Want to learn more about search engine optimization (SEO)?

Then you should learn from the top SEO experts.

Reading the top SEO blogs and publications is a good start. So is attending SEO conferences.

But don’t stop there.

SEO is such a giving community.

We share strategies, tactics, tips, tools, data, and so much more on social media and at conferences – as well as in articles, research, and blog posts.

You will definitely learn something new every day from this list of 140 SEO experts. Follow them if you want a free SEO education.

Why This SEO Experts List Exists

The term “SEO expert” is thrown around a lot these days.

Do a Google search for [seo experts to follow] and you’ll find plenty of lists.

Here’s the thing about most of these lists: they’re usually deeply flawed in one way or another.

Why?

Generally, top SEO expert lists:

Are just a sneaky way for an unknown author to get himself or herself on a list filled with experts and look like a big-time SEO expert.

Are published by unknown SEO agencies or companies purely for the purposes of attracting links and shares.

Include people who, while brilliant in other areas of marketing (social media, content marketing, etc.), aren’t really SEO experts.

Include people who no longer are really involved in SEO (or never really were practitioners). For example, while Matt Cutts, the former distinguished engineer who was head of the webspam team at Google, might be great on a list if it were still 2013 – it’s no longer 2013.

Include popular “experts” who share bad information that give the industry a bad name. (We won’t name any names here.)

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That’s why, about a year ago, I put together the first version of this list of top authorities and experts you should be following or listening to if you want to learn about SEO today.

How This List Was Compiled

Now we’ve updated this list for 2019 – to bring you what I believe to be the most up-to-date list of high-quality SEO experts you’ll find.

And I didn’t put this list together alone.

I’m so grateful for the help I received from the following panel of fantastic judges who helped compile this awesome list:

Loren Baker, founder of Search Engine Journal and co-founder of Foundation Digital

Jenny Halasz, president of JLH Marketing.

Alexandra Tachalova, founder of Digital Olympus.

Purna Virji, senior manager of global engagement at Microsoft.

(Note: Neither Baker nor Halasz were allowed to vote for themselves – their presence on the judging panel in no way influenced their inclusion on this list.)

This post isn’t meant to reward everyone who has ever been an SEO professional or includes the acronym SEO in his or her job title. It also isn’t intended to be a popularity contest that confuses expertise with social media follower counts.

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The people on this list are all actively doing SEO now – or they’re sharing SEO information, knowledge, and insights (either via social media, contributing to publications or blogs, or speaking at conferences).

Here was our basic judging criteria (though, like Google, our scoring algorithm was comprised of more than 200 ranking signals 😉):

Are they currently doing SEO (not mandatory)?

Do they speak about SEO at conferences (or webinars, podcasts, etc.)?

Do they share good SEO content on social media?

Do they write good content about SEO for blogs/publications?

The main idea of this post is to help you find interesting people who know a lot about SEO and are willing to share what they know. This is just one way Search Engine Journal is able to direct you to SEO professionals who can help you improve at your job and advance your career.

While I love the idea that there are hundreds of SEO professionals doing great work who go unrecognized – and there truly are! – if they aren’t visible and sharing knowledge, it doesn’t matter in terms of the list you’re about to read.

No offense is intended toward any of those hard-working people, but if you aren’t making yourself visible to the wider SEO community, then it’s the equivalent of ranking on Page 2 of Google.

Our goal with this list is to highlight people who are moving the industry forward and sharing unique insights/knowledge/tips/ideas, etc.

Finally – there is no rankings order here from best to least best. Each person on this list has value in their own way.

Rather than go in alphabetical order by last name, as we did last year, I decided to introduce some randomness. This year, I plugged our list into this list randomizer to give everyone a fair shot at where they appear.

Why You Aren’t On This List

Let’s be honest – these posts are always a bit controversial.

After a post like this is published, there are always a few responses you can expect:

Those who are mentioned: Generally, they are honored, humbled, or even surprised. It’s always nice to make someone’s day.

Generally, they are honored, humbled, or even surprised. It’s always nice to make someone’s day. Those who aren’t included: After quickly checking they aren’t on the list, they fire up Twitter and point to flaws. Typically, it comes in the form of either “this person doesn’t even DO SEO,” “you included so-and-so, so this list sucks,” or “lists like these devalue our entire industry.”

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Again, no list is perfect. But we’ve tried to make this list the least imperfect it can be, right now.

If you weren’t included this year, there’s always next year.

If you really want to be here next year, let it motivate you this year – get noticed, share your knowledge with the community, network, and increase your own visibility by building up your personal brand.

Honorable Mentions

For this year’s installment, no employees or spokespeople from the major search engines were included as part of our 140 SEO experts.

However, we believe every SEO professional should always keep an eye on these people to stay up on the latest updates and get some advice straight from the search engines, as these folks regularly tweet, write, or speak (in Hangouts, at conferences, and on webinars):

Google:

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Bing:

Frederic Dubut, senior program manager

DuckDuckGo:

Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder

140 SEO Experts to Follow in 2019

OK, now it’s time for the main event and what you came here for – SEJ’s list of SEO experts.

The following people really know their stuff when it comes to SEO.

Follow them if you want to grow your skill set and knowledge.

Andy Drinkwater

Freelance SEO Consultant / iQ SEO Ltd

Andy started out as a Copywriter and moved into SEO in 1999. He now specializes in technical SEO and auditing.

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Follow @iqseo on Twitter

Follow Andy on LinkedIn

What Andy loves about SEO: The community is pretty amazing and is what makes it so enjoyable. But working as an SEO, I love the chase of the SERPs and the fact that no two days are ever the same.

Years working in the SEO industry: 19 years

Notable achievement from 2018: Moving out of the home-office into dedicated office on the business park. This, surprisingly, made a number of differences.

Andy recommends: Using Strong Internal Links for SEO

Heather Lloyd-Martin

CEO and Founder / SuccessWorks

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Heather loves teaching in-house teams and freelance writers how to write engaging, share-worthy and top-positioned content.

Follow @heatherlloyd on Twitter

Follow Heather on LinkedIn

What Heather loves about SEO: The people. The fast pace. The ever-changing landscape. SEO is fun!

Years working in the SEO industry: 20+

Notable achievement from 2018: I wanted to help clients in a new way – so I went back to school and dove into the world of business coaching. I received my Certified Professional Coach certification in 2018 and just launched Pivot Hacks.

Heather recommends: Should Writers Care About Voice Search?

Dixon Jones

Global Brand Ambassador / Majestic and Founder / DHJ Ventures LTD

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Dixon Jones is Global Brand Ambassador for Majestic and now a business coach taking innovative ideas from the bedroom to the boardroom.

Follow @Dixon_Jones on Twitter

Follow Dixon on LinkedIn

What Dixon loves about SEO: I have a love/hate relationship with the pace of change. Fortunately, the people collaborate to adapt to that change.

Years working in the SEO industry: 20

Notable achievement from 2018: The first person in the UK to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement award at the UK Search Awards.

Dixon recommends: How PageRank Really Works: Understanding Google

Carolyn Shelby

SEO Manager / ESPN

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Carolyn has been an enterprise technical SEO since the mid-’90s.

Follow @cshel on Twitter

What Carolyn loves about SEO: I love the constant stream of new challenges and opportunities to figure out how to fix broken things.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: Started working at ESPN.

Carolyn recommends:

I understand that the HTML5 spec allows more than one H1 per “page”, but when everything is labeled as “the most important thing on the page”, then really nothing is “the most important thing on the page” #seo pic.twitter.com/v7TIYHDN26 — Carolyn Shelby (@cshel) December 5, 2018

Cyrus Shepard

Founder / Zyppy

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Cyrus is an SEO practitioner, writer, speaker and educator who has worked for Moz and now runs Zyppy, an SEO consultation, content, and software company.

Follow @CyrusShepard on Twitter

What Cyrus loves about SEO: SEO is an area where hard, smart work can pay off in huge ways. That, plus the best community on earth. We’re all brothers and sisters and more.

Years working in the SEO industry: 9

Notable achievement from 2018: In 2018, we launched Zyppy.

Cyrus recommends: 100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked

Brian McDowell

Principal Digital Strategist / BloomReach

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Brian began his career in the 1990s building online software and has dedicated his career to providing enterprise-level SEO solutions with a heavy focus on ecommerce.

Follow @Brian_Mcdowell on Twitter

Follow Brian on LinkedIn

What Brian loves about SEO: I love the constant evolution of both the search engines and user behavior. There is a constant drive to stay educated which is impossible without the community. The community itself has become like family to many involved.

Years working in the SEO industry: 21

Notable achievement from 2018: In 2018, I was able to share in the excitement of a company acquisition. I love being a part of a start-up and helping drive innovation. Having years of your time and dedication recognized (even after moving on) is an exciting event for all parties.

Brian recommends: Data Driven Content Marketing Audit – Pubcon Vegas 2018

Carolyn Lyden

Digital Marketing and Demand Generation Lead / Flock Safety

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Coming from a writing background, Carolyn loves content strategy and just recently discovered her love of data.

Follow @Carolyn_Lyden on Twitter

Follow Carolyn on LinkedIn

What Carolyn loves about SEO: The community! You can ask a question online and multiple people will offer different points of view and experiments to try.

Years working in the SEO industry: 8

Notable achievement from 2018: 2018 Search Marketer of the Year Finalist

Carolyn recommends: Five Ways to Use Social for SEO and Vice Versa

Mat Siltala

Podcaster / Business of Digital Podcast

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Matt is a keynote speaker, entrepreneur, photographer and weekly podcaster on digital marketing.

Follow @Matt_Siltala on Twitter

What Mat loves about SEO: There is something very satisfying about helping people grow their dreams. Not that long ago it wasn’t easy for someone with a small budget to be successful. They could not compete without Radio or TV advertising etc., but not through SEO anyone has a chance to live their dream. I love being able to help them achieve that through what I do.

Years working in the SEO industry: 20+ – since 1997

Notable achievement from 2018: I spoke on the main stage at BrightonSEO, and that was by far the biggest audience I have ever been in front of, and it was amazing!

Mat recommends: How to create the best content in the world

JR Oakes

Director, Technical SEO / Adapt

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JR is an architectural glass designer turned developer, Technical SEO, and data/ML/NLP geek, as well as co-organizer of two SEO meetup groups.

Follow @jroakes on Twitter

What JR loves about SEO: Constantly evolving in new and unique ways. Collaborating with and learning from other passionate and smart people.

Years working in the SEO industry: 6

Notable achievement from 2018: Fixed an annoying issue in the new Google Search Console for hundreds of SEOs with a simple Chrome extension.

JR recommends: Measuring the quality of popular keyword research tools

Dave Rohrer

Founder / NorthSide Metrics

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Dave is a reformed Web Developer that somehow became a Marketer.

Follow @daver on Twitter

Follow Dave on LinkedIn

What Dave loves about SEO: It requires you to constantly learn and adapt.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15+

Notable achievement from 2018: The podcast “The Business of Digital Podcast” I co-host turned one year old in 2018 and will turn two in early 2019.

Dave recommends:

So @daver and I tackled a tough topic in our latest @bizofdigital Podcast episode. We’d love any feedback or input from anyone that has anything to add that can benefit anyone in our industry. https://t.co/QqttamyJnW — Matt Siltala (@Matt_Siltala) November 7, 2018

Rob Woods

Owner / Rob Woods Consulting

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Rob has been an SEO for 18 years and currently consults with medium to large sites in e-commerce, travel, software, and publishing

Follow @robdwoods on Twitter

What Rob loves about SEO: Constantly learning and adapting to changes in the algorithms and technology.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: Spoke at State of Search for the first time.

Rob recommends: Advanced SEO Auditing

Kelsey Jones

Founder and Chief Marketing Strategist / Six Stories

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Kelsey Jones has over a decade of experience in editing, writing, and SEO for clients globally, from Tophatter to Salesforce.

Follow @wonderwall7 on Twitter

Follow Kelsey on LinkedIn

Read Kelsey on Search Engine Journal

What Kelsey loves about SEO: The people are so, so great. Once I stopped being intimidated about meeting the “SEO celebs” I started getting to know them. I learned that we are all a fun group of nerds who love the industry and helping businesses improve their online visibility. Our community won’t hesitate to help one another, no matter what. I know I have a “search homie” in almost every major city and I love seeing everyone at conferences and while traveling.

Years working in the SEO industry: 11

Notable achievement from 2018: My two courses (Website Optimization and SEO Content) for Digital Marketing Institute are live as part of their updated Digital Marketing Professional certification program.

Kelsey recommends: When Shouldn’t You Automate B2B Marketing?

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Ammon Johns

Internet Marketing Consultant

One of the surviving ‘first generation’ SEOs, Ammon is widely cited as a thought leader, mentor, and pioneer to many, consistently, since the ’90s.

Follow @Ammon_Johns on Twitter

Follow Ammon on LinkedIn

What Ammon loves about SEO: I love the diversity of the work, of the challenges, and of the community, and the way that an industry where all the originals were self-taught is naturally supportive and collaborative, even when competitive.

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Years working in the SEO industry: 20+ – since before there was an SEO industry, and before SEO had a name, being a full-time specialist in ‘web marketing’ since 1996.

Notable achievement from 2018: Survived another year, where some beloved colleagues did not.

Ammon recommends:

Mindy Weinstein

CEO / Market MindShift

Mindy is an SEO practitioner and trainer, as well as a marketing professor.

Follow @mindyweinstein on Twitter

Follow Mindy on LinkedIn

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Read Mindy on Search Engine Journal

What Mindy loves about SEO: My favorite thing about SEO is the constant change. It is an industry that requires you to research, test and implement on a regular basis. Plus, there is a rewarding aspect of the job where you get to watch businesses grow because of your technical (and marketing…that’s SEO too) help.

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: Even though I’m still running my business, I was hired as full-time faculty for Grand Canyon University where I get to teach the future marketers of the world.

Mindy recommends: A Technical SEO Checklist for the Non-Technical Marketer

Marcus Tandler

Co-Founder and Managing Director / RYTE

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Marcus loves SEO.

Follow @mediadonis on Twitter

Follow Marcus on LinkedIn

What Marcus loves about SEO: I love how the SEO industry is always openly sharing and discussing their experiments, best-practices, and fails.

Years working in the SEO industry: I started with SEO in November of 1998 so exactly 20 years.

Notable achievement from 2018: After 10 years of SEOktoberfest, we successfully evolved the event into the G50 Summit, which took place at famous Elmau Castle in the very same room the G7 world leaders have met. This has definitely been the right move for our exclusive SEO think tank and therefore a definite highlight for me in 2018.

Marcus recommends: How to Work Effectively with Google Search Console Data to Analyze Google Updates

Topher Kohan

Senior Product Manager – SEO / Growth at The Weather Company, an IBM Business

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Topher is just a guy that likes to do SEO and tries to be a good person.

Follow @Topheratl on Twitter

Follow Topher on LinkedIn

What Topher loves about SEO: I love SEO and all the folks that are part of the industry for a very simple reason: You/they can help make good things happen for each other and for the sites they support.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: Moved one step closer to helping my sites to understand that visibility is more important than rankings

Topher recommends:

All the hubbub around @Google showing results with no link has folks thinking that the google owes them something. They don’t. We allow themes crawl and index our site with the hopes of more traffic but nothing says they have to send that traffic to us #seo — Topher Kohan (@Topheratl) November 27, 2018

Robbie Richards

Founder / robbierichards.com

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Robbie is the Marketing Director at Virayo (a search marketing agency for SaaS companies), and the founder of robbierichards.com.

Follow @RobbieRichMktg on Twitter

Follow Robbie on LinkedIn

What Robbie loves about SEO: A couple things: (1) things are constantly changing, and (2) the ability to drive measurable bottom line results for clients.

Years working in the SEO industry: 6

Notable achievement from 2018: Launched Virayo, a search marketing agency for SaaS companies.

Robbie recommends: 14 “No-BS” Ways to Rapidly Increase Organic SEO Traffic in 2018 (with Case Studies & Examples)

Nick Eubanks

CEO / From The Future

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Nick is Founder of From The Future and Partner at Traffic Think Tank and NK Tech.

Follow @nick_eubanks on Twitter

Follow Nick on LinkedIn

What Nick loves about SEO: The passion and willingness to share knowledge

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: Growing TrafficThinkTank.com to over $500k in ARR in under 12 months

Nick recommends: How to Calculate Your Total Addressable Market Online

Marie Haynes

Owner / Marie Haynes Consulting.

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Marie is completely obsessed with trying to understand how Google’s algorithms work and how business owners can produce high-quality pages that Google loves to rank well.

Follow @Marie_Haynes on Twitter

What Marie loves about SEO: Learning!

Years working in the SEO industry: 10+

Notable achievement from 2018: Our team was nominated for best small SEO agency at the US Search awards

Marie recommends: E-A-T and SEO

Mike Ramsey

Founder / Nifty Marketing

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Mike Ramsey is a prolific speaker and the founder of Nifty which is a digital agency with an emphasis in Local Search Marketing.

Follow @mikeramsey on Twitter

Follow Mike on LinkedIn

What Mike loves about SEO: The constant complexity and weaving a practice that touches on design, usability, promotion, data, and gut. It’s always an adventure.

Years working in the SEO industry: 10+

Notable achievement from 2018: Became a 3x Inc 5000 company.

Mike recommends: Local Landing Page Study: What’s happening in 2018

Tim Soulo

CMO and Product Advisor / Ahrefs

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Tim Soulo is the CMO and Product advisor at Ahrefs (a SEO toolset, powered by Big Data). He’s also an international speaker and author of a number of SEO research studies.

Follow @timsoulo on Twitter

Follow Tim on Facebook

What Tim loves about SEO: I love to see when people use SEO to grow their business and improve the quality of their life as a result 🙂

Years working in the SEO industry: 10+

Notable achievement from 2018: In 2018, Ahrefs Blog has surpassed 200k visits per month from Google, making it one of the biggest and most reputable blogs in our industry.

Tim recommends: 91% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. And How to Be in the Other 9%

Brian Dean

Founder / Backlinko

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Brian is the founder of the SEO training company, Backlinko.

Follow @Backlinko on Twitter

Follow Brian on YouTube

What Brian loves about SEO: It’s the perfect blend of art and science.

Years working in the SEO industry: 8

Notable achievement from 2018: Hit 100k subscribers on YouTube!

Brian recommends: The Ultimate SEO Audit [Works GREAT in 2019]

JP Sherman

Manager of Search & Findability / Red Hat

JP Sherman, as the Manager of Findability at Red Hat, uses SEO, UI/UX, machine learning and other tactics, supported by behavioral science, to connect people to the information they’re looking for regardless of how and where they’re looking for it.

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Follow @jpsherman on Twitter

What JP loves about SEO: I thrive on the collaborative community we’ve all built where brilliant people of diverse backgrounds and skills all work together to share knowledge, build useful things and cull out the bunk. I love that we all tackle big, strange and interesting problems, celebrate each others’ successes and occasionally laugh at the rogue noindex tag.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: Speaking about site-search at BrightonSEO gave me enough experience points to level up to “international speaker” while allowing me my first trip to the UK.

JP recommends:

A1: another thing that deeply impacts a biz’s growth is process. even great products, marketing, tech can be improved or destroyed by process – i try to focus on that as much as other factors #SEMrushchat — JP Sherman (@jpsherman) July 25, 2018

Dan Shure

Consultant / Evolving SEO and Podcast Host / Experts on the Wire

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After being a professional musician for 10 years, Dan Shure now helps companies like WGBH, Sumo & Primal Nutrition with SEO and has interviewed over 100 Marketers for his Experts on the Wire Podcast.

Follow @dan_shure on Twitter

Follow Dan on LinkedIn

What Dan loves about SEO: That the industry offers you the ability to work in a variety of situations (in-house, agency, consultant – on location or remote) and that you can approach it from a specialty that most interests you (technical, content, strategy, local, vertical, etc). There is a lot of opportunity for anyone with any particular skill set, strengths, and passions.

Years working in the SEO industry: 9

Notable achievement from 2018: Was given a prominent mention in Rand Fishkin’s book ‘Lost and Founder’ re: advice [I] gave Rand for how to improve Moz’s popular Keyword Explorer tool.

Dan recommends: Using Keyword Psychographics to Improve Your SEO with Marty Weintraub

Eric Enge

General Manager / Perficient Digital

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Eric has been involved in SEO for 20 years, founded Stone Temple and helped write The Art of SEO.

Follow @stonetemple on Twitter

Follow Eric on LinkedIn

Read Eric on Search Engine Journal

What Eric loves about SEO: I love its ever-changing nature, which allows me to face new challenges on a daily basis.

Years working in the SEO industry: 20

Notable achievement from 2018: I have been named Search Personality of the Year / Search Marketer of the Year by three different award organizations.

Eric recommends: Rating the Smarts of the Digital Personal Assistants in 2018

Kristine Schachinger

Consultant and Owner / Site Without Walls

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Kristine has been designing and building websites since 1998 and ranking them since 2004. She is a Jill of all Trades but specializes in SEO (technical), accessibility, usability, and conversion optimization.

Follow @schachin on Twitter

Follow Kristine on LinkedIn

Read Kristine on Search Engine Journal

What Kristine loves about SEO: I love the people most of all. You couldn’t ask to work in a more supportive industry when it comes to SEOs helping SEOs in all ways, not just work. Plus they are overall just such an intelligent and funny group of people who come from all backgrounds and walks of life and I get to call many of them not only my colleagues but friends. Couldn’t ask for better.

You could say you come for the SEO, but you stay for the people. Cheesy, but true.

Then I would say the challenge of figuring out the jigsaw puzzle that is Google’s algorithms. Of course the difference between working on a real puzzle and Google’s is with Google you are doing it in the dark not knowing what the full picture is because the game maker won’t tell you, but knowing that is what makes it the most fun – figuring things out, reverse engineering while what you work on changes almost daily – you can never get bored!

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Years working in the SEO industry: I have worked 14 years in Search and 20 in Digital.

Notable achievement from 2018: Being featured in this article 🙂 or my week in London this summer with UK Search people (Spoke at Ungagged London and Leeds UK plus got a chance to meet all the wonderful people at the Manchester SEO Lunch!). Great time with great people.

Kristine recommends: In Search of Natural Language Processing: Rank Brain, Google, SEO, and You

Simon Heseltine

VP of Audience Growth / Trader Interactive

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Simon’s team runs SEO, SEM and social for industry-leading sites such as CycleTrader, RVTrader, CommercialTruckTrader and EquipmentTrader.

Follow @simonheseltine on Twitter

Follow Simon on LinkedIn

What Simon loves about SEO: Google always makes the work interesting, plus the community itself is great.

Years working in the SEO industry: 14

Notable achievement from 2018: Started at Trader Interactive in May of this year, and am absolutely loving the company, and the work we do.

Simon recommends: Is SEO table stakes? (Hint: No!)

Marcus Tober

Founder and CTO / Searchmetrics

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Marcus is a passionate SEO, as well as a passionate product guy that loves to build products that people love.

Follow @marcustober on Twitter

Follow Marcus on LinkedIn

What Marcus loves about SEO: I love SEO because the impact of our work is huge. We make the user and hopefully the companies happy when we optimize websites and it’s content. A perfect website without the best content is nothing worth as also the best content that is not being found. We SEOs think from the business and user perspective and bring all of this together.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: Early Access version of our “New Suite” after many years of development.

Marcus recommends: Three smart content strategies for boosting search performance without creating fresh content

Hannah Thorpe

Business Director / Found

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As an SEO Business Director at the award-winning digital marketing agency Found, Hannah is responsible for everything from leading complex technical strategies, right through to creating innovative content campaigns for clients.

Follow @hannahjthorpe on Twitter

Follow Hannah on LinkedIn

What Hannah loves about SEO: I love that SEO moves at such a fast pace, it means that there’s always something new to learn or a different challenge to tackle.

Years working in the SEO industry: 5

Notable achievement from 2018: Joining the team at Found has got to be the biggest career highlight for me. Found acquired my agency, White.net, in the middle of 2018 and it’s been an incredible experience to now be part of such an amazing team.

Hannah recommends: From Search to Discovery – The Changing Face of Search Engines

Bill Slawski

Director of SEO Research / Go Fish Digital

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Bill Slawski moved from the East Coast to Carlsbad, California three years ago.

Follow @bill_slawski on Twitter

Follow Bill on LinkedIn

What Bill loves about SEO: I am curious about how people use information, and want to help them find what they need.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: Spoke at Google London Headquarters and in Milan about SEO.

Bill recommends: Five Years of Google Ranking Signals

Fili Wiese

SEO Expert / SearchBrothers.com

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Fili is a technical and international SEO expert, ex-Google engineer and former senior Google Search Quality team member.

Follow @filiwiese on Twitter

Follow Fili on LinkedIn

What Fili loves about SEO: There is always something new.

Years working in the SEO industry: 20

Notable achievement from 2018: More than 57 TB of server logs and 94 billion backlinks analyzed in 2018.

Fili recommends: BrightonSEO LIVE 27 April 2018 – Optimizing for Search Bots by Fili Wiese

Dave Davies

CEO / Beanstalk Internet Marketing

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Dave is a nerd who likes marketing so starting Beanstalk Internet Marketing in 2004 with his wife Mary made a lot of sense.

Follow @beanstalkim on Twitter

Follow Dave on Facebook

Read Dave on Search Engine Journal

What Dave loves about SEO: It’s like real-world Monopoly: there are winners and losers and it’s more-or-less zero-sum.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: Spoke at three conferences in three weeks

Dave recommends: How Machine Learning in Search Works: Everything You Need to Know

Will Critchlow

Founder and CEO / Distilled

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Will runs Distilled which provides online marketing services from offices in London, New York and Seattle, hosts the SearchLove conference series in the US and UK, produces the popular online training platform DistilledU, and runs the SEO split-testing platform DistilledODN.

Follow @willcritchlow on Twitter

Follow Will on LinkedIn

What Will loves about SEO: I love learning, and so I like working in an industry where I can surround myself with innovations.

Years working in the SEO industry: 13

Notable achievement from 2018: Grew our ODN platform (https://odn.distilled.net) to early product market fit and launched it as a business unit led by my colleague Craig Bradford.

Will recommends: Interviewing Google’s John Mueller at SearchLove: domain authority metrics, sub-domains vs. sub-folders and more

Dan Petrovic

Director / DEJAN Marketing

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Dan is an Australian digital marketer, best known for his SEO work at Dejan Marketing.

Follow @dejanseo on Twitter

Follow Dan on LinkedIn

What Dan loves about SEO: I absolutely love when I discover something new and get to share it with the rest of the SEO community.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: CTR optimization framework I describe in the following trilogy:

https://dejanseo.com.au/same-rank-more-clicks/

https://dejanseo.com.au/ctr/

https://dejanseo.com.au/predictive-analytics/

Subsequently, our internal tool that calculates CTR optimization opportunities was made free to the public on https://www.phraseresearch.com/

Dan recommends: Link inversion, the least known major ranking factor

Bastian Grimm

Director Organic Search / Peak Ace AG

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Bastian Grimm, CEO and Director Organic Search at Peak Ace, is a renowned expert in large-scale, international SEO; with more than 15 years of experience in online marketing. He currently oversees Peak Ace’s search engine optimization as well as content marketing initiatives.

Follow @basgr on Twitter

Follow Bastian on LinkedIn

What Bastian loves about SEO: The fast pace of our industry is a massive challenge and a struggle at the same time; so many new things left and right – and only so limited time. However, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I totally enjoy the broad spectrum of SEO and being able to work together with so many different teams and personalities from different backgrounds and even cultures.

Years working in the SEO industry: 17

Notable achievement from 2018: Won European Search Award 2018 (best SEO campaign)

Bastian recommends: Web Performance Madness – brightonSEO 2018

Ann Smarty

Brand Manager / Internet Marketing Ninjas

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Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com as well as the founder of ViralContentBee.com

Follow @seosmarty on Twitter

Follow Ann on LinkedIn

Read Ann on Search Engine Journal

What Ann loves about SEO: I love how fast it changes

Years working in the SEO industry: 13

Notable achievement from 2018: I started my own premium SEO coaching: http://www.seosmarty.com/become-anns-premium-subscriber/

Ann recommends: How to Optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets to Build More Traffic

Bartosz Goralewicz

CEO and Co-founder / Elephate

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Leading a highly specialized team of forward-thinking SEO experts, Bartosz works on the deep technical optimization of large international structures, while paving new terrain for the SEO industry to explore.

Follow @bart_goralewicz on Twitter

Follow Bartosz LinkedIn

Read Bartosz on Search Engine Journal

What Bartosz loves about SEO:

Constant change. The amazing community. Endless possibilities for growth. Seeing how our work affects large businesses and the people who work there.

Years working in the SEO industry: 8 and I still consider myself “fresh blood” 🙂

Notable achievement from 2018: We started working with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. In the process, we began consulting/optimizing whole ecommerce platforms, allowing for Elephate to evolve into an official technical SEO agency responsible for whole ecommerce platforms. With this approach, our work affects not just one, but hundreds of clients.

Bartosz recommends:

If you’re an SEO that works on modern sites (or that wants to), these are great presentations to go through. https://t.co/ALUu0Tcivl — 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) May 28, 2018

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Jon Henshaw

Senior SEO Analyst / CBSi and Founder / Coywolf

Jon is the Co-founder of Raven Tools. He currently works at CBS Interactive and runs Coywolf Digital Marketing Insights.

Follow @henshaw on Twitter

Follow Jon on LinkedIn

What Jon loves about SEO: I’m endlessly curious and I love that SEO is constantly evolving. It’s a perfect match!

Years working in the SEO industry: 15+

Notable achievement from 2018: Started Coywolf Digital Marketing Insights

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Jon recommends: WordPress Site Speed Optimization Guide

David Mihm

VP Product Strategy / ThriveHive and Founder / Tidings

David Mihm is a small business marketing enthusiast, advocating for straightforward, best-practice techniques that will lead to long-term success in attracting and retaining customers digitally.

Follow @davidmihm on Twitter

Follow David on LinkedIn

What David loves about SEO: I love that Google is empowering small businesses to do more and more of their own marketing with all the new features (and visibility of those features) in Google My Business. There’s so much you can do now without having to know any code that it’s much easier for small businesses to get started with SEO than ever before.

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Years working in the SEO industry: 14

Notable achievement from 2018: Won StreetFight’s Best New Product Award (Tidings).

David recommends: For Agencies: How to Adapt Your Service Offerings to the Modern Digital Landscape

Keith Goode

Sr. SEO Strategist / IBM

Keith Goode has over a decade experience in online marketing, in-house SEO, and SEO evangelism and training, working with some of Austin’s top start-up companies, including HomeAway and SpareFoot, and global powerhouses, such as Dell and IBM.

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Follow @keithgoode on Twitter

Follow Keith on LinkedIn

What Keith loves about SEO: The disciplines within SEO seem perfectly aligned to meet the needs of people who are technical, or people who are data/mathematics-oriented, or people who are creative/literary. As a result, the industry attracts a diverse set of talented people.

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: I was asked to speak on the main stage for Pubcon Florida in 2019.

Keith recommends: Scaling SEO Across Large Enterprise Ecosystems

Aleyda Solis

International SEO Consultant and Founder / Orainti

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Aleyda is an experienced SEO consultant (service that she provides with her SEO consultancy Orainti), blogger, author, speaker (with more than 100 conferences in 20 countries in English and Spanish). She was awarded as the European Search Personality of the Year in 2018.

Follow @aleyda on Twitter

Follow Aleyda on LinkedIn

Read Aleyda on Search Engine Journal

What Aleyda loves about SEO: The constant learning, testing, and sharing.

Years working in the SEO industry: 11

Notable achievement from 2018: I was awarded as the European Search Personality of the Year in 2018.

Aleyda recommends: PWAs SEO: Developing Optimized PWAs and How to Validate them

Eli Schwartz

Director of Growth and SEO / SurveyMonkey

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Eli is the Director of Growth and SEO at SurveyMonkey where he leads SEO and viral product strategies for the entire product portfolio.

Follow @5le on Twitter

Follow Eli on LinkedIn

Read Eli on Search Engine Journal

What Eli loves about SEO: The people! Without the amazing wisdom shared by everyone in this community in person, in blog posts, and at conferences we would all be hacking away at this by ourselves trying to guess what worked.

Years working in the SEO industry: 13

Notable achievemaent from 2018: Was invited to present on the topic of SEO at Latitude59 – Estonia’s national technology conference. The attendees were some of the fascinating people I have ever spoken to.

Eli recommends: SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz

Ashley Ward

Founder / Madhouse Marketing

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International speaker, author, and digital strategist, Ashley Ward helps businesses manage their brand presence online.

Follow @ashleymadhatter on Twitter

Follow Ashley on LinkedIn

Read Ashley on Search Engine Journal

What Ashley loves about SEO: The evolution of both technology and users. To be great in digital marketing you have to be willing to evolve as both technology and users become more intelligent and demand new behaviors. Talk about never getting bored! Plus, this is one of the most welcoming industries to be a part of.

Years working in the SEO industry: 7

Notable achievement from 2018: Traveled to 10 different countries teaching content and social media best practices.

Ashley recommends:

How to level up your content analytics game w/ @ashleymadhatter -Important metrics people aren’t looking at

-What TOFU MOFU BOFU is and how to use it

-How analytics teams should be structured

-The power of reach as a metric and how to measure ithttps://t.co/QbstIgoReO — Ross Hudgens (@RossHudgens) December 17, 2018

Jeremy Knauff

CEO and Founder / Spartan Media

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Jeremy is the founder of Spartan Media, contributor to multiple publications, and host of the Digital Marketers Podcast.

Follow @JeremyKnauff on Twitter

Follow Jeremy on LinkedIn

Read Jeremy on Search Engine Journal

What Jeremy loves about SEO: I love that the industry is constantly changing and that members in the industry are always willing to help each other.

Years working in the SEO industry: 19

Notable achievement from 2018: I started the Digital Marketers Podcast

Jeremy recommends: SEO Is Back! But Was It Ever Really Gone?

Gianluca Fiorelli

Strategic and International SEO Consultant

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Gianluca has been an SEO since 2014 and a movie fanatic since he was a kid.

Follow @gfiorelli1 on Twitter

Follow Gianlucca on LinkedIn

What Gianluca loves about SEO: I love the generosity of the SEO community and the impossibility of getting bored Search Marketing offers us.

Years working in the SEO industry: 14 (I started in 2004, after 10 years working in the TV Industry.)

Notable achievement from 2018: The most notable achievement of this year was bringing to success the 2nd edition of The Inbounder, the digital marketing conference I founded in 2015.

Gianluca recommends: The Future of Visual Search by Gianluca Fiorelli for Brighton SEO

Laura Lippay

SEO Lead / Comcast

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Laura has almost two decades of experience in enterprise-level SEO, mostly in the tech and entertainment space, working with companies like Netflix, Tesla, Red Bull, Microsoft, Yahoo, CNET, Nylon Magazine, and dozens more. Most recently, she left Silicon Valley after 18 years there and joined Comcast.

Follow @lauralippay on Twitter

Follow Laura on LinkedIn

What Laura loves about SEO: SEO jokes. The old SEO raucous days of big SEO parties. The frenemy dynamics of the relationships between SEOs and Search Engineers and how that’s evolved search quality and the industry. Government + Search challenges and dynamics, like Steve King (R-IA) wanting to monitor Google Search engineers’ social media to try to prove that the algorithm has a liberal bias. A lot of things.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: Started a side thing as an artist. But also, quadrupling Netflix TV show/movie page traffic was fun.

Laura recommends: Better Than Basics: Custom-Tailoring Your SEO Approach (With Real-World Examples)

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Ashley Berman Hale

Technical SEO Lead / DeepCrawl

Ashley is a technical SEO lead, tinkerer, breaker of things, and roller skater.

Follow @bermanhale on Twitter

Follow Ashley on LinkedIn

What Ashley loves about SEO: The potential to make things better for humans and to be constantly learning new things

Years working in the SEO industry: ~15ish

Notable achievement from 2018: First time speaking internationally – SMX Munich

Ashley recommends: SMX Munich 2018 – Content Distribution

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AJ Kohn

Owner / Blind Five Year Old

An experienced marketing executive with a successful track record spanning 20 years, AJ combines a deep understanding of search marketing with a passion for product strategy and iterative product development, fusing design and user experience with quantitative analysis.

Follow @ajkohn on Twitter

Follow AJ on LinkedIn

What AJ loves about SEO: I enjoy SEO because it’s always changing so I never get bored.

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Years working in the SEO industry: 14

Notable achievement from 2018: Martin Fry liked one of my Tweets.

AJ recommends: Algorithm Analysis in the Age of Embeddings

Kristopher Jones

Founder and CEO / LSEO.com

Kristopher B. Jones is a serial entrepreneur, best selling author, and Founder / CEO of LSEO.com

Follow @krisjonescom on Twitter

Follow Kristopher on LinkedIn

Read Kristopher on Search Engine Journal

What Kristopher loves about SEO: I love analyzing data to make decisions to improve organic rankings!

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Years working in the SEO industry: 20

Notable achievement from 2018: LSEO was a finalist in the Top SEO Agency category at the US Search Awards

Kristopher recommends: The 7 Worst Link Building Myths Holding Back Your Campaign

Jesse McDonald

Global SEO Strategist / IBM

Jesse McDonald is a Global SEO Strategist at IBM, conference speaker, and industry writer.

Follow @jesseseogeek on Twitter

Follow Jesse on Facebook

What Jesse loves about SEO: I enjoy how this industry requires you to stay on your toes and adapt.

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Years working in the SEO industry: 5

Notable achievement from 2018: I had the privilege of serving as a judge for the US Search Awards for the first time.

Jesse recommends: The Beginner’s Guide to Identifying and Recovering from a Google Penalty

Paul Shapiro

Partner, Director of Strategy and Innovation and SEO Practice Lead / Catalyst

Paul Shapiro, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Catalyst, specializes in technical SEO and is the founder of the industry’s first technical SEO conference, TechSEO Boost.

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Follow @fighto on Twitter

Follow Paul on LinkedIn

What Paul loves about SEO: The SEO industry is for the most part very supportive of one another, which is admirable. It’s also an industry that touches many other disciplines and emphasizes problem-solving, making it very exciting!

Years working in the SEO industry: 7

Notable achievement from 2018: Held the 2nd annual TechSEO Boost, the SEO conference I founded in 2017 devoted entirely to technical SEO.

Paul recommends: Reducing the time it takes to write meta descriptions for large websites

Debra Mastaler

President / Alliance-Link

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Based in Northern Virginia, Debra Mastaler is President of Alliance-Link, a content development and link building consulting firm specializing in audience and inbound link growth.

Follow @debramastaler on Twitter

Follow Debra on LinkedIn

What Debra loves about SEO: I love the marketing behind being a link builder.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: Received my OMCP certification in Link Building Training in 2016.

Debra recommends: Link Building Fundamentals By Debra Mastaler

Alan Bleiweiss

Forensic SEO Consultant / Alan Bleiweiss Consulting

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Alan provides forensic site audits to world-class enterprise clients around the world.

Follow @AlanBleiweiss on Twitter

Read Alan on Search Engine Journal

What Alan loves about SEO: Everything is always new, while everything is always the same.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: Spent a year living on Oahu

Alan recommends:

Sometimes AMP is not helpful. Can you tell when it was activated on this site and when it was subsequently deactivated? ECommerce site. pic.twitter.com/Z0b0EtlIG5 — Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) November 24, 2018

Aleh Barysevich

Founder and CMO / Link-Assistant.Com

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Aleh Barysevich is a seasoned SEO expert, Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at the company behind SEO PowerSuite (professional software for full-cycle SEO campaigns) and Awario (social media monitoring app).

Follow @ab80 on Twitter

Follow Aleh on LinkedIn

Read Aleh on Search Engine Journal

What Aleh loves about SEO: The best thing about SEO industry is that it’s constantly evolving. I’ve been in the field for over 15 years already, and it feels like I’ve tried hundreds of different professions and roles. Search engine algorithms keep changing so rapidly, making us adapt, grow and acquire new skills really fast. SEO is never boring!

Years working in the SEO industry: 15+

Notable achievement from 2018: 2018 became the year when I first started speaking at the major SEO events. These were Affiliate Summit West in January 2018, followed by SMX London in May, BrightonSEO in September, and, finally, SMX East in October. I was mainly speaking on the topic of page speed, which has definitely the SEO topic of the year for me. My team and I have conducted a massive 1-mln-URL SEO experiment to track the correlation between page speed and rankings. We’ve shared these results widely with the SEO community through my speeches and articles at the leading industry publications.

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Aleh recommends: Double down on speed optimization with these 9 advanced tips

Rishi Lakhani

Digital Marketing Strategist

Rishi is a long-term SEO stress tester.

Follow @rishil on Twitter

Follow Rishi on LinkedIn

What Rishi loves about SEO: The daily shift and change – the need to learn every day.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: Spamming Matt Cutts blog to rank for my blog’s name.

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Rishi recommends:

The sign of a good SEO is simple – they recognise greatness in others better than themselves. Without the support network or peers and industry leaders real SEO wouldnt be where it is today. — Rishi Lakhani (@rishil) February 19, 2018

Bill Hartzer

CEO / Hartzer Consulting

Bill Hartzer is a technical SEO consultant providing SEO audits, having practiced organic and natural SEO since 1996.

Follow @bhartzer on Twitter

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Follow Bill on Facebook

Read Bill on Search Engine Journal

What Bill loves about SEO: SEO is one of the industries that allows you to directly see (and measure) the results of your hard work.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: I was interviewed by CBS News about the Google search results.

Bill recommends: Google Exploit: Canonical Negative SEO

Joe Hall

Senior Organic Search Strategist / Perficient Digital

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Joe specializes in high-level technical SEO for enterprise brands.

Follow @joehall on Twitter

What Joe loves about SEO: Problem solving, working with brilliant developers, and talented marketers.

Years working in the SEO industry: 10

Notable achievement from 2018: Started at Perficient Digital in July.

Joe recommends:

SEO Prediction: 2019 will be do or die moment for many that haven’t fully taken advantage of mobile first indexing. Structured markup, entity optimization, and mobile design/speed is now a requirement. Pos 0-5 are going to be the new Pos 1-10. Nothing matters below 5 on mobile. — Joe Hall 🦡 (@joehall) August 30, 2018

Bill Hunt

President / Back Azimuth Consulting

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Bill is an experienced technical SEO focused on solving complex global search marketing challenges.

Follow @billhunt on Twitter

Follow Bill on LinkedIn

Read Bill on Search Engine Journal

What Bill loves about SEO: The challenge of change.

Years working in the SEO industry: 24

Notable achievement from 2018: 2015 US Search Awards Lifetime Achievement Award

Bill recommends: Common International SEO Challenges & How to Prevent Them

Roger Montti

Owner / Martinibuster.com

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Roger Montti is a search marketing consultant with nearly 20 years of experience.

Follow @martinibuster on Twitter

Follow Roger on LinkedIn

Read Roger on Search Engine Journal

What Roger loves about SEO: The challenge of advancing the state of the art of SEO through independent research of patents and scientific papers and then to use that knowledge to reach plausible and logical conclusions. The reward is in seeing my insights accepted and propagated throughout the SEO industry.

SEO is about gaining knowledge of existing variables. That knowledge is like gaining awareness of chess pieces on a board. It’s only when you have enough pieces on the board that you can then begin to see how the game is being played.

The detective work that leads to discoveries that help me understand what makes a site rank well and what I can do help sites rank is what I most enjoy about SEO.

Years working in the SEO industry: 19

Notable achievement from 2018: “Publishing the news of the Yoast SEO 7.0 bug was important. Even though Yoast published a blog post about it, the news of this serious bug went unreported. A strange situation for such a popular plugin.

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As a result, thousands of users were unaware of the issue. I myself only became aware of it by following a link in the Yoast plugin update notice. I clicked the link to understand what the changelog meant by a cryptic reference to an attachment issue.

After reading the Yoast blog post about this issue I wondered, how could this not have been reported more widely?

The publication of the news on SEJ about the attachment bug helped thousands of users become aware of the problem. Many publishers reached out to thank me. As a web publisher, this is the kind of information I would like to have. I felt it was the right thing to do to get the news out. Tens of thousands of people worldwide agreed with me.

Roger recommends: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: Everything You Need to Know

Greg Gifford

Vice President of Search / DealerOn

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Greg Gifford, VP of Search at DealerOn, speaks internationally at both automotive and SEO conferences, teaching thousands of small business owners and marketers how to get their sites to show up higher in local search rankings.

Follow @greggifford on Twitter

What Greg loves about SEO: The best part about the SEO industry is the people. I’ve met and become friends with some of the most amazing people in the world.

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: Our blog won the BrightLocal annual poll for Best Local SEO blog

Greg recommends: Jason Voorhees’ Killer Tips on How to be a Local SEO Legend

Glen Allsopp

Founder / Detailed

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Glen Allsopp is the Founder of Detailed, an SEO consulting company and search analysis blog.

Follow @viperchill on Twitter

Read Glen on Search Engine Journal

What Glen loves about SEO: There is always something new to learn and new tips and tricks to discover. There are new industry entrants making fantastic contributions all of the time, whether they be technical, creative or anything in between.

Years working in the SEO industry: 13

Notable achievement from 2018: Started working with multiple clients who I never thought would give me the time of day. It’s amazing who you can get to talk to (and work with) if you just reach out and focus on them, rather than yourself.

Glen recommends: Advanced Keyword Research: Four Tactics You’re (Probably) Not Using

Barry Schwartz

President / RustyBrick

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Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick, a New York Web service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales.

Follow @rustybrick on Twitter

Follow Barry on Facebook

What Barry loves about SEO: I love the community.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: I guess the US Search Personality Award in 2018

Barry recommends: Google Medic Update: Google’s Core Search Update Had Big Impact On Health/Medical Sites

Chris Boggs

Founder / Web Traffic Advisors

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Past agency SEO/SEM Consultant on my fifth year as a solo-preneur currently working directly with enterprise clients and supporting larger agencies to deliver improved results in Travel, Retail, eCommerce, Automotive, and B2B Software industries.

Follow @boggles on Twitter

Follow Chris on LinkedIn

Read Chris on Search Engine Journal

What Chris loves about SEO: No day is the same! My work days range from various industries/topics to a variety of research, audit, and client delivery tasks, allowing me to stay fresh and avoid the feeling of “having to make the bagels” daily.

Years working in the SEO industry: 18

Notable achievement from 2018: I grew my largest PPC client by doubling overall conversions while decreasing PPC spend by 35 percent.

Chris recommends: #SEMPOChat: Branding – Building and Owning Your Online Brand

Stoney deGeyter

Founder and CEO / Pole Position Marketing

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Stoney is a 20-year digital marketing veteran and aspiring novelist.

Follow @StoneyD on Twitter

Follow Stoney on LinkedIn

Read Stoney on Search Engine Journal

What Stoney loves about SEO: It’s always changing, yet continues to adhere to consistent marketing principles.

Years working in the SEO industry: 21

Notable achievement from 2018: Completed my first novel. Now I’m agent shopping!

Stoney recommends: 20 Digital Marketing Hacks to Grow your Business

Tom Anthony

VP Product / Distilled

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Tom Anthony has been working on the web for 20 years, and specializes in deep tech SEO.

Follow @TomAnthonySEO

Read Tom on Search Engine Journal

What Tom loves about SEO: It is the perfect storm for my skillset – I have a background in web development, academic experience of AI, and I love puzzles!

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: Google paid me a $5,000 bug bounty for hacking their search algorithm – I believe the first time they paid someone for disclosing a black-hat SEO attack.

Tom recommends: An introduction to HTTP/2 for SEOs

Brent Csutoras

Digital Marketing Consultant / Brent Csutoras, LLC

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Brent is Digital Marketing Consultant at Brent Csutoras, LLC and Managing Partner at Search Engine Journal, one of the top Digital Marketing publications online.

Follow @brentcsutoras on Twitter

Follow Brent on LinkedIn

Read Brent on Search Engine Journal

What Brent loves about SEO: I love that for the first time any person, company, or product, has the chance to get near equal exposure as established and successful competitors. Search Engine Optimization changed the way we look at marketing and customer service.

Years working in the SEO industry: 13

Notable achievement from 2018: I was accepted and given my own column at Inc.com (Inc Magazine) (https://www.inc.com/author/brent-csutoras)

Brent recommends: Goodbye Facebook Pages, Hello Reddit!

Stephen Kenwright

Marketing Director / Edit

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Stephen is the Founder of SearchLeeds and Marketing Director at Kin + Carta Edit.

Follow @stekenwright on Twitter

Follow Stephen on LinkedIn

What Stephen loves about SEO: I love that people spend so much time and effort learning new things just so they can share them and enrich the community. No other industry does so much R&D and gives it away for free.

Years working in the SEO industry: 8

Notable achievement from 2018: More than 2,000 marketers signed up to attend SearchLeeds and Edit won a Search Award for our work with SpaSeekers.

Stephen recommends: Temet nosce: using data to improve self-awareness

Casie Gillette

Sr. Director, Digital Marketing / KoMarketing

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Casie is a leader at KoMarketing and lover of all things content marketing, SEO, Social and Boston.

Follow @Casieg on Twitter

Read Casie on Search Engine Journal

What Casie loves about SEO: There are a lot of fields where you can become an expert and always be an expert. Not SEO. Things change and you have to stay on top of what is happening and be willing to try new things.

Years working in the SEO industry: 14

Notable achievement from 2018: This year I spoke at my first MozCon. It was by far the biggest crowd I’ve been in front of and just an amazing show in general.

Casie recommends: Are Any of These 3 Things Draining Your Passion for SEO?

Kelvin Newman

Founder / BrightonSEO

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Kelvin Newman is the Founder of Rough Agenda, a company that arranges specialist digital marketing events including BrightonSEO.

Follow @kelvinnewman on Twitter

What Kelvin loves about SEO: How everyone is so deeply fascinated about both people and technology and how the two interact

Years working in the SEO industry: 11

Notable achievement from 2018: 4,000 people came from 40 countries to the most recent brightonSEO making us the biggest SEO conference in the world.

Kelvin recommends: Three practical (and inventive) ways of pinching keyword insight from your competitors #searchleeds

Patrick Stox

Technical SEO / IBM

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Patrick is a technical SEO for IBM and organizer of the Raleigh SEO Meetup.

Follow @patrickstox on Twitter

Follow Patrick on LinkedIn

What Patrick loves about SEO: Everyone is friendly and passionate. People are constantly learning and sharing; trying to make themselves and others better.

Years working in the SEO industry: 10+

Notable achievement from 2018: Barry Schwartz included me in his Honor an SEO series.

Patrick recommends:

I’ve never been so happy to have been quoted. https://t.co/6ihBPVChYP pic.twitter.com/ooy4Jxk7cs — Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) November 2, 2018

Tony Wright

CEO / WrightIMC

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Tony Wright is a seasoned digital marketer with 20+ years experience and is the CEO and founder of WrightIMC, a full-service digital marketing agency in Plano, Texas.

Follow @tonynwright on Twitter

Follow Tony on LinkedIn

Read Tony on Search Engine Journal

What Tony loves about SEO: I love helping companies create a profitable internet presence. The industry is also full of amazing caring people I am privileged to call friends.

Years working in the SEO industry: 20+

Notable achievement from 2018: I was selected as an outstanding alumnus of Texas Tech University in 2018.

Tony recommends: SEO Specialist vs. Generalist: Why You May Be Better off Avoiding a Niche

John Doherty

Founder and CEO / Credo

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John is the founder and CEO of GetCredo.com and a veteran SEO and digital marketer.

Follow @dohertyjf on Twitter

Follow John on LinkedIn

Read John on Search Engine Journal

What John loves about SEO: The people are some of the best I have met in any industry.

Years working in the SEO industry: 9

Notable achievement from 2018: Hired my first full-time employee at Credo

John recommends: How to get more B2B leads

Jan-Willem Bobbink

Freelance SEO

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Jan-Willem Bobbink is an experienced freelance SEO who built his first website in 1997. He got lost in solving the holy grail of SEO after that while doing big site SEO.

Follow @jbobbink on Twitter

What Jan-Willem loves about SEO: The job as an SEO changes on a daily basis. Your work is never done. You can look smart and don’t achieve anything. You can be completely anonymous and reach millions of people. Being smart can actually be a positive thing.

Years working in the SEO industry: 14

Notable achievement from 2018: 1 million unique visits a day on one of my test sites that got back due to the “Medic” and “EAT” updates

Jan-Willem recommends:

SEO Quick wins: finding meta data optimisation opportunities with Data Studio https://t.co/AsvZRAv1W1 — Jan-Willem Bobbink (@jbobbink) September 3, 2018

Joel Klettke

Conversion Copywriter / Business Casual Copywriting Ltd.

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Joel helps B2B and SaaS companies convert more customers into leads by getting in the heads of their customers and staying there.

Follow @JoelKlettke on Twitter

Follow Joel on LinkedIn

What Joel loves about SEO: The community surrounding SEO has some of the funniest—and most intelligent—people I’ve ever met. I’ve made friends in this space that have lasted me nearly a decade at this point. There’s always somebody willing to give, share, or help.

Years working in the SEO industry: I worked directly in SEO for four; I’ve worked in an adjacent industry for the past five years.

Notable achievement from 2018: I helped an online divorce company out of the UK drive over £11K+ more per month – without even writing a word for them. I provided a data-driven audit of their site, made some recommendations, they implemented them, and now they’re grossing five extra figures every month. Not bad!

Joel recommends:

My God this is a gold mine of a conversation on #SEO & #contentmarketing. Every SEO & copywriter should watch this and take notes. H/T to @JoelKlettke & @RossHudgens. 🤜🤛 “SEO Copywriting with Joel Klettke” https://t.co/xD5Cut5dbY via @siegemedia pic.twitter.com/ohTDTdIUll — Franck LN (@the_fln) November 21, 2018

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Cindy Krum

CEO and Founder / MobileMoxie

Cindy Krum is an expert in mobile SEO, app SEO and her company, MobileMoxie has launched the first online toolset that focuses on reporting and measuring just for mobile.

Follow @Suzzicks on Twitter

Follow Cindy on Facebook

What Cindy loves about SEO: I love that it is always changing; it is like a mystery that is never fully solved.

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Years working in the SEO industry: 17

Notable achievement from 2018: My company celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and I spoke at MozCon five consecutive years in a row (I think I’m tied for the women’s record on this one).

Cindy recommends:

FYI – @MobileMoxie tools are available to test for free! The Mobile SERP Test is here: https://t.co/F943SfbJPT … and The Mobile Page Test is here: https://t.co/2v18Du5USL … Bulk options, archiving and share functionality and an ASO tool are all included in subscriptions. pic.twitter.com/ByQ34V5EvU — Cindy Krum (@Suzzicks) December 5, 2018

Ruth Burr Reedy

Director of Strategy / UpBuild

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Ruth is an SEO with more than a decade of experience in the industry, specializing in technical SEO, advanced web analytics, and SEO team building and training.

Follow @ruthburr on Twitter

Follow Ruth on LinkedIn

What Ruth loves about SEO: I love that SEO is constantly evolving – there’s always more to learn and new things to test out, and a wonderful community of people sharing what they’ve learned!

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: Speaking at SearchLove Boston – it was my first time speaking at SearchLove, and I had a blast!

Ruth recommends: SearchLove Boston 2018 – Scaling Json-LD Using GTM

Jason Mun

Director of Search & Insights / Overdose

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Jason has been in the SEO industry for more 10 years and is passionate about ecommerce SEO, heading up the creation, optimization and execution of SEO strategies for some of Australia’s biggest online retailers.

Follow @jasonmun on Twitter

Follow Jason on LinkedIn

What Jason loves about SEO: SEO is a digital channel that is not influenced by media dollars. I love the fact that it is essentially a blackbox and no one knows exactly how the algorithms rank websites, forcing SEO’s to constantly test and learn. The constant knowledge sharing, case studies and tests/studies are what excites me about the industry – as an industry we are all banding together to learn more about the intricacies of search engines.

Years working in the SEO industry: 11

Notable achievement from 2018: Winning Search Personality of the Year 2018 at the inaugural SEMrush Awards at the Sydney Opera House

Jason recommends: Technical SEO for Ecommerce Websites

Richard Baxter

Founder / Builtvisible

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Richard Baxter founded full service Organic Digital agency Builtvisible.com in 2008.

Follow @Builtvisible on Twitter

Follow Richard on LinkedIn

What Richard loves about SEO: I find the subject technically very challenging. I like that it’s a largely self-taught subject that you can only finesse through your own work in the field. Length and depth of experience counts for everything. Most of all that it’s easy to prove (through results) that you know what you’re doing.

Years working in the SEO industry: 16

Notable achievement from 2018: Builtvisible.com won gold at the International Content Marketing Awards hosted by the Content Marketing Association a few weeks ago. I’m extremely proud of the content team at Builtvisible (as I am everyone at BV) but most importantly its good to be recognized at a credible awards ceremony hosted by a respected marketing organization.

Richard recommends: An SEO’s guide to XPath

Duane Forrester

VP, Industry Insights / Yext

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Duane is a keynote speaker, thought leader, launched Bing Webmaster Tools, author, DMK expert and dog guy.

Follow @DuaneForrester on Twitter

Follow Duane on LinkedIn

Read Duane on Search Engine Journal

What Duane loves about SEO: The ability to impact the world at scale, and the massive support our community provides itself.

Years working in the SEO industry: 20+

Notable achievement from 2018: Faced a fear – did stand up comedy after 6 weeks of classes!

Duane recommends:

ICYMI: Success today is not found in a single tactic. Our own @DuaneForrester breaks down how Digital Knowledge Management is foundational for your brand. https://t.co/BXOnSqowWW pic.twitter.com/fRvgE5gF2e — Yext (@yext) September 5, 2018

Rand Fishkin

Co-founder and CEO / SparkToro

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Rand is the former founder and CEO of Moz, author of Lost and Founder, and a huge fan of the carbohydrate known as “pasta.”

Follow @randfish on Twitter

Follow Rand on LinkedIn

What Rand loves about SEO: The people!

Years working in the SEO industry: 15+

Notable achievement from 2018: Published my first solo book (Lost and Founder), started a new company (SparkToro), and celebrated 10 years of marriage (to the amazing Geraldine DeRuiter).

Rand recommends: SEO on the SERPs – Brighton SEO Closing Talk

Jenny Halasz

President / JLH Marketing

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Jenny is a consultant, speaker, and writer for the industry, specializing in enterprise-level SEO and Analytics.

Follow @jennyhalasz on Twitter

Follow Jenny on LinkedIn

Read Jenny on Search Engine Journal

What Jenny loves about SEO: This industry is like a family to me. Many of my closest friends are SEOs. I love how we can get together and talk about anything – from information retrieval to the stresses and celebrations of work and family life.

Years working in the SEO industry: 19

Notable achievement from 2018: I’m most proud of my role in helping to guide an industry-wide conversation about mental health and the challenges of working independently or remote. I lost someone very important to me in the industry this year to suicide, and as a survivor of multiple mental health issues myself, I just want everyone in the industry to know that you are valued and you are not alone. While your contributions may or may not be above-the-fold news, you are helping to move us forward and we want you here.

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Jenny recommends: KICC Method

Dr. Pete Meyers

Marketing Scientist / Moz

Dr. Pete is Marketing Scientist for Seattle-based Moz, where he works with the marketing and data science teams on product research and data-driven content.

Follow @dr_pete on Twitter

What Dr. Pete loves about SEO: I love the generosity of the SEO community, whether it’s sharing information or just looking out for each other.

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Years working in the SEO industry: 20, but I took a break in the middle 🙂

Notable achievement from 2018: I finished an in-depth study of CTR curves with Russ Jones, but it turned into a Frankenstein’s monster that we have to stop from burning down the village before we can publish it.

Dr. Pete recommends: David MihmRanking Is A Promise: Can You Deliver?

Barry Adams

SEO Consultant

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Barry Adams has been building and ranking websites since 1998, and is a veteran of the SEO industry who specializes in technical SEO and SEO for news publishers.

Follow @badams on Twitter

Follow Barry on LinkedIn

What Barry loves about SEO: It’s such a collaborative industry, where so many people who are nominally competitors are keen to share knowledge and insight to help the broader industry and raise standards for everyone. The camaraderie and friendships within the industry are what make me proud to be part of it.



Years working in the SEO industry: I started doing SEO for my own hobby websites in 1998 and started doing it professionally since 2004.



Notable achievement from 2018: Off the back of some great client successes in the news industry, I won a series of big news brands as my clients and am enjoying working with them immensely.



Barry recommends: Google News vs Donald Trump: Bias in Google’s Algorithms?

Motoko Hunt

President and International Search Marketing Consultant / AJPR

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With experiences working as a corporate interpreter, then a manager in the traditional international marketing industry, Motoko has been providing digital marketing services targeting Japan, Asia, and other markets to companies around the world.

Follow @motokohunt on Twitter

Follow Motoko on LinkedIn

Read Motoko on Search Engine Journal

What Motoko loves about SEO: I like that SEO work lets me wear many hats: a psychologist, a forensic investigator, a negotiator, etc.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: I was on the judging panel for four industry awards in 2018.

Motoko recommends: A Quick Guide to Getting Started in International SEO

Julie Joyce

Owner / Link Fish Media

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Julie Joyce owns the NC-based link building company Link Fish Media, is one of the founding members of the SEO Chicks, has written over 120 articles for Search Engine Land, and hosts a monthly “Show Me The Links!” webinar for SEMrush.

Follow @JulieJoyce on Twitter

Read Julie on Search Engine Journal

What Julie loves about SEO: It is NEVER boring.

Years working in the SEO industry: 16

Notable achievement from 2018: Started invoicing with something besides Excel

Julie recommends:

I’m thankful for @JulieJoyce she’s creative, clever & brilliant. She makes everything better & makes me happy that the weird stuff i like is shared. — JP Sherman (@jpsherman) November 21, 2018

Trond Lyngbø

Founder / Search Planet AS

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Trond is a Norwegian senior SEO consultant specializing in enterprise SEO for large e-commerce companies and web shops in the Nordics and Western Europe.

Follow @TrondLyngbo on Twitter

Follow Trond on LinkedIn

What Trond loves about SEO: Targeted, cost-effective and measurable — and long-lasting.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: For the third year in a row since I started my company in 2016, without any loans or venture capital, we have a steady six-digit profit annually each year and I have improved my life-quality and been able to be less machine and more human.

Trond recommends:

In 2014 I didn’t know about any women in SEO. @dannysullivan suggested that I did something about that. I’m glad I listened! 🙌🏻 @sengineland pic.twitter.com/0GJwLSJR4e — Trond Lyngbø (@TrondLyngbo) April 18, 2017

Dan Taylor

Account Director / SALT.agency

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Dan has a passionate and inquisitive mind.

Follow @taylordanrw on Twitter

Read Dan on Search Engine Journal

What Dan loves about SEO: The active community, and the amazing people who dedicate time selflessly to doing research and furthering our field of practice.

Years working in the SEO industry: 7

Notable achievement from 2018: Winning the inaugural TechSEO Boost Research Competition.

Dan recommends:

We’ve just launched https://t.co/Vnvx8gwHSt to the first wave of alpha testers! 🎉 Utilising @Cloudflare Workers, Sloth Generators allow you to create Cloudflare Worker bundles easily to implement Redirects, Hreflang, AB Testing, Security Headers, Log File Collection… pic.twitter.com/3W4tEoE1HN — Dan Taylor (@TaylorDanRW) December 13, 2018

Brian Harnish

SEO Manager / Site Objective

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Brian is an SEO, developer, strategist, speaker, and author.

Follow @brianharnish on Twitter

Follow Brian on LinkedIn

Read Brian on Search Engine Journal

What Brian loves about SEO: I love the people, the camaraderie, the work, and the challenges. I feel that I am privileged to have had the positive experiences I have had working in the industry. I’ve met lifelong friends, colleagues, and have made connections that I otherwise would not have made in other fields.

Years working in the SEO industry: 11 years officially since 2007. 21 years if you count being a web developer and learning dev in 1998.

Notable achievement from 2018: I feel extraordinarily privileged that I was chosen to consult with and do SEO audits for Microsoft’s ASP.NET team this past year, which eventually expanded to SEO consulting for Microsoft.com and other divisions. I accomplished much besides that in the past year since launching Site Objective, so I feel very fortunate in my successes.

Brian recommends: 50 Questions You Must Ask to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website

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Max Prin

Head of Technical SEO / Merkle

Max supports Merkle’s SEO department and clients by providing technical recommendations, developing tools and processes through research and testing as well as programming and publishing TechnicalSEO.com.

Follow @maxxeight on Twitter

What Max loves about SEO: Above all, I love the fast-changing pace of SEO. What was true yesterday might not be true tomorrow so we need to learn every day to stay sharp and accurate.

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Years working in the SEO industry: I’ve been working in the digital marketing space (including web development) for about 10 years and focused on SEO for the last 5 years.

Notable achievement from 2018: I think the highlight of this year for me has been the number and places of conferences I’ve spoken at. 10 events across 4 countries and 3 continents.

Max recommends:

Jono Alderson

Special Ops / Yoast

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Jono is a digital strategist, marketing technologist and full stack developer.

Follow @jonoalderson on Twitter

What Jono loves about SEO: The constantly evolving environment, technology, challenges, opportunities – and the need for us to evolve and change with that.

Years working in the SEO industry: Many! I’ve lost count

Notable achievement from 2018: Voted SEO World Champion of 2018 at SEOktoberfest, by a panel of the industry’s leading experts.

Jono recommends: Digital Marketing is dead – Survival tips for what comes next

Stephanie Briggs

VP / Briggsby

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Stephanie does SEO and content strategy at Briggsby.

Follow @stephbeadell on Twitter

What Stephanie loves about SEO: I really appreciate the variety of the work we do.

Years working in the SEO industry: 7

Notable achievement from 2018: Our clients were able to ship a ton of features this past year that were great for users and great for organic search traffic and revenue.

Stephanie recommends: Search-Driven Content Strategy – MozCon 2018

Grant Simmons

VP of Search Strategy / Homes.com

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Grant is a search savvy idealist, creative thinker and proud American with a funny accent.

Follow @simmonet on Twitter

Follow Grant on LinkedIn

What Grant loves about SEO: The people are great, the work mostly challenging & different. You can actually have an opinion and then prove it. SEO evolves too. So it’s inspiring to keep pushing new ideas.

Years working in the SEO industry: 19

Notable achievement from 2018: Homes.com won a US Search Award, and I got to speak at BrightonSEO!

Grant recommends: Hell’s SEO – EATing your way to search success!

Andy Betts

Executive Advisor and Consultant

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Andy connects people and brands to help them be successful – not just in SEO – but across all digital, marketing

Follow @andybetts1 on Twitter

Read Andy on Search Engine Journal

What Andy loves about SEO: The pace, people, places and experiences – the whole journey we are on !!

Years working in the SEO industry: 17

Notable achievement from 2018: I dedicate all my achievements this year to my dear friend Michael Kirchhoff who passed away earlier this year. Michael was a great person and a great SEO who had an amazing passion for this industry and will be missed by all.

Andy recommends: New Ways to Approach Technical SEO: A Necessity, Not an Option

Kate Morris

Director of SEO / Bluprint, an NBCU Company

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Kate is a Texan turned Coloradan with 4 fur babies and a long history of speaking, teaching, and learning about search.

Follow @Kate on Twitter

What Kate loves about SEO: Connecting users with their needs at the moment they need it the most.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: Launched a new brand while simultaneously maintaining and transitioning the old.

Kate recommends: MozPod: Using Content to Drive eCommerce, with Kate Morris

Lisa Myers

CEO / Verve Search

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Lisa Myers is the Founder of award-winning SEO Agency, Verve Search, based in London. Conference Speaker. Mentor. Shield maiden.

Follow @LisaDMyers on Twitter

Follow Lisa on LinkedIn

What Lisa loves about SEO: It’s like a riddle that never gets solved, constantly evolving and demanding you’re at your best at all times.

Years working in the SEO industry: 13

Notable achievement from 2018: Sold Verve Search to Omnicom Media Group at the end of 2017 and managed to grow the agency further, maintaining quality, as part of a large media network. Also won 5 awards, including Best Large Content Marketing Agency, and launched the LinkScore tool.

Lisa recommends: Measuring the Value of Links

Ryan Jones

SEO Director / PublicisSapient

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Almost 40 years, ago Ryan was thrust into the world naked, alone, angry, and screaming – since then he’s put on clothes and grown to lead an SEO team but not much else has changed.

Follow @ryanjones on Twitter

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn

Read Ryan on Search Engine Journal

What Ryan loves about SEO: The best part of the SEO industry is the SEO community.

Years working in the SEO industry: 14

Notable achievement from 2018: Was featured in this article

Ryan recommends: What Is a Google Broad Core Algorithm Update?

Jes Scholz

Chief Digital Officer / Ringier

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Jes is a digital strategist focussed on the future of search.

Follow @jes_scholz on Twitter

Read Jes on Search Engine Journal

What Jes loves about SEO: The community – It’s an industry that is very open to knowledge sharing and has the best events.

Years working in the SEO industry: 10

Notable achievement from 2018: Chatting about demystifying marketing applications of AI at TuringFest. Working on the presentation helped to pull together many fields I’d already delved into (chatbots, visual search, content recommendations, etc). Being able to then pass on “the best bits” and see the audience’s response was great.

Jes recommends: SEO Friendly Pagination: A Complete Best Practices Guide

Elmer Boutin

Director, SEO (Organic Search) / GTB

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Elmer has been doing SEO since he built his first website in 1996.

Follow @rehor on Twitter

Follow Elmer on LinkedIn

What Elmer loves about SEO: SEO gives me the opportunity to do something that is always evolving, which keep me learning new things. I love the SEO industry because of the wonderful people involved in it.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: Appeared in 2 webinars and was invited to be in a yet-to-be-released digital marketing podcast.

Elmer recommends: From Strings to Things – Entity Optimization

Scott Polk

CEO / Marketing Nomads

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Scott has been working in the SEO industry for more than two decades.

Follow @scottpolk on Twitter

Follow Scott on LinkedIn

What Scott loves about SEO: I love helping clients succeed with their businesses, watching traffic convert to sales and educating folks on the importance of Search to their revenue.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: 2018 has been all about new projects and new directions. For most of the back half of the year, we have been working with some fantastically talented developers to create a new development agency (Dev Nomads) as part of the Marketing Nomads family, it will be soft launching in early 2019. We also launched ourselves into the local food movement and are taking Nomad Ranch (our small cattle ranch) to the public with grass-fed beef available for direct sale.

Scott recommends:

Alexis Sanders

SEO Manager / Merkle

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Alexis is a contributor to the Moz blog, Search Engine Land, OnCrawl, Raven Tools blog, and TechnicalSEO.com; creator of the TechnicalSEO.expert challenge; and is an SEO account manager at Merkle.

Follow @alexisksanders on Twitter

Follow Alexis on LinkedIn

What Alexis loves about SEO:

SEO crosses paths with different crafts, which allows for consistent continual learning.

I enjoy solving complex, strategic-based problems, translating executive goals into action plans.

The search community – everyone I’ve interacted with wants to improve and give back.

Years working in the SEO industry: 5

Notable achievement from 2018: Speaking at MozCon, all three SMX events (West, Advanced, and East), and BrightonSEO!

Alexis recommends: The SEO Cyborg: How to Resonate with Users & Make Sense to Search Bots

Ross Tavendale

Managing Director / Type A Media

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Ross is the managing director of Type A Media, the agency famous for their 4 day work weeks.

Follow @rtavs on Twitter

Follow Ross on YouTube

What Ross loves about SEO: The relentless spam….no, only joking. I love the fact that everyone is so open and willing to share their knowledge and up for having a bit of fun whilst doing it.

Years working in the SEO industry: 9

Notable achievement from 2018: Getting over 100k views on the Canonical Chronicle, our bi-weekly SEO news show.

Ross recommends: BrightonSEO – Data Journalism: A practical guide to winning big links

Dawn Anderson

CEO, Founder and SEO Consultant / Move It Marketing

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Dawn Anderson is an SEO consultant, CEO of Move It Marketing, trainer, lecturer and digital marketing MSc dissertation supervisor.

Follow @dawnieando on Twitter

Follow Dawn on LinkedIn

Read Dawn on Search Engine Journal

What Dawn loves about SEO: The continual need to learn and grow.

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: Spoke at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas

Dawn recommends: Voice & Conversational Search: Top Challenges & How to Overcome Them

Damon Gochneaur

Founder / Aspiro Agency and Director of Search / Southwest Media Group

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Damon is a passionate omnichannel digital marketer with nearly 15 years of Digital Marketing experience.

Follow @DamonGochneaur on Twitter

Follow Damon on LinkedIn

What Damon loves about SEO: Helping businesses grow. That never gets old.

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: Purchased a semi-pro soccer team in 2018.

Damon recommends: Interview with Damon Gochneaur: Tips for Local Businesses

Andrew Shotland

CEO / LocalSEOGuide.com

Andrew helps people with funky SEO problems, but I really want to be remembered as the Inventor of the Wave.

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Follow @localseoguide on Twitter

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn

What Andrew loves about SEO: Every day, we get a chance to work on one of the most ridiculous, frustrating marketing channels there is and help our clients succeed.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15

Notable achievement from 2018: A group of SEOs and I formally started BayAreaSearch.org a professional networking association for SEOs in the Bay Area, now with over 150 members.

Andrew recommends:

SEO is always the lowest priority, until it’s not… — Andrew Shotland (@localseoguide) May 6, 2016

Britney Muller

Senior SEO Scientist / Moz

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Originally from MN, Britney currently lives on a boat in Seattle, WA and is Moz’s Senior SEO Scientist.

Follow @BritneyMuller on Twitter

Follow Britney on LinkedIn

What Britney loves about SEO: The community! Going to conferences has become a summer camp of sorts and I’m eternally grateful for my peers’ support and knowledge that is readily shared. We all help each other level up.

Years working in the SEO industry: 10

Notable achievement from 2018: Meeting new incredible women in our space! Sarah Pritchard, Nikea Ranger, Casie Gillette, Niki Mosier, Ashley Ward, Kameron Jenkins and Tiffany Da Silva all really inspired me this year.

Britney recommends: How to Target Featured Snippet Opportunities – Whiteboard Friday

Annie Cushing

Founder / Annielytics

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Annie makes data sexy and is publishing a book to teach others how to make their data sexy in early 2019.

Follow @anniecushing on Twitter

Follow Annie on LinkedIn

What Annie loves about SEO: I love the generosity of the SEO industry. It’s one of the only industries where you’ll find competitors helping each other.

Years working in the SEO industry: 14

Notable achievement from 2018: Finished two manuscripts for my “Making Data Sexy” book (one for PC and one for Windows). I started January 1 and it was my goal to finish in a year.

Annie recommends: Three SEO issues that your SEO report needs to include (but you probably overlook)

Justin Briggs

Founder / Briggsby

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I do SEO and film.

Follow @justinrbriggs on Twitter

Follow Justin on LinkedIn

What Justin loves about SEO: Solving complex systems

Years working in the SEO industry: 10

Notable achievement from 2018: My favorite highlight of this year was speaking at VidCon in Melbourne

NAME recommends: On-page SEO for NLP

Jamie Alberico

Technical SEO Consultant / Not a Robot

Jamie’s skills include finding broken things, breaking things, and telling others that things are broken.

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Follow @Jammer_Volts on Twitter

Follow Jamie on LinkedIn

What Jamie loves about SEO: I’m honored to work with some of the most curious, collaborative, and compassionate professionals I have ever known.



Years working in the SEO industry: 10



Notable achievement from 2018: First international speaking gig at BrightonSEO



Jamie recommends: SEO for Angular – BrightonSEO 2018

Andrew Optimisey

Founder / Optimisey

Andrew is an SEO consultant and organizes the free-to-attend Optimisey SEO events – attracting world-class speakers who share actionable advice and best practice.

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Follow @Optimisey on Twitter

Follow Andrew on Facebook

What Andrew loves about SEO: I love the SEO community: smart (and lovely) people, doing brilliant and fascinating things that they’re happy to share and talk about.

Years working in the SEO industry: 6

Notable achievement from 2018: Other than being featured here? I organized 6 free-to-attend SEO events, with some frankly astonishingly brilliant speakers and helped more people learn what good SEO looks like.

Andrew recommends: Past events – Optimisey

Martin MacDonald

Founder / MOG Media Inc.

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Martin is a Specialist Enterprise level SEO with over 20 years experience.

Follow @searchmartin on Twitter

What Martin loves about SEO: That constant change is the norm and the varied histories of industry colleagues.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: Opened MOG Media’s first Silicon Valley office.

Martin recommends:

Being an “SEO Expert” doesn’t mean you have all the answers. Far from it. It means you know where to look and what to test, to get to the right answers. https://t.co/fOqXEcf575 — Martin MacDonald (@searchmartin) May 24, 2018

Arsen Rabinovich

Director of SEO and Founder / TopHatRank

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Arsen is an SEO, Digital Marketer, Speaker, Growth Strategist, and Founder at TopHatRank.

Follow @tophatarsen on Twitter

Follow Arsen on LinkedIn

What Arsen loves about SEO: I love SEO because it is never dull, never stale and is continuously evolving, it touches multiple disciplines that range from really nerdy tech to super creative marketing and always keeps us on our toes.

Years working in the SEO industry: 9

Notable achievement from 2018: 2018 was very exciting for TopHatRank. Our team expanded, four of our SEO team members are now conference speakers, two of them spoke for the first time in 2018. I am super proud of what we were able to accomplish this year.

Arsen recommends: An Interview with Arsen Rabinovich on eCommerce SEO

Melissa Fach

Community Manager / Pubcon and U.S. Blog Editor / SEMrush

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Melissa has been in the SEO industry since 2006 and her experience led her to work with several companies like SEJ, Moz, AuthorityLabs, Pubcon and SEMrush.

Follow @SEOAware on Twitter

Follow Melissa on LinkedIn

What Melissa loves about SEO: The work can change the lives of those running a business; I love that. The industry is fantastic because while it is massive, it is also tight-knit. The friendships and working relationships are amazing.

Years working in the SEO industry: 12

Notable achievement from 2018: I got to present the 2018 U.S. Personality of the Year Award to Barry Schwartz – someone I have respected and learned from since I started learning about SEO.

Melissa recommends:

I turned down a post on this and when I explained why I was told to google LSI keywords and look at the snippet. I was told I didn’t understand that LSI has changed and snippets are chosen by G, and they know more than me. Not a full understanding out there. — Melissa Fach (@SEOAware) January 7, 2018

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Tom Capper

London Consulting Team Lead / Distilled

Tom came to Distilled from an economics/econometrics background in 2013, initially in an analytics role, before gradually transitioning into running a wide range of consultative SEO projects.

Follow @THCapper on Twitter

What Tom loves about SEO: The culture – it’s easy to just see the rotten eggs, but for the most part, this is an incredibly open industry.

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Years working in the SEO industry: 5

Notable achievement from 2018: SearchLove London – I’d actually never spoken at my “home” SearchLove before, and it was great to condense all the various theories/observations I’d been thinking about over the last couple of years into one cogent(ish) story.

Tom recommends: How to rank for head terms

Casey Markee

Founder / Media Wyse

Speaker, trainer, writer and all-around good guy, Casey is a 20+-year SEO veteran focusing on site auditing within the Food, Lifestyle and DIY niche.

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Follow @MediaWyse on Twitter

Follow Casey on LinkedIn

What Casey loves about SEO: Its dynamic nature. It’s fast and ever-changing and requires constant attention to evolving best practices.

Years working in the SEO industry: 20+

Notable achievement from 2018: Honored by the SEO Community on SE Roundtable in May 2018

Casey recommends: Advanced SEO for Food Bloggers: An Interview With Casey Markee

Shelly Fagin

SEO / Highly Searched and Community Manager/SEMrush

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Shelly is a technical SEO who specializes in working with local businesses.

Follow @shellyfagin on Twitter

Follow Shelly on Facebook

Read Shelly on Search Engine Journal

What Shelly loves about SEO: Helping businesses thrive and creating new jobs

Years working in the SEO industry: 17

Notable achievement from 2018: Helping establish SEMrush All-Stars, a Facebook group for SEMrush subscribers

Shelly recommends: Site speed Server Optimization

Michael Bonfils

Global Managing Director / SEM International

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Michael Bonfils is an SEO industry veteran who runs and operates an agency specializing in international and multilingual search marketing services.

Follow @michaelbonfils on Twitter

Follow Michael on LinkedIn

Read Michael on Search Engine Journal

What Michael loves about SEO: SEO is like having a girlfriend who always keeps on your feet, never gets boring.

Years working in the SEO industry: 22

Notable achievement from 2018: Printed a badge and snuck into the very first Googleplex tech office during Google’s first industry Google dance.

Michael recommends: 9 Frequently Asked Questions About Yandex SEO & PPC, Answered

Adam Riemer

President / Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC.

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Adam is a two-time Pinnacle award-winning affiliate marketer, digital strategist, and wine lover that focuses on companies from start-ups to the Fortune 500 with ROI-based strategies.

Follow @rollerblader on Twitter

Follow Adam on Instagram

Read Adam on Search Engine Journal

What Adam loves about SEO: The creativity that comes with content strategy and troubleshooting the tech issues that companies wind up in through multiple sources of incorrect information.

Years working in the SEO industry: 15+

Notable achievement from 2018: Being told thank you by a stranger for the first time.

Adam recommends: What To Do When Sales & Leads Stop Overnight

Dana DiTomaso

President and Partner / Kick Point

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Dana pushes people and teams to set goals and track data so that they understand what strategies and tactics bring value and what is just a waste of money.

Follow @danaditomaso on Twitter

Follow Dana on LinkedIn

What Dana loves about SEO: It’s a constantly changing field! Every day is a new challenge.

Years working in the SEO industry: 19

Notable achievement from 2018: Nominated for SEO Speaker of the Year at the Search Engine Land Awards.

Dana recommends: Best SEO tips for small business from Dana DiTomaso, one of the world’s leading SEO experts [Podcast]

Christoph C. Cemper

Founder and CEO / LinkResearchTools

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Christoph has been doing links and SEO since 2003, LRT since 2009 and Link Detox since 2012.

Follow @cemper on Twitter

Follow Christoph on LinkedIn

What Christoph loves about SEO: Curiosity and Thrills.

Years working in the SEO industry: 16

Notable achievement from 2018: Built an all-new platform for ongoing and automa