SEO for Public Policy Publishers
We help think tanks, advocacy group, and magazines focused on public policy generate more organic traffic.
- Increase your organic traffic
- Rank for keywords that reinforce your brand
- Boost current campaigns using your content catalogue
- Reach media and policymakers through search
Featured Services
1-Hour SEO Review
Free
Not sure where to get started with SEO? Is SEO a marketing channel that makes sense for your organization?
Schedule a free 1-hour SEO review and we’ll help you take the first steps toward organic search glory.
We’ll examine your Google Search Console data, Google Analytics history, and run automated technical audits on your site before our call so we can identify quick fixes that might be preventing you from gaining traction in search results.
TTd SEO Suite
$500/month
We’ve spent the last several years developing a suite of tools to automate SEO activities like tagging, fixing broken links, keyword research, and even adding citations to your posts and pages.
Here’s what we offer:
TTd Topics
We use Natural Language Processing to fully automate the tagging process on your site.
We do this by leveraging Google’s Knowledge Graph and information from Wikidata. This allows Google to better understand your areas of expertise, also known as “topical authority,” resulting in a significant lift in rankings and traffic.
TTd Keywords
Titles and descriptions shouldn’t be a guessing game. We use AI to extract keywords, retrieve keyword demand/competition data from Ahrefs, and generate titles and meta descriptions using the keywords you deem most relevant.
It’s a quick, simple process for optimizing titles and descriptions using real search market data.
TTd Citations
We use web crawlers to find new links pointing to your website and allow you to approve them for display to visitors in a “cited by” section.
So the next time The New York Times, The Washington Post, Axios, or Le Monde links to you, those links will appear on your articles or studies, bolstering your credibility with both Google and your readers.
TTd Link Recovery
Your website’s topical authority also relies heavily on links. We can recover lost links without hours of manual work.
Using The Internet Archive and “fuzzy matching” we restore inbound link authority to hundreds or thousands of pages throughout your website.
SEO Audit & Content Strategy
Starting at $5,000
Is your search traffic slipping away? Has a recent Google update caused your traffic to suddenly diminish? Has search never been a big portion of your organization’s traffic?
Our 99-point SEO audit and content strategy goes beyond standard, robotic SEO audits. We provide a complete SEO roadmap informed by over 20 years of working in the world of politics and public policy.
Your high-level, prioritized plan will guide you in directing your editorial and technical resources to make changes that will generate the greatest return in search traffic.
Advisory Engagements
Starting at $10,000/quarter
Rather than stopping our work with you at the audit stage, we can work with you to implement our recommendations through a quarterly advisory engagement.
We work with clients who employ in-house development teams, agencies, or freelancers. Whatever your team looks like, we’ll serve as your dedicated advocates for SEO and shepherd fixes through the development process.
Advisory engagements include an initial audit and access to our TTd SEO Suite. If you’ve already paid for a standalone audit, that charge will be credited toward your first quarterly engagement.
Talks & Workshops
Contact Us for Pricing
Tallest Tree offers SEO education ranging from 1-hour talks to multi-day workshops. We can provide an executive-level overview of how SEO fits into your broader marketing strategy, in-depth technical and strategic guidance to your broader team, or anything in between—we tailor each presentation to fit the unique needs of our clients.
Workshops can be combined with our Audit & Content Strategy offering, so along with teaching general principles, we can break down the fixes and strategies we recommend specifically for your site.
Whether we meet with you in-person or online, you’ll learn about our proven framework for addressing SEO from technical, tactical, and strategic perspectives.
Our Clients
Pageviews from search increased by 32.6%
The obstacle in bringing in SEO experts on retainer is always stakeholder buy-in. Leadership tends to be less in touch with technology and the problems we’re facing in digital promotion are hard—especially when things are “invisible.” Initially there’s nothing for them to see. The product isn’t a video, a white paper, or even a new design.
Patience and empathy with management helps—they don’t have a frame of reference. In this case, we tied SEO to deplatforming—there are fewer cases of groups being delisted from Google than being suppressed on Facebook or Twitter.
Part of the language that stakeholders speak is fundraising—so we had to attach a product like the Case Index to this project.
When it comes to results, the numbers speak for themselves. If we compare the year since we launched the Case Index to the previous 365 days, organic sessions increased 44.1%, a gain of over 300,000 users. Pageviews from search increased by 32.6%, bringing the total to 1.9 million.
Furthermore, our website now appears in the top-10 search results for 119 Supreme Court cases, with an additional 168 ranking in positions 11 through 50. This has raised the average court case keyword ranking for our site to 14.52, outperforming sites like supremecourt.gov, harvardlawreview.org, americanbar.org, and yalelawjournal.org.
We’re achieving a level of visibility on our Supreme Court content that has been a dream goal of Federalist Society supporters. We want to be a source of outstanding Supreme Court commentary, so seeing court cases at the top of Google results is remarkable.
This whole process began with Tallest Tree’s audit. It was supremely impressive from an analysis standpoint—the technical teardown and strategy immediately established credibility. And unlike audits or reports some consultants produce, this wasn’t a pre-written set of improvements. Tallest Tree’s recommendations were bespoke to us.
Taking the time to be a good communicator and translator of the SEO ideas to different parties—our internal team, external developers, and internal content writers—is extremely rare and has been incredibly valuable.
There were other benefits of having Tallest Tree on retainer, as well:
- Finding ways to achieve measurable results. Nonprofits struggle with quantifying results, so being able to track things like ranking and traffic is a huge departure for us.
- Having SEO expertise in the mix when we’re talking about marketing and content has been a huge help and value for the Federalist Society. We’d otherwise be leaving a lot of value on the table. At its best, SEO is technical knowledge combined with understanding of how people actually use content.
- Trusting someone to focus on these issues so developers are focusing on development and marketing is focusing on messaging.
I have on many occasions recommended Tallest Tree to others and told them that SEO extends beyond the sort of on-page things like h1 tags. Tallest Tree understands that SEO has an end goal in mind and is about serving users.
We feel like there’s much more direction to our website work—we’re no longer just fixing broken things. We now have the goal of lifting up all of our content, rather than simply maintenance.
On top of the expertise and language you speak, Cord is a personable guy. We appreciate his use of humor and listening to diffuse tensions between developers and their recommendations. Consultants can be condescending or prone to drowning you in jargon, but Tallest Tree never did that.
Daniel T. Richards
Vice President & Director of Digital
We wouldn’t have started an SEO project unless we were confident that we’d see results. After working with Cord and Tallest Tree Digital on our Google Ad Grant campaigns, we felt confident moving forward with a project to improve our SEO. The results have been quick, significant, and noticeable—KPIs are up and our staff have noticed that we’re surfacing in search more often.
Tallest Tree’s approach is methodical, they’ve made good use of our time, moving the project along while recognizing that our own team has competing priorities. The examples and guidance they’ve provided have been extremely helpful, turning several of our staff members into mini SEO experts.
Cord’s background in limited government, free-market institutions was also a key consideration. We were on the same page on day one.
Mike Alissi
Publisher
Good communication and trust are the two most important things to me. Unlike other agencies, I’ve always felt I can trust Tallest Tree and I’ve never felt neglected or ignored.
Getting a frank assessment of the costs and benefits involved in web development has helped me and my team set priorities.
The process of working on our website has gone from frustrating and disappointing to feeling totally comfortable.
Brandon Wright
Editorial Director
Working with Cord and the Tallest Tree team has been fantastic.
They immediately understood the SEO needs of our organization and set forward and implemented a plan to help us grow our web traffic and reach.
While true technical experts, they are able to translate their work and results into easy to understand terms for non-technical policy professionals as well.
Erin Blumenthal
Vice President of Marketing and Events
The Team
Cord Blomquist
Founder & Lead SEO
Tallest Tree founder Cord Blomquist has been in the think tank world since 2005, when he was an intern at the Cato Institute. After a brief stint as a Hill staffer, Cord went on to lead the communications team at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and build the digital team at the Mercatus Center.
Einar Jóhannsson
Lead Developer
Einar Jóhannsson serves as Tallest Tree’s lead developer and CTO. Einar has worked in web development for over a decade and has created websites for dozens of think tanks.
Michael Chapman
Senior Developer
Michael Chapman is an experienced platform developer who enjoys sharing his knowledge of programming with others. Since 2019 Michael has served as a lead instructor for Girls Who Code, a non-profit aimed at providing women an avenue into the technology world.