Gemini Hierarchy

1.1 Information Retrieval (IR) Science

• 1.1.1 The Indexing Pipeline (Discovery → Crawl → Render → Index → Serve)

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• 1.1.2 IR Algorithms & Scoring

  • TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency)

  • BM25 (Best Matching 25)

  • Vector Space Models & Embeddings

• 1.1.3 Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Search

  • Tokenization, Stemming & Lemmatization

  • Named Entity Recognition (NER)

  • Transformer Models (BERT, MUM, Neural Matching)

1.2 Web Architecture Fundamentals

• 1.2.1 HTTP/HTTPS Protocols (Status Codes, Headers, Handshakes)

• 1.2.2 DNS & Domain Theory (Resolution, Records, TLD mechanics)

• 1.2.3 Client-Server Model & Request/Response Cycles

• 1.2.4 The Document Object Model (DOM) vs. HTML Source

2.1 Crawlability & Accessibility

• 2.1.1 Robots Exclusion Protocol

  • robots.txt syntax, directives, and conflicts

  • X-Robots-Tag (HTTP Header control)

  • Meta Robots Tags (noindex, nofollow, noarchive, max-snippet)

• 2.1.2 XML Sitemaps Architecture

  • Standard XML vs. Sitemap Indices

  • Specialized Sitemaps (News, Video, Image)

  • Size limits & frequency strategies

• 2.1.3 Handling HTTP Status Codes

  • 200 (OK), 301/302/307/308 (Redirect chains & loops)

  • 404 (Not Found) vs 410 (Gone) utility

  • 5xx (Server Errors) & Soft 404 handling

2.2 Rendering & JavaScript SEO

• 2.2.1 Rendering Strategies

  • Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

  • Client-Side Rendering (CSR)

  • Static Site Generation (SSG) / Hydration

  • Dynamic Rendering (The Workaround)

• 2.2.2 The Two-Wave Indexing Process (Queueing & Execution)

• 2.2.3 Troubleshooting JS

  • Shadow DOM implications

  • pushState history API vs hashbang URLs

  • Lazy-loading implementation (Intersection Observer API)

2.3 Site Architecture & Taxonomy

• 2.3.1 URL Structure & Permalinks (Slug optimization, trailing slashes)

• 2.3.2 Internal Link Graph Theory

  • Click-depth / Crawl-depth analysis

  • Hub & Spoke / Silo Structures

  • Orphan Page detection & resolution

  • CheiRank vs PageRank distribution

• 2.3.3 Faceted Navigation & Parametric Handling

  • Canonicalization strategies for facets

  • Parameter handling in GSC

• 2.3.4 International Architecture

  • ccTLD vs Subdomain vs Subfolder

  • hreflang implementation (HTML, Header, Sitemap)

  • x-default usage

3.1 Semantic Search Strategy

• 3.1.1 Keyword Research 2.0

  • Seed keyword extraction

  • Search Volume vs. Click-Through Rate (CTR) potential

  • Keyword Difficulty (KD) calculation variables

• 3.1.2 Search Intent Profiling

  • Navigational, Informational, Commercial, Transactional

  • "Fractured Intent" (Mixed SERPs)

• 3.1.3 Entity Optimization (The Knowledge Graph)

  • Subject-Predicate-Object triples

  • Disambiguation of entities

  • SameAs schema declaration

3.2 Content Architecture Models

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• 3.2.1 Pillar Page & Topic Clusters (Hub & Spoke)

• 3.2.2 The Skyscraper Technique

• 3.2.3 Content Pruning & Consolidation (Zombie page removal)

• 3.2.4 Keyword Cannibalization Resolution

3.3 On-Page Optimization (The Mechanics)

• 3.3.1 Title Tag & Meta Description (CTR Optimization)

• 3.3.2 Header Hierarchy (H1-H6) & Outline structure

• 3.3.3 Image SEO (Alt text, file names, EXIF data, formats)

• 3.3.4 Structured Data (Schema.org)

  • JSON-LD implementation

  • Rich Snippet eligibility (Review, Product, FAQ, How-To)

  • Nesting & Connecting Schema (The @id reference)

3.4 E-E-A-T & Quality Signals

• 3.4.1 Authorship Signals & Bio Pages

• 3.4.2 YMYL (Your Money Your Life) constraints

• 3.4.3 Needs Met rating correlation

4.1 Link Graph Analysis

• 4.1.1 Backlink Profile Auditing

  • Link Velocity & Trough/Peak analysis

  • Anchor Text distribution ratios (Brand vs Exact Match vs Naked)

  • Toxic Link identification & Disavow File protocol

• 4.1.2 Link Equity Calculation (PageRank flow)

4.2 Acquisition Strategies

• 4.2.1 Passive Link Acquisition (Data studies, Tools, Statistics)

• 4.2.2 Active Outreach (Digital PR, Broken Link Building, Resource Pages)

• 4.2.3 Unlinked Brand Mentions (Reclamation)

4.3 Local Off-Page (The Proximity Factor)

• 4.3.1 Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization

• 4.3.2 Local Citations & NAP Consistency (Data Aggregators)

• 4.3.3 Review Velocity & Sentiment Analysis

5.1 Core Web Vitals (CWV)

• 5.1.1 Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - Load performance

• 5.1.2 Interaction to Next Paint (INP) - Responsiveness (Replacing FID)

• 5.1.3 Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - Visual Stability

5.2 Critical Rendering Path Optimization

• 5.2.1 Resource Prioritization

  • preload, prefetch, preconnect, prerender

• 5.2.2 Asset Optimization

  • Minification (CSS/JS)

  • Compression (Brotli/Gzip)

  • Image Formats (WebP, AVIF) & Responsive Images (srcset)

• 5.2.3 Caching Strategies & CDNs (Content Delivery Networks)

6.1 Google Search Console Mastery

• 6.1.1 Performance Reports (Regex filtering)

• 6.1.2 Inspection Tool debugging

• 6.1.3 Crawl Stats Report analysis

6.2 Analytics & Attribution

• 6.2.1 GA4 for SEO (Landing page reports, Organic exploration)

• 6.2.2 Attribution Models (First click, Linear, Data-driven)

6.3 Technical Measurement

• 6.3.1 Log File Analysis

  • Bot hit frequency

  • Status code distribution by bot

  • Crawl budget waste identification

• 6.3.2 Rank Tracking nuances (Mobile vs Desktop, Geo-specific)

• 6.3.3 A/B Testing for SEO (Split testing titles/content)

7.1 eCommerce SEO

• Product Variant handling

• Category Page optimization (Faceted nav challenges)

• User Generated Content (Reviews) management

7.2 Enterprise SEO

• Stakeholder management & Education

• Migration Strategies (Domain changes, CMS replatforming)

• Scalability & Automation

7.3 News & Publisher SEO

• Google Discover optimization

• Top Stories & News Sitemaps

• Paywall/Subscription schema (JSON-LD)

8.1 AI & Search (SGE/AIO)

• Optimizing for AI Overviews (AIO)

• Information Gain scoring

• LLM-based Search behavior

8.2 Programmatic SEO

• Dataset utilization for scale

• Template engineering

• Quality control at scale

8.3 Edge SEO

• Serverless functions (Cloudflare Workers, Lambda@Edge)

• Modifying headers/HTML at the network edge

Concept: The Conversation between Browser and Server.

Core Competencies: Status Codes (200, 301, 302, 404, 410, 500, 503).

The "Unlock": Understanding that a page isn't "gone" until the server says 404 or 410.

🔗 Lateral Connection: DNS Resolution (A Records, CNAME).

Concept: HTML Source vs. Rendered DOM.

[Requires 1.1]: You must know how the server delivers the HTML.

Core Competencies: Viewing Source, Inspect Element, basic HTML tags (<head>, <body>, <a>, <meta>).

The "Unlock": Realizing that what Google sees might differ from what you see in "View Source" (the foundation for JavaScript SEO).

Concept: The Address System.

Core Competencies: Protocols, Subdomains, TLDs, Paths, Parameters (?id=), Fragments (#).

The "Unlock": Understanding that example.com/page and example.com/page/ are technically two different locations.

[Requires 1.1 + 1.3]: You need to understand User-Agents (headers) and URL paths.

Core Competencies: robots.txt syntax (Allow/Disallow), Wildcards (*), Sitemap declaration.

The "Unlock": Disallow does not equal Noindex. (A critical distinction).

[Requires 1.2]: These live in the <head>.

Core Competencies: <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">, X-Robots-Tag (Header implementation).

The "Unlock": How to prevent indexing while allowing crawling (or vice versa).

[Requires 2.1]: Sitemaps are useless if blocked by robots.txt.

Core Competencies: XML structure, lastmod reliability, Index coverage reconciliation.

[Requires 1.1 + 1.3 + 2.2]: You must understand parameters, redirects, and meta tags to use this.

Core Competencies: Self-referencing canonicals, Cross-domain canonicals, Parameter handling.

The "Unlock": Solving "Duplicate Content" issues without deleting pages.

⚠️ Critical Junction: Misunderstanding this leads to "Canonical Tag pointing to 404" errors.

[Requires 3.1]: Facets create near-infinite URL variations that require canonicalization or blocking.

Core Competencies: Crawl Budget management, Spider traps, Filter combinations.

[Requires 3.1]: Hreflang shares logic with canonicals (they must agree).

Core Competencies: Language vs. Country codes (ISO formats), Return tag errors.

[Requires 1.2 + 2.1]: Understanding the DOM and how bots crawl.

Core Competencies: Crawl → Render → Index queue.

The "Unlock": Why your content doesn't appear in Google's cache even if it's in the HTML.

[Requires 4.1]:

Core Competencies: Server-Side Rendering (SSR), Client-Side Rendering (CSR), Hydration, Prerendering.

The "Unlock": Diagnosing "Soft 404s" caused by Empty Client-Side Shells.

[Requires 1.2 + 4.1]: How browsers build the DOM/CSSOM.

Core Competencies: Render-blocking resources, Async/Defer JS, Preloading.

[Requires 5.1]:

Core Competencies: LCP (Load), CLS (Visual Stability), INP (Interactivity).

The "Unlock": Debugging layout shifts requires understanding the DOM load order.

[Requires 1.1 + 2.1]: You are analyzing raw server requests.

Core Competencies: Identifying bot hit patterns, verifying "Crawl Budget," spotting orphan pages via external hits.

[Requires 1.1 + CDN Knowledge]:

Core Competencies: Using Cloudflare Workers/Lambda@Edge to inject headers or modify HTML before it hits the browser.

Problem: "Google isn't indexing my page."

Dependency Check 1: Is it blocked in Robots.txt? (Level 2)

Dependency Check 2: Is there a Noindex tag? (Level 2)

Dependency Check 3: Is there a Canonical pointing elsewhere? (Level 3)