Probs cuz you're a cat, SEO ain't for cats. Go climb a tree and swallow a bird whole or sum'n.
Haha without more data it's impossible to pinpoint the exact issue that you're facing. All the relevant factors that you've mentioned above affect the results of a specific website in SERPs, however the exact strategy that you're following depends on the exact actualization i.e. execution as compared to theoretically assessing the performance of a given case study.
Often I see the phrase Be better than the others proclaimed on this forum. What does that even imply when Google's search and continuous updates have lost relevancy in the age of AI? Beat the competition, yes. Optimize for (potential) customers, not just Search Engines, and you'll get a leg up. However from experience and what I've gathered throughout the years, I've come to the conclusion that SEO comes down to a variety of factors, whether it's creative purposeful content that appeals emotionally and engages a user throughout the experience, as much as the technical side of a website and how the contents retain structure when crawled by an intelligent algorithm for ranking. Google displays favoritism as well, and none singular strategy is guaranteed through core updates. What works today can become a burden tomorrow, even though some competitors might have better results to show-off.
Late edit: Backlinks are still the most important ranking factor, whether commonly accepted by Gurus or otherwise. Authority won't get built overnight without receiving acknowledgment.