Cyrus Shepard

So I would...

One thing I would call out is a recent study that Cyrus Shepard from Zyppy published on ranking factors, and he has a section on backlinks, and it's still, in terms of like the overall factors, not only backlinks, but like everything else, I think content relevance was number one in terms of like making sure that you're able to rank for keywords.

Number two was, like, having good links to the page.

And so as an industry, depending on, like, what specific vertical you work on, you might realize if you happen to be in a very competitive industry, it's very likely that links are going to be beneficial.

penalty exists, it must be there.

And then I was just recently in Chiang Mai, and Cyrus Shepard's a Google quality rate, and he's telling us some of the things of what Google asked him to look for.

And you're looking at it, and it is from the Google quality rate guidelines.

Yeah.

Now it's time for our must-read marketing article of the week, an article so advanced, so in-depth, so detailed that we simply cannot cover it in its entirety on today's show.

This week's must-read marketing article of the week comes from Cyrus Shepard over on Zippy, and he asked 131 SEOs, including some of the most respected in the industries.

What factors are the most important for ranking in Google in 2026? It's got a whole list of everything.

Some spoilers here.