Google Algorithm is Broken
Authority from backlinks over prioritises poor operators
I’ve spent a lot of time looking into the black art of clean backlinks in order to increase keyword ranking and I’ve come to is a realisation that because backlinks are the most important part of getting authority this metric actually makes searching for some businesses not an ideal experience for searches.
Before I begin let me know say the details below are based on my 20+ years in the industry experience it is tainted with subjectiveness. I’ve tried not to give priority to anyone in particular but to simply show some of the processes that are at work here to not give you the results you’re really looking for. Take what you can from this, learn and test results yourself to get a full understanding.
Backlinks are the King of Authority
The SEO players are certainly making the most of the fact that backlinks are king and not necessarily relevant content. Some of you out there will argue that’s not the case and “content is king”. Sorry, not in 2025 and the backlink businesses are as dodgy as dodgy and very, very good at justifying in techno jargon why you need to pay monthly’s to have you rank higher.
Let’s get to the main issue here backlink “juice” even old backlinks deliver higher authority for websites specifically benefiting older operators and NOT always providing the best choice for the searchers.
Onsite Optimisation: Extremely important, based on my onsite testing for optimised sites and the list of best agencies I’ve completed previously only 2 of these agencies actually ranked in the top 10 sites on the front page based on some on-site optimisation. numbers. Lighthouse score benchmarking doesn’t correlate or hold too much weight when it comes to ranking. What I mean by this is if a site scores 100/100 for performance they might still be ranked page 5.
Case study into poor search results for “Web Designer Cairns”
For different industries search results are presented differently for users. It’s whats known as a SERP. For the keyword set “Web Designer Cairns” I’m at least grateful that this is not diluted by Google with too many review websites. Compare this to other search types and you might find yourself with mainly review websites.
As at 13 April 2024 here’s a list of the top 10 (8 only sorry, top two spaces were taken up with GMPs) and their authority numbers based from MOZ for the search term “web designer cairns”. There’s many factors here that makes these rank the way they do and for most people doing a search on the same day will have similar but not necessarily the same. Results could be changed based on your location. Your Google profile and search history for example just to name 2. For me though these were on the top page.
There are several problems here with Google’s algorithm especially at the moment in 2025.
Note as well results were not necessarily consist with Google My Profile review numbers and most of these had between 2 and 80 so again a big mix.
Looking for the best, quality providers that build up to date websites involving great brand, design, strategy and technical implementation.
Consider searching “Web Designer Cairns” and for the majority of the first page you’re seeing older businesses with more authority due to their backlinks being on the sites they’ve built over the past 20 years. I’ve got a post on Best Web Designers in Cairns if you should wish to have a look, what you’ll find is my recommendations and questions you should ask. You should not always consider front page results to be the best providers when considering quality.
What you find on page one for this is agencies with old websites sometimes over 10 years old still making money from the work they did back then with sub-par work. I won’t go as far as to point out any specifics but look at those that look like a template with a slider image at the top you could have bought from Envato Themeforest. This is the way we use to do things before everything became easier and more cost effective to customise.
Look for those websites that use free low-quality stock photos that look terrible and often they’ll be quick to point out they’ve been operating since the early 2000s or 1990s.
Look out for agencies that claim to of built their own CMS or speak too much about technology and not enough about what really matters. Results.
It’s these sites that mainly have a higher authority due to the hundreds of sites they’ve built over that time.
Do you think this type of result best serves a searcher to find the best possible web designer? Or does it simply help you find the agency that has been around the longest?
How does older sites based on authority hurt the user?
- User doesn’t get the best or latest up-to-date answers
- Results become repetitive – same big authority sites keep showing up for similar searchs
- Local businesses, specialists and new ideas get drowned out by sub-par authority
Why does Google consider backlink authority a key indicator of meeting search intent?
Backlinks are the hardest thing to get, everything else in the “SEO” world is easy. Sorry if I’ve upset you with that but I really think given a little bit of time site performance and optimisation you can master on-site SEO far more easily. Content you can also build as I’m doing right here. Getting backlinks requires time and more effort and sometimes a little bit of caution. Backlinks that actually really matter as well come at a cost. I can hear it already people saying “You shouldn’t buy backlinks – Google says”
The snowball effect with backlinks for old businesses
As an agency get’s bigger and bigger over time they get more and more customer backlinks. They might even try to mix it up with some keywords as well as their business name. It’s all a little frustrating that if you can in person network and be a good salesmen you’ll obviously grow quicker and result in more authority quicker than the quiet achievers.
Are all backlinks equal – gaming the system
Absolutely not, consider getting a backlink from a brand new website that has zero authority. It’s initially worthless but as that business grows it may become worthwhile. Each website has a score or number associated with it. Nobody knows what that number is but some of the search tools between MOZ, HREFS and SEMRush all have their guess metrics which are not always accurate as well. If we have to guess though this is one way to go.
Links from directories like design rush which you can view our profile here may give you some authority as seen on several Cairns agencies profiles. The quality of the link here counts as there are several hoops to jump through to get listed.
Amazing location backlink opportunities that will boost your relevance
We know Google are using backlinks for ranking your website. Check you’re competition and see where they have backlinks from.
For me I haven’t even started but a key list of premium backlinks for me are as follows:
Tourism Tropical North Queensland
These two simply popped up doing a competitor analysis as a good source and I’ll be joining at some stage in the near future.
To simply get the backlinks with these is fairly cheap however looking beyond that benefit there are some really excellent benefits at different level signups.
Paying for backlinks
As a newer player in the market getting your website ranked organically can only be done through good quality backlinks that have authority over a spread of levels. Google does not want you to invest in services that create these backlinks for you. They go as far to say that you’ll be penalised if you do.
What options exist, the good and bad
Let’s cut to the chase, there is no such thing as good free backlinks or if there are they are so few.
- Backlinks as a service eg. 8 backlinks a month
You’ll pay for these backlinks while they are live – stop paying, lose your backlinks. You’re paying for those backlinks to be live for the “now”. Companies will justify this saying they have hosting, domain and other website expenses. Let’s just call it now, these expenses aren’t worth the 1k you’ll spend every month but they do have a portfolio of sites which can be used to do exactly what they claim. - Backlinks life time purchase
Again all bad, these are like link farms and do little to nothing with the other thousand sites it links to. Well done buying these for $20 per year. You get what you pay for. - Directories
Don’t waste your time most of these will have an attribute on the link telling Google not to follow mitigating any benefit. - Blog Comments
Also completely useless as comments are stuffed with other websites trying to achieve the same thing Google has figured out exactly how to remove the value here. - Buy aged relevant domains and build your own backlinks
The issue here is it’s years of work and aged domains can be a 5 figure up front expense to buy something with authority.
If you’re in this space I really see very little difference between buying Google Ads and buying an ongoing “temporary” backlinks.
99% of agencies don’t know what they’re doing with SEO
I’ve several articles on this worth reading but at the end of the day most agencies will focus on what’s known as on-site SEO of a website and totally ignore off-site because it’s too hard.
They can produce nice graphs and reports that talk about performance missing meta keywords and stats that get pulled in from Google Search Console. It all looks legit but instead of SEO this really should be called simply “Website Optimisation with a touch of search”.
What the future of Search Authority will hopefully look like
- With the rise of AI hopefully we’ll see a rise in deeper checks on providers.
- We’ll see more weight on user engagement or time-on-page or dwell time.
- What we can do? Do good work and don’t get tied up with what you’re competitors are doing
