Grumpy SEO Guy
Ranking But No Backlinks? Where's the Proof? - Episode 76
This is Grumpy SEO Guy Episode 76. Rinking without backlinks? Where's the proof? 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 scammers are still trying to tell you that you can rank without authority and without backlinks. And worse than that, they're charging people to tell them this. I wanted to make this episode because there's a lot of people that talk a lot about SEO and they make claims, but they never show proof and they never show evidence. Okay. In this episode, we're going to discuss that. 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. In the last episode, which you should listen to, it wasn't really about SEO, but it was about internet marketing in general and how it's pretty scammy. I gave an example of stock trading teachers who sell courses or sell entrance into their stock trading rooms, okay, that claim to teach you a profitable system to trade stocks. A lot of these people claim that they make hundreds of thousands of dollars per week or whatever, like ridiculous claims, right? Now, I'm not saying that there are not traders that make hundreds of thousands of dollars per week. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is people that are claiming it and then trying to sell you a course are not making hundreds of thousands of dollars per week trading stocks, okay? Go listen to that episode if you want more details on it, but there's multiple examples of scams in that episode. But anyway, look, if, if, and by the way, in that episode, I explain the reasoning and economics behind why somebody who actually makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per week trading stocks is not going to, you know, be offering an ebook for $40 that teaches their system. Like literally nothing works that way because why would you waste your money and time making an ebook to sell for $40 if you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per week? Things don't just know, just know, okay? Anyway, and I get, I go into what happens when somebody, when somebody is actually in a position like that where they are very profitable and very successful, there are things that can happen with that person, but selling it for really cheap is not one of them. So you can, you can play that episode if you want to learn more about it or we could just keep going because we're going to. Okay, so, so look, these people, the claim, the claim that they're such good traders and they will teach you and all you have to do is pay hundreds or thousands of dollars a month to be in their trading room where they will tell you what to buy and what to sell. By the way, none of these people make any money, like usually every once in a while, like you might like randomly make money, but like consistently nobody makes money. There have been stories and reports of people that are moderators in some of these chat rooms and they say that nobody makes money, the moderators don't make money, and the people selling the courses don't even make money because what's ultimately happening is they are not profitable traders, they are scammers who are lying to people and telling them that they will teach them how to trade, all they have to do is pay them, except they don't know how to trade in the first place. So they're not there. It's the whole thing's fake. It's a big scam. Anyway, now let's talk about evidence and proof because those people are making big claims. Let's talk about evidence and proof. If you were actually a profitable stock trader, okay, and for some reason you wanted to teach people paying $40 for your ebook, okay, you decided that you're going to make $40 per ebook sale instead of making hundreds of thousands of dollars per week trading stocks, okay? Let's just pretend that that's the case, okay? If you're making such outlandish claims, right, you should provide evidence and proof that they are true. Now, how would a stock trader do that? They could get a notarized brokerage statement, okay, that would prove it. They could have an accountant audit their returns. That would prove that it's true. In fact, I would probably believe that if a trader came to me and said, "Hey, I'm a hundred thousand dollars per week trading stocks." Look, here's proof and it was audited by a third party accounting company, okay, and maybe it was a notarized brokerage statement or something like that. I mean, I would say this looks legit. This seems real to me. None of them ever do that. Do you want to know why? Because they're not actually profitable traders and they're scamming people. Okay, let's talk about SEO for a second. A lot of people make claims about SEO. They say things like content is king. Not a single person has ever shown evidence or proof that quality content is a ranking factor. Now, the people who make these claims are content salesmen. There are two claims that they like to make and I'm going to tell you what they are. These are enormous scams. I would say that you should probably run from anybody making these claims. You can see if they have any proof and they won't, but you should probably just not, you know, do business with them. Anyway, look, here's the first claim that they make. Content is king. Okay, so why are they saying that? Why did they say content is king? Because they are content salesmen, okay? If they lie to you and tell you that content is king, you might buy content from them. They will tell you what content is king. If you write really good content, it will rank. Guess what? We can write really good content for you and it will make you rank. Now, that's not how SEO works, but don't take my word for it. Ask them for proof. Ask them to show you an example of a website that ranks with no backlinks because it has really good content. I asked the world to show me that in episode 57. And so far, nobody has done it. And I'm not expecting anybody to, because that's not how SEO works. Lots of people like to troll my post and say, you're wrong. Grumpy as you guy. You're wrong. Don't listen to him. He's just trying to sell backlinks, which is funny because I'm literally not selling backlinks. Let's pause here for a minute. The purpose of Grumpy SEO guy is to teach people SEO, okay, and to stop people from doing business with scammy SEO agencies and scammers. Okay. Those are the reasons that I made this podcast. See, here's what I think is happening. I think when you're a scammer, you assume that everyone else in your industry is also a scammer, right? So they know, like maybe they actually, we might come back to that. That's their topic. They might know that they're scamming people by telling them that content is king. I actually think there are some people that say content is king that actually don't know that it's wrong. That's a separate topic. Anyway, let's just say that they know they're scamming people, okay? They assume that everybody else is also scamming people. So if they're saying content is king, that's their reason to do that is so they can make sales. So if I'm saying content is not king and authority is king, they assume that I must be doing it to make sales. So literally, there's two reasons for this podcast. Like I just said, one, to teach people SEO and two, to keep people from purchasing SEO from scammers, okay? If you're saying content is king and you can write content so good at ranks without backlinks, you are a scammer. That's the reason I'm making this podcast. My inbox is replete with messages from people telling me that I have helped them do just that. I have helped them fire their old agencies who lie to them about needing content and content is king. I have so many emails from people that are like grumpy SEO guy. We spent six months or you know, however long working with this agency and all they did was write us content and we got zero ranking improvements from it. That's because it's not a ranking factor. That it makes perfect sense that you did not get any keyword movement from it because that's not part of SEO. Like, I mean, I'm sorry you had that experience, but now you're starting to understand how SEO works. So anyway, people like to say grumpy SEO guy, you're wrong. That's wrong. That's wrong. What he says is wrong. It's wrong, but they never provide any evidence nor proof that anything I say is wrong. Now, look, I'm the first person to admit I might be wrong about a lot of things. I even have a disclaimer before the episodes that says I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. This is just based on my own experience. Okay. I'm I guys, I might be wrong. I believe that I'm right and I have lots and lots and lots and lots of proof and experience demonstrating that I'm right, but I might be wrong. I would love for somebody to prove me wrong. I would love to see an example of a website that ranks because the content is really good and it doesn't have any backlinks. I would love to see that. Here's because then, why, why would I love to see that? Because then I would have better SEO data. Okay. Like, here's here's another thing. Like people, I found not only an SEO, but like in life, people often cannot understand this concept. I do not argue. You might be able to correctly comment that I like to argue. Okay. Like, I I probably not. I don't like to argue, but I could see why somebody might say that. Okay. But I don't argue from a place of ego. I love being wrong. Okay. And people do not understand that because, well, like everybody, when they're arguing, they it's ego. They have to be right. The other person has to be wrong. Like, bro, I don't care either way, who's right or wrong. What I care about is getting to write information. Okay. I love being wrong because it means I just learned something new. Okay. So if I'm wrong about SEO, please, please show me an example. Please prove to me that authority is not king. Please prove to me. Please prove to me that the framework that I teach, meaning the four things you need to rank, one, no penalties to content, but not quality of content content just has to exist, three authority and four relevancy. Please prove to me that that is wrong. I would love to modify that model and make it better. But so far, I've not seen any evidence or data or proof suggesting that it's wrong. I've seen lots of people tell me I'm wrong, but not a single person has ever provided evidence or proof. And they're not going to because SEO doesn't work that way, but they love to say they don't grumpy SEO guy, you're wrong, you're wrong. Everything that he says in his podcast is wrong. Bro, show me proof that it's wrong. I'll show proof that authority matters. Go Google anything, literally anything. Look at how many backlinks the pages on the first page have. I bet you it's a lot and I bet you they're very good quality. Speaking of haters, there are people who I'm not I'm not sure they have to be trolls because I'm not sure why anybody would think this otherwise. People try to disprove me. I actually I actually think I'm getting kind of famous in the SEO in the SEO podcaster sphere because uh or like whatever it's called because they say that when you get famous, you become you you they say that when you become famous, you get haters and I'm starting to get haters. So this is like people love to pretend like they're disproving something I say like some of the common ones are well here's a website that ranks and it's got lower DA than this other website. They're for your wrong see it's got yes authority and it ranks higher. No, in fact, I literally have an episode explaining why that's possible episode 52 and I give example websites and keywords that doesn't disprove anything. DA is a is a guess of authority. DA doesn't mean anything. Do you think like you can outrank with lower DA over higher DA all day long that doesn't disprove anything I've said. The purpose of SEO is to rank at the top of the search engines. It is not to get as much DA as possible. I don't I'm not really sure what why anybody thinks I've ever said anything otherwise. Like Google doesn't use DA. That's not a real metric. It's an estimate of authority that is by Moz like but and it's it's cool. I'm not saying I don't use DA. I'm saying DA is not a DA is not your actual authority. So it's completely possible that a site with less DA out ranks a site with higher DA. That is completely possible and does not disparage anything that I've ever said in this podcast. But thanks for playing. Anyway, the other thing that people love to say is you're wrong because this website it has fewer backlinks than this other website and it ranks higher. Therefore you're wrong. It's not who has the most backlinks. Again, I've literally never said that it's about number of backlinks. I have always said that it is about quality of backlinks. So thanks for playing but you didn't disprove anything I said. Anyway, look, I would love I would love for content to be king. Like I'm okay. Like I'm I'm guys. I'm actually not kidding. Like if content were king, first of all SEO would be easier and the internet would be so much better. It would be so can you can you imagine if you could search for something and see good results instead of seeing like websites manipulated by SEO agencies? Think how awesome that would be. The internet and the world would be much cooler if that were the case. But it's it's not the case. Also, also, I wouldn't have to spend so much money on private blog portfolio sites. So like it would be like a like a triple win. Okay. But unfortunately, but this is not how SEO works. So it doesn't matter. This is another example. Okay. I gave an example at the beginning of stock traders that are not actually successful stock traders who are selling courses and ebooks and stuff, but they can't actually make money trading. So they're scamming other people, right? They they never provide proof that they are actually profitable. And if it's it's funny, actually, if you spend any time in in like on like trading forms or anything, you will you will definitely meet people making these claims. And when people ask them for proof, like it's it's just like excuse after excuse after excuse. It's obnoxious. Anyways, people still like buy their courses, though. I don't know. I probably guys don't buy anything from anyone who can't prove that the theory that they teach is correct. Okay, like that. I just I just saved you lots of money. Okay. So look, here's another example that this like reminds me of. Okay, let's talk about martial arts for a minute. If you remember, I think I'm going to get a lot of this wrong. I'm going to try my best to remember. Okay. In early, no, in the late in the late 90s, there was this new martial arts competition called ultimate fighting championship UFC. Okay, say what you will about UFC. Okay, say what you will about it. But one thing consistently happened in UFC. And that was fighters that studied Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tended to win. Okay. Now, I'm not going to get into the the disagreements. And everybody has their own opinion about why UFC was created. But one theory is that it was designed to show how Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was the best style of martial arts. So prior to this point, there was always arguments in the martial arts community. What's the best martial art style? Is it karate? Is it kung fu? Is it take quando? Is it aikido? Is it ninjutsu? Is it I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Hopkido? Is it you know, tongue pseudo? Like whatever, like all these all these arguments. Oh, it's this. Oh, it's that. Oh, it's whatever. Okay, cool. Cool. And you know, people would, you know, argue, but I don't know whatever. So then UFC comes around. Okay. And they're like, Hey, fighters from all styles, you can partake in our tournament. There's no rules. Obviously, there were like a couple rules. Um, but you know, like whatever. Anyway, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu generally one. Okay. And it won so much that everybody in UFC now trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Okay. Like, I'm not, I'm not, and people like, there's, there's going to be like martial artists that are listening to this that are like, first of all, they're going to like unsubscribe. And then they're going to email me and be like, copious, yo guy, blah, blah, karate is the best because that's fine. I'm not, I'm not, look, I love all martial arts. I'm not like making fun of any of them. I'm just saying this is, I was very in the martial arts community, like about, uh, prior to like the late 90s. Okay. So I remember the, the conflict and the, uh, the disagreements that people had, um, about UFC. I remember it. Let me, let me, I hope this isn't boring for those of you that are not into martial arts, but there are some similarities here with SEO that we're going to, um, return to in a moment. So a few, a few things happened, like in martial arts circles in the late 90s or whenever, it might have been the mid 90s. I can't remember. But anyway, whenever, whenever UFC started, um, my, my apologies if I have the date wrong. Anyways, look, so let's, I'm, I'm just going to use karate. I'm not making fun of karate. I love karate. I have great respect for karate and all martial arts. I'm just, I just need to pick a style. So I'm going to say karate. Okay. So UFC happened and these Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guys kept winning and then karate people, and again, you could apply this to any style, but I'm just going to say karate karate people were like making excuses all over the place for why they weren't winning. Okay. And these excuses were things like, Oh, you know, well, um, that, that would never actually work against a really trained karate guy, like karate kah, like karate kah is a person who practices karate. Anyways, that would never work against a trained karate person, right? Like, they're like, Oh, that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Oh, yeah, they always try to pull the guy under the ground. Yeah, I would just, I would just elbow him in the back of the head and then it wouldn't work. Like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is the worst karate is the best. It would never work on me or anybody from my dojo and it would net and it would because because Jiu Jitsu is not a good, you guys, it was that kind of constant nonsense. Now here's the problem. None of those, and I'm generalizing, but I'm also not. None of those karate people had ever trained against an opponent who was actually trying to fight back the stereotype, and this is a stereotype. And this is not 100% true, but this is very true. Okay, I know this because I used to train karate in karate schools. A lot of the drills and stuff that you do are not, are not against what they call a resisting opponent. So for example, you learn how to like counter a punch. All right, a guy throws a punch at your face, but it's, but he leaves, he throws a punch, and then he leaves his arm out in the air and he lets you do your, your seven hit combo against him. And then you walk away feeling like you are an invincible fighter because you studied karate. In real life and in UFC, nobody throws a punch and then just like leaves their arm out there for you to counter attack. No, like the majority, again, I'm stereotyping so hard. I'm going to, I'm going to like offend a lot of people right now, but the majority of like karate schools and most other styles of schools train that way. So then when something like UFC came that like literally blew the minds of everybody, they didn't know how to react because they suddenly felt threatened by something different. Okay, so karate people, by the way, were totally good to enter the tournament. There were, there were karate people in UFC, there were karate people in UFC. There's a reason that they consistently didn't win. And there's a reason that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu did consistently win. But you know what, let's go on to the next excuse. Then karate people would say, Oh, the reason karate didn't win is because, is because it's too deadly for the ring. In fact, if you were on the internet around that time, that was literally like in martial arts forms and stuff. That was literally a meme, like too deadly for the ring. Okay, like, so in other words, what they're saying is karate, your only choice is to kill the guy, or you won't win UFC. And because you can't kill someone in UFC, you're not going to win. Like, is there telling me that all your like professional karate techniques, right, that you spent all this time studying? The only thing you can do with him is kill somebody. Like, you can't just punch the guy and knock him out. You can't like, you know, throw him on the ground. And then you can't do anything else. You can only kill people. And that's why karate people don't win UFC. Okay, bro, like, whatever. So if you want to even look further into this into the weird cult, that is martial arts. Okay. And I say this to compare it to SEO, especially the content writers, I actually think that content is king is a cult. Okay. But anyway, there's in, in the, I'm not, I'm not entirely aware if this still happens. But in the, in the late 90s and early 2000s, and I promise we're gonna get back to SEO in a second. And it's going to be on the same concept is what I'm talking about now. In the late 90s, then in the early 2000s too. Okay. There was this, I don't know what to call it, this technique, this martial arts technique that appeared on the internet and was basically called no touch knockout. Okay. And what it was, and I'm not joking, you can look into this. This is a real thing. Okay. Just go on your favorite video website and search for no touch knockout. Okay. This is a real thing. These people believed that they could knock people out without touching them, just using the strength of their mind. So imagine, I want you to imagine two people that are, you know, maybe like nine feet away from each other. Okay. And one guy does a pushing motion, and the other guy falls over. But, but they actually thought it was real. Now, hold on for a second. You might be thinking to yourself, wait a minute, this requires an awful lot of misleading and cult-like indoctrination into the part of the student. Doesn't it? Yes, it does. Now, I'm actually not kidding. But, but I have to specify, it was not fake in the sense of the student, because it was usually the master doing it to the student. It wasn't fake in the sense of, I'm going to fall over and we're going to, and we're going to convince people that he's knocking me out without touching me. No, the student actually believed that his, his teacher was able to push him over without touching him. Like he, like mentally, he had bought into the concept so powerfully that he actually thought his master could do that. Okay. Now, let's just hold on for a second. It never worked on anybody who wasn't training with them. Okay, like because they had people come in and test it and see if it would actually work. And of course, of course it didn't work. Guys, I'm not saying that your mind doesn't have power. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm saying you can't topple people just by going through the motions and, and, and, and pressing your intention into them or like whatever. Like, guys, if, okay, you know what? I'm not even going to say that's not possible, but I'm going to say all these people were faking it. At least the teachers were faking it unless they actually thought they could do it. Psychologically, this is totally off topic. Psychologically, it's possible that both master and student thought it was real. Okay. But it, it doesn't matter. I even saw, I even saw a story on, on, on television ones. I'm actually not kidding. They sent some reporters in to a school of a guy who claimed he could do this. And it didn't work on any of them. Of course, it didn't. And then they sent in, I think some, like, some, like jujitsu or like judo students or something. And guess what? It didn't work on them either. I don't know, kind of a useless technique if it only works on your students anyway. But, but it gets worse. There are also videos. You'll find, if you search for this, you, and I promise we're going to talk about SEO in a minute. There are videos, if you search for this, of masters doing it to their students. Okay. And there are also videos of these no touch knockout masters, right? Fighting actual fighters. Okay. The fighters were like, we accept your challenge. They were like the actual fighters. They were like, we accept your challenge. And so they, it's, it's difficult to watch. I'm actually not joking. It's difficult to watch. You have this no touch knockout master fighting an actual fighter. And obviously the no touch stuff doesn't work. And then the actual martial artist like walks up to him, hits him in the face and the fight is over. And, and it's like, of course it didn't work. I mean, I feel bad. I truly feel bad for the person because I think, I think that on some level, they actually believe it worked. Like, I actually think that because, I mean, unless your goal is to just scam as many students as possible. Like, I'm going to teach you how to knock people out without touching them. Like, you, you gotta think that that's not going to work. But the students were so, I don't know. It's, it's a weird martial arts is weird sometimes. I love martial arts, but it is weird sometimes you guys. Anyway, the point is all of these people making claims that they could knock people out without touching them either couldn't do it or wouldn't show proof that they could do it. By the way, doing it on your students doesn't work. Okay, you got to do it on a resisting opponent. Otherwise, what a pointless technique. So the people like, and in sort of reminds me of content is king and people saying, oh, you just write good content and you don't need backlinks. Yes, you do. Yes, you do need backlinks. If content is king, show me some evidence of content ranking without backlinks. Show me show evidence. Show evidence of that happening. Why can't you show evidence of it happening? Why can't you? I'm not, I'm not look, I'm not trying to like, like, like mock or ridicule anybody. I'm honestly not. There are, I truly think there are people out there that think content is king, just like there are people out there who think that you can knock somebody out without touching them. I mean, without, you know, like throwing something at them or like shooting them or something. I mean, like using, using the like, the like invisible force of your mind, right, which is like actually what these people were training. Like these people were spending hours, make a martial arts podcast, these people were spending hours a day training this thing that was fake because their teacher told them you can knock people out without touching them. And it's like, do what it doesn't work. So anyway, back to UFC and then SEO. So, um, TLA anyway, so, all right, so look. Man, um, so you had these, you had these karate people that had never actually fought a resisting opponent. Okay, probably never actually been hit hard. Okay, probably had no experience, um, fighting on the ground. Okay. And, and then they're here saying that UFC is wrong and Brazilian judges who doesn't work, they're not qualified to talk about it because they're, they're not, they're not even on the same level as those people. Okay. It's kind of like, there's, there's a, there's a term armchair quarterback. Okay. Uh, and, and for the, I feel like everybody knows what this means, but if not an armchair quarterback is somebody who watches a football game and then says why everybody on the team is wrong and what they should have done instead. And this person is smarter than all of them. And if they would just follow his strategies, they would have won. Okay. So this is a guy who, you know, usually it's a guy who is not a football player. Okay. Is not a football coach. Okay. Thinks he knows better than NFL players and coaches. And they're all stupid and he's really smart. And if they would just listen, if they just listen to him, they would win. Okay. That guy has no right to talk about football, coaching or strategy or anything because he's a guy who watches football and maybe like, read a magazine about football. Okay. It's like, if you read a guide about karate and you looked at some pictures of how to, how to punch and how to kick, you, you are not qualified to say if anything in UFC is legitimate or not because you read a guide that showed pictures of, of how to kick. Okay. You, you are not a karate expert. You are not a martial artist. Okay. If you're telling people that content is king, you are not qualified to teach SEO to anybody because you have never done SEO. Anybody who thinks content, I've said this before. I am, I am sure of saying that anybody who says content is king has never done SEO. When you do SEO, you quickly learn that content is not king. Anybody saying content is king has never done SEO and is not in a position to provide SEO services or teach you how SEO works. Okay. Armchair cornerbacks are not football coaches. Okay. People that do no touch knockouts cannot comment on the validity of UFC. And I just said it, but I'm going to repeat it. People that say content is king do not get to provide SEO services because they don't realize how it works. But that doesn't stop them from lying to people and taking their money, just like those scammy traders who are like, I make hundreds of thousands of dollars, I will teach you how to do it. Just join my trading room. By the way, it's expensive. Bro, show some proof and millions of people will join your trading room. It might actually be worth your time to do that. If you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month or a week or whatever, to prove that you can do it, then you will probably make more money than that. But you know what? They're not actually making that much money. So they're not going to prove it. Anyway, if you want to say content is king, prove it. I have an episode, episode 57, where I publicly challenged the world to show me an example of content being a ranking factor and a website ranking without backlinks. Nobody has done it because that's not SEO. But people love to say I'm wrong. And they love to say that Oh, content is king and we'll write really good content and just buy the content from us because they're content salesmen. They also, oh, here's another thing. Content salesmen like content salesmen like to tell you that content length matters. They like to tell you that, well, if a thousand words is good, 2000 words is even better. Why are they saying that? Because they are charging by the word. If they can get a person to believe that 2000 words is preferable, they will make twice as much money than if they were to purchase a 1000 word article. Okay. Anyway, guys, I don't know what else to say. I'm flattered that I have trolls, but like, I just just just just show me some proof. And for those of you listening out there, if you're thinking about buying content from somebody, I will not tell you to not buy content because some people may not want to write and they may like buying content from somebody. And in that case, you should buy content from people. But if somebody is telling you that they can write content that is so good, it ranks without backlinks, please ask for proof, please ask for proof, please ask for proof. And I think I already said it on this episode, but I forgot if I did or not. So I'm going to say it again, if you want proof that authority and backlinks matter, Google, anything you want, and look at the backlinks of whatever ranks on the first page, it will have backlinks. One more thing I want to tell you, and then this episode is over. I did have somebody send me an example of a website that ranks without backlinks. Now hold on for a second because I can see people being like, ha, ha, because I feel like people that don't like me are still listening to this anyway, right? So they're like, ha, grumpy, you see a guy, you're wrong. Okay, I'm not wrong. So let me let me explain this. I did in fact see an example of a website that ranked with no backlinks. Now let me tell you why it wasn't considered. Number one, it was not in English. Okay, I said in the episode that if you want to disprove this, it has to be English. I have personal experience, and I've heard lots of things from other people suggesting that English websites are treated differently from non-English websites. Okay, and okay. So number two reason it wasn't considered is it was not on Google.com. It was on a different language Google. So like I just said, I don't have proof of this. I have a lot of evidence, but I don't necessarily have proof. I'm not sure that other countries Google follow the same rules as Google.com. Okay, but let's let's just not even pay attention to those two for now. Number three, the number three reason it was not considered is there were only 10 competitors. Guys, if there are only 10 competitors for your keyword, of course you're on page one. By the way, that's low competition. If there's only 10 competitors, that's low competition. So that's why it wasn't considered. Unfortunately, I really, I really appreciate like of all the people that are like, you're wrong, content is king, like at least one person showed an example, but it was not English. It was not Google.com, and there were only 10 competitors. So I am happy that a person actually sent me an example. It didn't disprove anything I said, but I mean, at least at least one person, at least one person is thinking, you know, so I'm that guy was cool, but like, I think it was a guy might have been a lady, if you're a lady, that lady was cool. Anyway, look, here's the thing. Please, please prove me wrong. Please, please show me, please show me something. Maybe you've heard the saying the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. That means if you say a thing, it is your responsibility to show that it is true. Okay, if content is king and you don't need backlinks, you've got there's got to be an example somewhere, right? If you're saying it, there's got to be an example somewhere. You got to show it. I've shown plenty of examples of backlinks being important. I just said it a couple minutes ago. Anyway, that's everything I wanted to say. 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 grumpyseoguy. You can visit the grumpy SEO guy subreddit or you can email me at hello@grumpyseoguy.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 at patreon.com/grumpyseoguy. And I will talk to you later. You're listening, Grumpy SEO guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time of nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about the concept of tier two and tier three backlinks. [Music]