🎙️ Unscripted SEO Podcast
SEO from the Eyes of a Google Quality Rater with Cyrus Shepard
Founder of Zyppy on what the quality rater guidelines actually reveal about how Google evaluates pages — and how to use that knowledge to build content that passes the human test.
Cyrus Shepard is the founder of Zyppy and one of the most analytically rigorous voices in SEO. A former Moz contributor, he’s best known for running large-scale correlation studies that identify what actually predicts higher rankings — and for translating the Google Quality Rater Guidelines from bureaucratic documentation into actionable strategy.
“Lily Ray: Hard Truth and Reality of the SEO Industry” — one of the most influential voices in modern SEO on the patterns she sees in core update recoveries, how she thinks about E-E-A-T, and what the industry still gets wrong about Google’s priorities.
— Lily Ray | Listen: Lily Ray on SEO Reality →
Key Takeaways
- The Quality Rater Guidelines are the closest thing to Google’s intent in writing. They’re not the algorithm — they describe what Google wants the algorithm to reward. Understanding the guidelines helps you build content that matches Google’s target, not just content that games the current state of the algorithm.
- E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor — it’s a framework for what ranking factors are trying to measure. No single signal captures “experience,” “expertise,” “authority,” or “trustworthiness.” But the combination of signals that do capture those things — author credentials, site reputation, factual accuracy, citation quality — is what Google is increasingly good at recognizing.
- Correlation studies reveal direction, not causation. Cyrus is careful to distinguish between what correlates with high rankings and what causes them — a distinction much of the SEO industry collapses, leading to optimization for proxies rather than the underlying thing.
- Title tag optimization is one of the highest-ROI technical improvements still available. Cyrus’s own research has consistently shown that improving title tags — specifically, making them more click-worthy and intent-aligned — produces measurable ranking and CTR improvements across large site populations.
Connect with Cyrus Shepard
- Website: zyppy.com
- LinkedIn: Cyrus Shepard
- Twitter/X: @CyrusShepard
The Unscripted SEO Podcast features candid, unscripted conversations with SEOs and digital marketers. Hosted by Jeremy Rivera.
