Architectural search optimization for digital publishers

David Boze

Communications & Strategy Director

As of 75 days post-launch, we’ve witnessed a 195% increase in organic search traffic—a staggering increase that exceeded my wildest hopes. This surge propelled us to the single best month of organic search traffic ever recorded, eclipsing even the surge in traffic we saw in the lead up to the 2024 election.

The greatest part about this is that unlike advertising or marketing campaigns that give your organization a temporary boost, these changes mean more eyes on every work we release from now on, without any additional expense. It means more engagement with the ideas that matter and a clear demonstration that effective, transparent SEO can be a force multiplier for organizations like ours.

Put smart policy analysis online and make it discoverable, and people will actually want to find it. It’s great to see our research team getting the traffic and attention their insights deserve.

I’m even more excited for our phase two SEO plans with Tallest Tree Digital. It’s great to work with a company I can have total confidence in. We’ve already seen astonishing results building from phase one, but I’m really confident phase two will boost WPC to an even higher level.

Daniel T. Richards

Director of Digital

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.

We now appear in the top-10 search results for over 120 Supreme Court cases. For some cases, we outperform supremecourt.gov, harvardlawreview.org, americanbar.org, and yalelawjournal.org.

If we compare the year since we launched the Case Index to the previous year, organic sessions increased by 300,000 users, a gain of over 44%. Views from search increased by 32.6%, bringing the total to 1.9 million.

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 reports some consultants produce, Tallest Tree’s recommendations were bespoke to 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.

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, Cord is a personable guy. Consultants can be condescending or prone to drowning you in jargon, but Tallest Tree never did that.

Mike Alissi

Publisher

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.

Erin Blumenthal

Vice President of Marketing & Events

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.

Thanks to Tallest Tree, our web traffic has soared from 1 million to 2 million, and now to over 4 million views a year. And it’s not just about the numbers—our brand value has grown significantly too.

Our articles and analyses are now featured alongside The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, AP, and Reuters in Google’s Top Stories. We couldn’t be happier with the results, both in terms of the measurable growth and the incredible boost to our brand!