07:52)

Building Authority:

• Backlinks: The primary source of authority is backlinks from other reputable websites. Each backlink acts as a vote of confidence, indicating that the linking site values the content.

• Quality of Linking Sites: Backlinks from high-authority websites (e.g., established news outlets or industry leaders) pass more authority than those from lesser-known or spammy sites.

"Every time a website links to another website, it is sharing authority with that other website." (07:52)

Clarifications:

• Grumpy SEO Guy dismisses other factors like site speed or user experience as direct contributors to authority, focusing solely on backlinks.

• He briefly addresses "nofollow" backlinks, stating they are suggestions rather than rules and are beyond the scope of this episode.

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6. Integrating Relevancy and Authority for Ranking

To illustrate how these elements synergize, Grumpy SEO Guy presents a cohesive example:

"In this example, let's say somebody searches for dishwashers. What the search engine is going to do is it's going to look through all of the websites that are relevant for dishwashers and then rank them based on authority." (09:28)

Process:

1. Filtering for Relevance: Search engines first sift through all websites to identify those relevant to the search query.

2. Assessing Authority: Among the relevant sites, those with higher authority ranks higher in the search results.

He underscores that, fundamentally, ranking hinges on being relevant and authoritative, independent of content quality.

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7. Key Takeaways and Closing Thoughts

Grumpy SEO Guy wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of the four essentials:

• Avoid Penalties: Steer clear of practices that can lead to search engine penalties.

• Content: Ensure your website has content, though its quality isn't a direct ranking factor.

• Relevancy: Align your content and backlink profiles with your target keywords to establish topical relevance.

• Authority: Build a strong backlink profile from reputable sources to enhance your site's authority.

He encourages listeners to subscribe, leave reviews, and engage with him on Reddit or via email for further discussions and support.

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Notable Quotes:

• "The quality of your content is not a ranking factor." (05:13)

• "Authority is a measure of power or trustworthiness for a website." (07:52)

• "Every time a website links to another website, it is sharing authority with that other website." (07:52)

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For SEO professionals and enthusiasts seeking to demystify the ranking process, this episode of Grumpy SEO Guy offers clarity and practical advice. By focusing on avoiding penalties, maintaining relevant content, and building authoritative backlinks, listeners gain a structured approach to improving their website's visibility in search engine results.

Transcript

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 105. There are four things you need to rank. We're going to explain them with examples. In this episode, 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 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 there is some confusion about the four things you need to rank. So in this episode, we're going to discuss them, we're going to give examples, and we're going to talk about how you can use them. 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, before we get started, just a little reminder. New episodes come out on Wednesdays at nine in the morning, Central standard time. That's for podcast programs. If you're watching this on YouTube, it's gonna be a little bit after that. If you're watching this on YouTube, I try to respond to comments on Wednesday, but sometimes I won't respond to them until Thursday. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please subscribe and click notifications. Also, thank you to my Patreons. You are the reason this podcast is free. If you want to support the podcast, you can do [e-mail] Grumpy SEOguy okay, so if you listen to Grumpy SEO Guy, you know probably that there are four things you need to rank. Let's discuss them really quickly. One, avoid penalties. Two, have content. The quality of the content doesn't matter. It just has to exist. Three, relevancy. And four, authority. Okay, let's talk about these and why they're important. One, avoid penalties. What is a penalty? A penalty is when you do something that is kind of against the rules and you get a penalty which drops your rank. So, for example, maybe you are in position seven, okay? And you're doing. You're. You're on page one, you're in position seven, and then you get a penalty, and now you're in position 90 or worse.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

Does that make sense? So anyway, there are three kinds of penalties you are likely to see. And we have an episode. It's episode two that covers these penalties. But let's talk about them again right now. Number one, over optimization. Over optimization is when you have too many backlinks that use the same penalty terms.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

So for example, if you're trying to rank for blue widgets and too many of your backlinks use the phrase blue widgets, you might get an over optimization penalty.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

Whatever words you have in the backlinks, that's called anchor text.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

So when you have too much anchor text, that's the same. And as your keyword, that can get you an over optimization penalty.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

Over optimization is a penalty because the back in the day, it worked really well. You could rank for many keywords just by getting lots of backlinks with the keyword in the backlink. But people did it too much, and now it's a penalty. So we just did an example of that one. Next kind of penalty that you might see is keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is when your keywords appear in the text of your website too often. So, for example, if you're trying to rank for the keywords blue widgets, and your text is people who collect blue widgets, like blue widgets, they go to a store that sells blue widgets and buy blue widgets. They have lots of blue widgets like that. The keywords are there. So much doesn't even. It seems weird, right? Okay. Keyword stuffing is a penalty because it used to work really well. You used to be able to rank by having your keyword in your text a lot. Now it can get you a penalty. The third type of penalty that you might see, and some folks disagree that this is a real thing, but anyway, it's called spammy backlink penalty. If you get backlinks from websites that are considered spammy, they might hurt you. We're gonna talk more about backlinks in a minute. But they might hurt you. Okay, we're not gonna talk about what a spammy website looks like right now, but just some websites are very low quality. And links from those websites might not actually help you. They might actually damage your SEO. So we're gonna leave it at that for now. While we're talking about penalties, let's talk very quickly about negative SEO. Negative SEO is when you cause your. Your competition to have a penalty. I'm not gonna teach you how to do it. And some people say that it's not real. But in episode two, when I'm talking about penalties, I talk about a client who got negative SEO'd and how we managed this. So if you're interested, you can find out more about it there. Okay. Now, the second thing that you need is content. I wanna be very clear. The quality of your content is not a ranking factor.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

You do not write good content and somehow rank higher. It doesn't work that way. We have many other episodes that explain that in detail. So let's talk about what content does and why you need it. The reason you have to have content is because you have to have things on your website for people to read or see or whatever.

[Listener]

Okay.

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

If you didn't have content, you would have nothing on your website. And are you going to rank an empty website? That would be silly. So, okay, you need content, so there's a reason to go to your website. But content also does something else. Content creates relevancy. Relevancy means what is the topic of your website? What is your website about? And we're going to talk about relevancy right now. Relevancy. Relevancy means what is your website about? What is the topic of your website?

[Listener]

Okay, what.

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

What is your website about? What is the topic of your website? What is the subject of your website? That's all it means. So if you have content about dishwashers, then your website is relevant for dishwashers.

[Listener]

Okay.

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

Does that make sense? This is important because in order to rank for a keyword, you have to be relevant for that keyword. We're going to talk about that more in a minute. There are two ways to get relevancy. You can get relevancy from content simply by having content about the topic, by writing about the topic.

[Listener]

Okay.

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

That's all you have to do.

[Listener]

Okay.

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

And avoid keyword stuffing. But that's all you have to do. The second way to get relevancy is by getting backlinks with the keywords in the backlink.

[Listener]

Okay.

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

The anchor text. So if you want to rank for dishwashers, you might need some backlinks with the anchor text. Dishwashers, like, does that make sense? So there's two ways to get relevancy, okay? You need relevancy in order to rank for a certain keyword. Because think about it. If your website is relevant for blue widgets, why would it show up in a result for dishwashers? So you need relevancy for your keywords. Okay? This brings us to the fourth thing you need. Authority. Authority only comes from backlinks, okay? It only comes from backlinks. It doesn't come from site speed, it doesn't come from user experience, it doesn't come from content. It only comes from backlinks. Authority is a measure of power or trustworthiness for a website.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

The more authority a website has, the more trustworthy it is and the higher it is likely to rank. So the way you get authority is from backlinks. Let's explain it like this. Every time a website links to another website, it is sharing authority with that other website. The theory is that you would not link to a low value website. So anytime you link to another website, you're saying, this is a cool website, I trust this website, I am recommending this website. So now that's part one. Part two is the more authority a website has, the more authority it passes in a backlink. So if you have a very authoritative website and it links to you, you will get a lot of authority. If there is a lower authority website and it links to you, you will get a little authority. Most websites have authority unless they are maybe de indexed, which is when you're taken out of the search entirely. Maybe if you're penalized or you know, feasibly if you're spammy.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

But most websites have authority. So anytime a website links to another website, it is sharing authority. Now somebody's going to say, well, what if there's a no follow backlink? Okay, look, first of all, there's another episode on that. Second of all, nofollow is a suggestion, not a rule. And finally, that's kind of more than what we're talking about in this episode.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

So anyway, that's how authority works. I wanna give an example that explains how all of these work together.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

So in this example, let's say the websites have no penalties and let's also say they have content.

[Listener]

Okay?

[Grumpy SEO Guy]

So we're just talking about relevancy and authority here. Okay, let's say somebody searches for dishwashers, okay? What the search engine is going to do is it's going to look through all of the websites that it has and it's going to say which websites are relevant for dishwashers. And which websites are not relevant for dishwashers. And it's going to put them into two collections. It's going to have the websites that are relevant and the websites that are not relevant. Relevant. Okay, we can forget about the ones that are not relevant because they're not relevant. Why would they appear in the search results? Doesn't make any sense. Okay, now we have all the websites that are relevant. Okay, how do we know how to rank them? Who gets to be number one, who gets to be next, who gets to be the next website, and so on. The answer is authority. Okay, so of all of the websites that are relevant for dishwashers, the one with the most authority will be number one. The one with the next amount of authority will be number two. And kind of. I don't want you to think that's exactly how it works, because that's not exactly how it works. But if you understand it that way, you will know how it works and how you can rank higher. Now, I want to be very clear, though, about these websites that are ranking for dishwashers or any other keyword. They are ranking because they have no penalties, because they have content, because they are relevant, and because they have more authority than their competition. It has nothing to do with the quality of their content. Okay, I hope this makes sense. I hope you learned a lot. 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 [e-mail] 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 [e-mail] 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.