Relevancy, Authority, and How The Algorithm Ranks You - Episode 126

Grumpy SEO Guy

Abstract

Thirteen minutes on the two words the field conflates most often. Relevancy and authority get used as though they named the same dial, and almost every confused question about ranking comes from treating them that way. They are different levers with different sources: one decides whether a site is in the running at all, and the other decides where in it the site finishes.

• Four things are needed to rank, in a priority order rather than a sequence: no penalty, content, relevancy, authority.
• Content does two jobs, and only the second is a lever — it creates relevancy by telling the engine what the site is about.
• Content quality is not a ranking factor, because there is no way for a machine to read it.
• Relevancy arrives two ways: from the anchor text of inbound links, and from the site's own content.
• The engine sorts the web into a relevant list and a not-relevant one, and only the first is used.
• Within that list authority decides the order — and the published authority metrics are estimates of a score the engine keeps hidden.

Everything below follows the episode in order, from the conflation through the four requirements taken one at a time, into the two-list model, and out to a record-shop analogy that mirrors the whole thing. For anyone building a personal brand the transferable part is the shape: a filter, then a sort — and knowing which of the two a given piece of work is actually moving.

Chapter summaries

00:38 - Relevancy and authority are conflated, and they are two different levers

People conflate relevancy and authority and assume they are the same lever.

"Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today."

— 00:38

The conflation is the reason for the episode: the two words get used as though they named the same dial, and almost every confused question in the field comes from treating them that way. They are different levers with different sources, and one of them decides whether you are in the running at all while the other decides where in it you finish.

02:18 - Four things are needed to rank, in a priority order rather than a sequence

Four things are needed to rank, in this order: no penalty, content, relevancy, authority.

"There are four things you need to rank."

— 02:18

Ranking is gated rather than scored: each of the four is a separate requirement, and failing one is not offset by excelling at another. It is stated as a fixed list rather than a ranked one.

02:47 - A penalty removes a site from the results however good everything else is

A penalty removes a site from the results no matter how good its SEO is.

"Number one, don't get a penalty. Pretty straightforward. So a penalty is when you."

— 02:47

A penalty removes a site from the results however good everything else is, which is why it sits first. Nothing further down the list is worth diagnosing until it is ruled out, and the diagnosis is cheap: the site is either there or it is not.

03:16 - Content does two jobs: it gives the engine something to find, and it creates relevancy

Content does two jobs: it puts something on the page for a viewer and the search engine to find, and it creates relevancy.

"Next thing you need is content. Now content does two things. One, it places."

— 03:16

Content does two jobs, and only the second is the interesting one. It puts something on the page for a viewer and the engine to find, and it creates relevancy — it tells the engine what the site is about. The first job is a precondition; the second is a lever.

03:38 - Content quality is not a ranking factor, so better writing lifts nothing by itself

Content quality is not a ranking factor; writing better content will not by itself lift a site.

"Quality is not a ranking factor. We've talked about this many, many times before."

— 03:40

The claim is stated flatly and it is the same one the field argues about endlessly. Quality matters to the reader and is not readable by the machine, which makes it a conversion input rather than a ranking one.

04:28 - Relevancy is the topic of a site, and a site must be relevant to rank

Relevancy is simply the topic of a site, and a site must be relevant to a keyword to rank for it.

"Relevancy, again, we just talked about this, means what is the topic."

— 04:28

The reason is given from the engine's side rather than the operator's: ranking something for a term it is not relevant to would make the results worse, which is the only thing the engine is actually optimising.

05:20 - Relevancy arrives two ways: the anchor text of inbound links, and the site's own content

Relevancy comes two ways: from the anchor text of inbound links, and from a site's own content.

"Two ways to get relevancy. Let's talk about relevancy."

— 05:20

The first of the two is worth dwelling on because it is the half most operators never touch: what other people call you when they link is a relevancy signal you do not write.

06:21 - Authority is comparative trustworthiness measured against every other site

Authority is comparative trustworthiness — strength, clout, popularity — measured against every other site.

"Authority is trustworthiness. Authority is strength. It is power. It is clout."

— 06:21

Strength, clout and popularity are all names for the same thing, and it is measured against every other site rather than on its own scale. The comparative framing is the useful part: there is no number to reach, only a position relative to whoever is currently ahead of you.

06:38 - Authority comes from backlinks, and inbound links are its only source

Authority comes from backlinks, and inbound links are the only source of it.

"You need authority to rank. Authority comes from backlinks."

— 06:38

The immediate qualification is that authority is not a count: links vary in quality and some do not help at all. The vote has to come from somewhere worth voting.

08:23 - The engine first sorts the web into a relevant list and a not-relevant one

On a search the engine first sorts the web into two lists: sites relevant to the query and sites that are not.

"About relevancy and authority. When you search for something, the first thing the search."

— 08:23

Only the relevant list is used at all. Everything on the other list is out of the running regardless of how strong it is, which is the sharpest statement of relevancy as a gate rather than a dial.

09:25 - Within the relevant list, authority decides the order

Within the relevant list, authority decides the order: most authority is first, next is second, and so on.

"How does the search engine know what website to put in the first."

— 09:25

Ordering by authority is the entire second stage: nothing else re-sorts the list once relevance has decided who is on it. Stated that plainly it sounds like a simplification, and it is the model the whole episode has been building toward — a filter, then a sort.

10:07 - Tool metrics estimate authority rather than report it

SEO tools only estimate authority; their published metric is an approximation, not the real value.

"I want to be very clear about something. People are going to use different SEO."

— 10:07

Tool metrics estimate authority; they do not report it. The consequence is worth stating because it resolves an argument people have constantly: a site with a higher published number ranking below one with a lower number is not a contradiction, it is the estimate being wrong.

11:01 - The real score is kept hidden, so nobody outside the engine knows a page's value

The real authority score is kept hidden by the search engine; nobody outside it knows a page's true value.

"Authority. The real value of authority, which by the way is referred to."

— 11:01

That is the honest end of the previous point — not that the tools are bad, but that the thing they are approximating is unavailable by design.

11:27 - A record-shop recommendation mirrors the whole two-step model

A record-shop recommendation mirrors the whole two-step model.

"Let me give you another example that is."

— 11:27

The record-shop version mirrors the whole two-step model: a customer is taken to the right section first, and only then given a recommendation from within it. The section is relevancy and the recommendation is authority, and doing them in the other order produces a confident answer to the wrong question.

12:33 - For someone new to a topic the popular pick is recommended, not the obscure one

For someone new to a topic, the popular pick is recommended, not the obscure one.

"Person wants a jazz album, but they don't know anything about jazz."

— 12:33

For someone new to a topic the popular pick gets recommended rather than the obscure one — which is authority doing exactly what it does on a results page. The analogy closes the episode because it makes the model intuitive without softening it: the shop assistant is not judging quality either, only filtering and then ordering.

Personal Branding Lessons

One distinction, applied seven ways. Almost every move below is a matter of knowing which of two levers a given piece of work is actually pulling.

Separate the relevancy lever from the authority lever

The two words are used interchangeably across the field and they name different things. Relevancy decides whether you are eligible; authority decides your position among the eligible. Work aimed at one does nothing for the other, which is why so much effort produces no movement — it was aimed at the lever that was not the constraint. Before starting anything, name which of the two it is supposed to move. 00:38

Check for a penalty before diagnosing anything else

A penalty removes a site from the results however good everything else is, which is why it sits first in the order. It is also the cheapest thing on the list to rule out: the site is either in the index or it is not. Diagnosing relevancy or authority on a penalised site is work spent on a question that cannot matter yet. 02:47

Publish content to create relevancy rather than to win on quality

Content does two jobs: it puts something on the page for a viewer and the engine to find, and it creates relevancy by telling the engine what the site is about. Only the second is a lever. Content quality is not a ranking factor, because a machine cannot read it — which does not make quality worthless, it makes it a conversion input rather than a ranking one. Spend accordingly. 03:16

Earn relevancy from anchor text as well as from the page

Relevancy arrives two ways: from the anchor text of inbound links, and from the site's own content. The first half is the one most operators never touch, because it is not theirs to write — it is what other people call you when they link. That makes it harder to influence and more valuable when it points the right way. 05:20

Compare your authority against the sites already ranking

Authority is comparative trustworthiness, measured against every other site rather than on its own scale. There is no number to reach, only a position relative to whoever is currently ahead. That reframes the whole problem from a target to a contest, and it makes the goal knowable: look at the pages above you rather than at a figure in a tool. 06:21

Treat a tool's authority number as an estimate

Published metrics estimate authority; they do not report it. The real score is kept hidden by the engine, so nobody outside it knows a page's true value. This resolves an argument the field has constantly: a site with a higher published number ranking below one with a lower number is not a contradiction, it is the estimate being wrong. Use the number as a rough sort, never as evidence. 10:07

Expect the relevant list to be filtered before anything is ordered

On a search the engine first sorts the web into two lists — relevant to the query, and not — and only the relevant list is used. Everything else is out regardless of strength. That is the sharpest possible statement of relevancy as a gate: authority does nothing at all for a page that never made the list, however much of it there is. 08:23

Questions

Each answer ends at the moment in the recording where it is given.

What is the difference between relevancy and authority in SEO?

Relevancy and authority answer two different questions. Relevancy is about topic: whether a site is even about the thing being searched, which decides if it is eligible to appear at all. Authority is about comparative trust — among the sites already judged relevant, which is strong enough to rank above the others. One filters for eligibility, the other orders the eligible, and confusing them hides why a site is either missing or merely low. A clear topic position settles the first. 00:38

What are the things a website needs to rank?

Four separate things, in order: no penalty, content, relevancy, and authority. They are gates rather than a single score — a site can meet three and fail the fourth and still not rank, because the missing one is not averaged away. A penalty comes first because it overrides everything; content next, because without it there is nothing to assess; then relevancy and authority, the two levers that decide the result once a site is eligible to appear. 02:18

Does content quality affect where a site ranks?

No — and this surprises people. The quality of content is not one of the ranking factors. Content is required, because it gives a page something to be found and creates topical relevance, but writing it better does not by itself lift a site. Plenty of excellent pages never rank, for reasons unrelated to how good they are. What moves a site is relevancy and authority; quality keeps a reader once they arrive but does not deliver them. 03:38

How does a site become relevant for a keyword?

Two ways, and only two. The first is a site's own content: writing about a topic makes the site relevant for it. The second is external — the anchor text, the visible words, of links pointing at the site: a link built on a phrase tells the engine the destination is about that phrase. Both are signals of subject. If you want to be found for a term, validate that it is genuinely your niche, then put it in your words and earn it in others'. 05:20

Where does authority come from?

From inbound links, and from nothing else. Each link from another site acts as a vote of trust, and the episode is blunt that this is the only source of authority — nothing internal to a site creates it. It cannot be declared; it is granted from outside. The same holds for a personal brand: trust is formed by others vouching for you, not by claiming it for yourself. 06:38

How does a search engine decide which site ranks first?

After filtering the web down to the sites relevant for the search, the engine orders that shortlist by authority: the most authoritative sits first, the next second, and so on. Relevancy qualifies the field; authority ranks the qualified. So first position is the relevant site the rest of the web trusts most. Ordering is a contest for scarce attention among sites that have already cleared the topic test. 09:25

Why does a site with a higher authority score sometimes rank lower?

It is not a contradiction. The public authority score from an SEO tool is an estimate, not the real value. The true score that actually orders results is hidden, so the published metric can disagree with it. When a higher-metric site ranks below a lower-metric one, it does not mean the model is wrong — it means the estimate missed the hidden number that did the ordering. Treat the metric as a guide, never as the truth. 10:42

Can anyone see a page's real authority?

No. The real authority score is kept hidden by the search engine, and nobody outside it knows a page's true value. That is exactly why third-party tools publish an estimate — they are inferring a number that is never exposed. So every external authority figure, however precise it looks, is an approximation of something secret. The honest stance is to act on the estimate while remembering it is not the real thing. 11:01

Sources

Relevancy, Authority, and How The Algorithm Ranks You - Episode 126

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