Creator Profile Avatar for Cyrus Shepard
Cyrus Shepard
Creator Profile Avatar for Cyrus Shepard

Cyrus Shepard

@cyrusshepard134K total followers
Founder of Zyppy - Follow for content about SEO, AI, Brand Marketing, Google Ranking Signals, Higher Traffic/Conversions, + 10x Content

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New: 17 Content Types to Survive Google’s Zero-Click Future Google Zero is coming for many sites, but Google still sends billions of visits per day to the web What kind of content survives? Not generic blog posts. AI killed that strategy (1/2)

X (Twitter)
X (Twitter)
5 mths

New Post: Google decimated traffic to legions of websites. But traffic to other websites rose What makes the winners different? To quantify it, I analyzed 400+ sites, and the answers became obvious 5 Data-Backed Features Of Websites Winning Google in 2026 (1/2)

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5 mths

New: AI Citation Ranking Factors Everyone talks about AI Citations as a way to boost visibility + traffic, but what works? To find out, I gathered every study/experiment from the past 2 years, and scored the biggest wins 22 Ranking Factors associated with earning AI citations

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X (Twitter)
4 mths

Latest posts

🚨 Upcoming Webinar Alert 🚨 Winning AI Citations Isn't the Same as Winning in Search I've posted a lot about winning AI citations, but sometimes those same actions can cost you visibility in traditional search. And @SearchPilot has the data to back this up. Thrilled to join @willcritchlow to discuss this phenomenon: "It points at a bigger problem with AI discovery. We can measure more things than we actually understand. Cyrus reviewed hundreds of AI citation studies, experiments and patents to work out what appears to influence citations. What he found is that getting cited and getting recommended are not the same thing. Citations can be easier to win. They are also easier to put on a dashboard. That does not make them the thing that matters most. If your team is being pushed to show progress in GEO, this hour is about not optimising a metric while missing the outcome."

X (Twitter) · 6 days

Pretty blown away by these two findings from Andy @crestodina's new study 1. Attribution is a BIG problem. The number of folks saying "I don't know if the blog delivers results" jumped to an all-time high We hear this from marketing teams all the time - what's the ROI of our content in an AI world? How do we measure it? (and there's typically never an easy answer) Which leads to takeaway #2... 2. Everybody is doing LESS of the *things that actually work*!!! Marketers who practice proven SEO/content strategies like Guest Blogging, Influencer Collaboration, Original Research, and even basic KEYWORD RESEARCH are all more likely to report "Strong Results" than people who don't But more people are abandoning these practices. D'oh! A few other takeaways: • 92%+ of marketers now use AI, but AI usage has basically zero correlation with better results • Influencer/expert collaboration was the strongest predictor of success • Original research increased the likelihood of strong results

X (Twitter) · 1 wk

10/10 SEO tips from the 2026 Google Ranking Factors Expert Survey: "Using AI to help you publish ten times the amount of the same quality content in half the time is not as good as using AI to help you publish the same amount of content, but ten times the quality." - Everett Sizemore https://t.co/SmzojtcAvX More spicy takes: "Although there is a clear preference for fresh content, original and authentic content may not be driving traffic in the short-term." - Debbie Chew "It's a popularity contest. Once Google finds you relevant for a query, it doesn't really reward 10x content... In fact, I'll go as far as to say that content that is too expert-level is actually harmful to visibility." - Dan Petrovic "Branding signals from places other than backlinks seem much stronger of a performance indicator." - Sheena Schleicher "Content length also gets a zero. I will happily die on this tiny hill... If the answer takes 600 words, give me 600 good words." - Melissa Popp "An LLMs.txt file

X (Twitter) · 2 wks

How do you handle AI Citations and future-proof your content in the age of AI? This is exactly what I talked about with longtime friend and SEO Jason Dodge on his very excellent <theredirect/> Podcast (great name for an SEO pod!) Here's what we discussed 1) Google Zero: A decline in direct search traffic is forcing brands to focus on high-intent conversions instead of informational clicks 2) Quality Over Quantity: How Google now treats content lacking "unique value" as spam, prioritizing original research, proprietary data, and first-party evidence 3) Entities & Brand: How a strong, consistent brand identity rather than just chasing keywords or specific content formats like listicles wins long-term 4) The Power of Evidence: (my favorite part) The most effective long-term strategy is to produce authentic, proprietary evidence that AI cannot easily replicate 5) The Traditional SEO Playbook: The old strategy of "publish content and earn links" is no longer sufficient

X (Twitter) · 3 wks

Google drops (some) Site Reputation Abuse policy penalties in Europe, but publishers shouldn't celebrate Here's what you need to know: "Site Reputation Abuse" is, broadly, when a strong site publishes (monetized) third-party content that probably wouldn't rank on its own, but rides the coattails of the strong site in order to make money. For example, Forbes publishing low-value coupon pages from a third-party supplier. Google typically applies a manual penalty to those pages, causing them to disappear from search results. But now, EU regulations mean that the manual penalty will *no longer apply in the EU*, and those pages can technically rank again. BUT... Google is also creating a workaround to seemingly circumvent EU regulations. Instead of dropping those pages from search results, Google will *separate* the penalized sections from the main site, so they will be forced to rank on their own, which they likely won't do. In the end, those penalized site sections will likely STILL

X (Twitter) · 4 wks
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