Experts
21 experts
Jono Alderson
Digital strategist, marketing technologist, and full-stack developer. Formerly Head of SEO / Special Ops at Yoast (drove its schema.org implementation), Distilled, and Linkdex. Globally recognized in structured data, web performance, and WordPress.
Notable: Two-time SEOktoberfest "SEO World Champion"; WordPress core contributor; prolific essayist ("Stop writing articles").
Dawn Anderson
Nearly two decades in technical and architectural SEO. Built her reputation translating academic information-retrieval research — BERT, NLP, neural ranking — into practical strategy. Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University; MSc Digital Marketing Strategy, FIDM, MBCS.
Notable: International speaker on advanced technical SEO and AI search; contributor to Search Engine Land, SEJ; SMX Advanced 2025 interviewee on the "SEO AI storm".
Dana DiTomaso New
20+ years in digital marketing, full-time in SEO/web dev since 2002. Since ~2020 focused primarily on digital analytics — making GA4, GTM, and Looker Studio accessible and actionable. Teaches analytics through KP Playbook.
Notable: SEL "SEO Speaker of the Year" nominee (2018); MozCon/SMX speaker; LinkedIn Learning instructor (160k+ learners); CBC Edmonton tech columnist.
Viola Eva New
Founded Flow Agency (formerly Flow SEO) in 2018 — a ~15-person boutique B2B search agency with 130+ SaaS clients worldwide. A decade of experience as speaker, educator, and trainer in B2B search marketing, now expanding into AEO. Known for a "mindful marketing", holistic approach.
Notable: 50+ workshops/talks; regular speaker Berlin to Las Vegas; SEJ and SEL author; GrowthMentor.
Micah Fisher-Kirshner
Data-focused "SEO critical thinker" who ran SEO/content across a PE firm's B2B SaaS portfolio. Previously in-house at Zendesk, Balsam Brands, Zazzle, and Become. Famous for rigorous teardowns of flawed SEO ranking studies and correlation research.
Notable: SEJ author; ran the BayAreaSearch meetup; advises SEO tool companies.
Kevin Indig
Led SEO/Growth at Shopify (Director of SEO), G2 (VP SEO & Content), and Atlassian before going independent. Has defined growth strategies for Ramp, Bounce, Nextdoor, and Snapchat; credited with helping companies acquire 100M+ users through SEO. Writes the Growth Memo newsletter (27k+ subscribers).
Notable: Co-host of the Contrarian Marketing podcast with Eli Schwartz; SEJ author; frequent international speaker.
Patrick Kajirian
Enterprise SEO product management specialist. Multiple SEO management roles at The Walt Disney Co. (incl. ESPN properties), then led organic growth at Realtor.com before Walmart. Expert in SEO at scale: indexation, internal linking, embedding SEO into product processes.
Notable: Podcast appearances on enterprise SEO ("SEO at Scale: Lessons from Disney, Realtor.com, and ESPN"); SMX Sydney speaker.
Mike King
Technical SEO and content strategy leader (and former independent hip-hop artist). Founded iPullRank in 2014; clients include SAP, Amex, HSBC. One of the industry's foremost thinkers on how search engines actually work — famed for his analysis of the 2024 Google Search API documentation leak and "relevance engineering" for AI search.
Notable: Author of The Science of SEO; SEL Search Marketer of the Year 2025 (2x winner); founded the SEO Week conference.
AJ Kohn New
Marketing executive with 20+ years spanning direct mail, email, and search. His consultancy's name reflects his philosophy: treat search engines like blind five-year-olds. One of the industry's sharpest independent thinkers on how Google actually works — user behavior signals, click data.
Notable: Highly influential essays at blindfiveyearold.com; Moz ranking-factors panelist; decks like "Daft Punk SEO".
Hanns Kronenberg
20+ years across RTL, Deutsche Telekom, SISTRIX (Head of Product Management, 6+ years), and Chefkoch — Germany's largest recipe platform. Current focus: AI search visibility, entity stabilization in generative search, brand presence in ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity.
Notable: Built GPT Insights and groundingpage.com; co-host of the "SEO Date" podcast; known for Chefkoch's dominance of German recipe SERPs.
Cindy Krum
Widely credited with inventing mobile SEO as a discipline — before the iPhone. Founded MobileMoxie in 2008 with the first mobile-SEO toolset. Known for predicting Google changes years ahead: Entity-First Indexing, "Fraggles", Journey Optimization.
Notable: Author of Mobile Marketing; USA Today Top 10 Most Influential SEOs (2022); built the SERPerator and Page-oscope.
Victor Pan New
Leads technical SEO at HubSpot: organic growth across thousands of SERPs, technical infrastructure, international SERP presence. Previously Search Director at Catalyst (GroupM) and WordStream. Known for candid, no-nonsense SEO opinions and advocating human-led keyword research.
Notable: HubSpot Community AMAs; frequent podcast guest on AI and SEO.
Valentin Pletzer
One of Germany's best-known news/publisher SEOs: editorial SEO, Google Discover, audience development. Formerly first-ever Director Audience Development & SEO at t-online (Ströer), before that Head of SEO at BurdaForward (Focus Online, CHIP). Known for reverse-engineering Google behavior as "VorticonCmdr".
Notable: Recognized authority on Google Discover; SMX Munich speaker.
Lily Ray
15+ years in SEO; built two award-winning agency SEO departments. One of the industry's best-known voices on E-E-A-T, algorithm updates and recovery, Google Discover, and AI search optimization. Her "winners and losers" algorithm analyses are cited industry-wide. Also a DJ and drummer.
Notable: Prolific speaker; SEL/SEJ columnist; recently launched her own consultancy Algorythmic.
Jes Scholz
Former Group CMO of Swiss media group Ringier, leading digital transformation across 140+ brands. Now consults for enterprises globally on entity-based SEO, brand entity optimization, and AI-driven search. Publishes the "SEO Brief" newsletter.
Notable: SEOktoberfest 2022 "SEO World Champion"; keynotes at Marketing Festival, SMX Munich, MozCon, NESS.
Jeremy Schwartz New
Career SEO and growth professional with prior roles at Compass, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, and LendUp (per LinkedIn snippets). Now at OpenAI's growth org during the period ChatGPT scaled organic acquisition; credited on OpenAI's ChatGPT Images launch page.
Notable: Low public profile — OpenAI affiliation is verified, exact title is not. Not the WisdomTree CIO or ex-Pandora CEO of the same name.
Will Scott
Building on the web since 1994; co-founded Search Influence in 2006. Coined the term "Barnacle SEO" in 2008. Current focus: AI search and Generative Engine Optimization — getting businesses visible in ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and Perplexity.
Notable: SMX Masterclass instructor on GEO; 2026 thought leadership on "agentic SEO" and non-human web traffic.
John Shehata
The leading authority on news SEO, with 25+ years in digital. Former Global VP Audience Development at Condé Nast (Wired, Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ). Has optimized ESPN, ABC News, The Atlantic, Reddit, and Disney. Now runs SaaS tools for news publishers tracking Google News, Top Stories, and Discover.
Notable: USA Today Top 10 SEO Experts 2022; contributing author, The Art of SEO; launched NESS in 2021 (700+ attendees, 55+ countries).
Kenichi Suzuki New
Japan's best-known SEO expert and educator, with ~20 years of experience. Runs Japan's most popular SEO blog (海外SEO情報ブログ, suzukikenichi.com). Diamond Product Expert in the Google Search Central Help Community; has contributed to improving Google Search and Search Console for over a decade.
Notable: Featured on Google's "Search Off the Record" podcast; speaker at brightonSEO, Pubcon, WordCamps in Australia.
Marcus Tober
Founded Searchmetrics in 2005, scaling it to $25M ARR and 250+ employees before exiting in 2019. Joined Semrush in 2022 and built Semrush Enterprise from scratch to $30M+ ARR. Now also active in PE due diligence, board advisory, and angel investing.
Notable: European Search Personality of the Year 2016; 200+ conference talks (DLD, OMR, SMX, Web Summit).
Andrea Volpini
20+ years in semantic web, AI, and publishing. Co-founded InsideOut10 and RedLink; launched WordLift in 2017 — an AI-powered SEO tool building knowledge graphs, used by Airbnb, Oakley, and Ray-Ban. Leading voice on entity/semantic SEO and agentic AI.
Notable: Knowledge-graph thought leader; SEJ author; active open-source developer (GitHub: cyberandy).
Attendees
23 attendees
Mary Albright New
Combines brand-building with an engineering background in earned media/SEO. Built tools to automate insights and prioritize opportunities across Wpromote's SEO, Content, Affiliate, and Influencer clients. Writing about UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) as "SEO for AI shopping agents". Active in Women in Tech SEO.
Notable: brightonSEO speaker ("How to Prioritize EVERYTHING"); Tech SEO Connect.
Konrad Burchardt
"Python SEO" at the intersection of SEO, web development, and data. Leads technical and programmatic SEO at Figma; previously ASO/SEO at Disney. Active open-source builder in the SEO tooling space.
Notable: Open-source tools on GitHub (sundios): GSC dashboard, rank tracker, PAA scraper, and AgentReady (AI-agent readiness scoring).
Sebastian Cario
From the German SEO/online-marketing scene (TRG – The Reach Group, Headwind, TAK Technologies, freelance SEO). M.Eng. Information Science, Hochschule Darmstadt. Moved from SEO practice into founding Lotto.com, the US online lottery courier platform.
Notable: Early German community circuit (BarCamp Hannover 2011). Current 2026 title unverified.
Jackie Chu
Enterprise/technical SEO leader with in-house stints at Yahoo, Square, Dropbox (Global SEO Lead), and Uber. At Square owned SEO/ASO/analytics driving 40%+ of upmarket revenue; went through the Square and Uber IPOs. At Uber drives web data tooling, SEO/GEO tooling, and the first-party CMS — her analytics work is credited with a 90% page-traffic increase and $2.6M+ in savings.
Notable: Pubcon main-stage and MozCon speaker; SEL author; featured by Women in Tech SEO.
Alex Dross New
B.Sc. Business Engineering; specialist in technical/on-page SEO, web performance, and digital governance at global enterprise scale. Built global SEO standards and domain strategy for a major pharmaceutical company. Also an independent Google Partner-certified SEM/SEO consultant.
Notable: Runs Dross:Aviation, contributing to Stratux/OpenVario open-source anti-collision systems for gliders.
Paige Ford New
Enterprise technical and international SEO specialist. Nearly 10 years at Netflix, rising from Senior SEO Specialist to Product Manager, Off Service & SEO — her ranking improvements drove $1M+ in cost savings and doubled Help Center traffic via indexing/hreflang fixes. Joined OpenAI late 2025.
Notable: Her OpenAI hire was itself industry news ("Everyone says SEO is dying. Then OpenAI hires a Netflix SEO…").
Greg Gifford
17+ years in online marketing; one of the best-known Local SEO specialists, with roots in automotive dealer SEO. Frames Local SEO around three dimensions: the website, the Google Business Profile, and reviews. Among the most in-demand speakers on the circuit.
Notable: Famous for fast-paced, movie-themed slide decks; first-ever Semrush Academy instructor; decade-long weekly local SEO video series.
Chris Hedgecock
Building and marketing on the internet since 1997 — "buyer, builder, seller of and investor in consumer internet businesses." Career spans SEO, online advertising, digital media, and PR. Known for a pragmatic "content and links" view of SEO and using PR tactics to drive rankings. Long-time SEOktoberfest participant.
Notable: RestoMods (classic car sweepstakes); Opt Out Life podcast guest.
Johan von Hülsen
In SEO since 2008; founded Wingmen in 2013. Core expertise: technical SEO and strategy for enterprise sites — publishers, e-commerce, SaaS. Especially known for depth on internal linking. One of the most respected voices in German-language SEO.
Notable: Speaker at SMX Munich, SEOkomm, Campixx; 121WATT trainer; Wingmen publishes a well-known German SEO newsletter.
Justin Keirath
Started SEO at age 13; 10+ years advising startups through corporations in the German market. Helps e-commerce brands (esp. Shopify) grow via SEO, paid media, and retention marketing — strategy plus hands-on technical implementation.
Notable: Known figure in the German SEO scene; interviewed by deutsche-startups.de; SEO DAY speaker nominee.
Amanda King
In digital marketing since 2010, with over a decade consulting for global blue-chip brands. Builds business- and product-led SEO strategies for mid-market to enterprise clients; deep in technical SEO, content, CRO, and data auditing. Pushes the industry beyond keywords toward business-led strategy.
Notable: Hosts "Engage: On Enterprise SEO"; SEL/Screaming Frog contributor; speaker at Ahrefs Evolve, SMX Munich; active in Women in Tech SEO.
Jordan Koene
Nearly 20 years in enterprise search. Former Head of SEO & Content Development at eBay (delivered the biggest search growth in eBay's history), then CEO of Searchmetrics Inc. Co-founded Previsible, advising Fortune 100 companies on "human-led, AI-ready" SEO.
Notable: Long-time host of the Voices of Search podcast; co-authoring a book on AI's impact on SEO.
Aniruddha Kortikar
Senior growth executive at Meta in Alex Schultz's growth organization. B.Tech from IIT Bombay, MS in Operations Research, MBAs from Columbia and UC Berkeley. Career spans scaling venture-funded startups toward IPO before big-tech growth leadership.
Notable: Named inventor on Meta advertising patents.
Tom LeBaron
Has directed $1B+ in performance marketing across B2B and B2C. Previously Principal, SEO Product at Realtor.com and performance marketing at Disney (theme parks, consumer products). At Zonda drives traffic/content for NewHomeSource.com, Livabl, and Houseplans.com.
Notable: Top 3 at the 2023 G50 SEO Summit; team won "Best In-House Team" at the 2015 US Search Awards.
Danni Liang
Growth leader at DoorDash; previously multiple growth leadership roles at Facebook/Meta including Director of Product Growth, working on brand development, promotion, and AR/VR growth initiatives.
Identification with moderate confidence — several people share this name; the ex-Meta/DoorDash growth exec is the best fit given the roster.
Casey Markee
24+ year digital marketing veteran; consulted for hundreds of companies across five continents. Since 2015 works exclusively in food and lifestyle blogging, where he is widely regarded as the SEO expert. Specialty: site audits for algorithmic and rank-suppression issues.
Notable: Lead SEO for Food Blogger Pro, NerdPress, Feast Design; ubiquitous on food-blogging podcasts; SEL author.
Jason Paget
Leads one of the world's largest organic marketing operations: SEO, ASO, landing pages, and CRO at Booking.com. Previously built and led the SEO practice at Viator (TripAdvisor). Active in the SEO community for over a decade.
Notable: His Booking.com team was named Sistrix "Visibility Leaders" in 2023 and 2025; SMX Advanced and brightonSEO speaker.
Jeff Preston
20+ years in marketing; best known for a decade running in-house SEO at Disney Interactive (Disney.com, ESPN.com, StarWars.com). Later Director of SEO at News Corp (realtor.com) and SEO lead at Asurion. Earlier ran an interactive agency in Japan. MBA, University of San Diego.
Notable: Enterprise/in-house SEO conference speaker (SMX West, Pubcon); annual "SEO Year in Review" posts.
Alin Radulescu New
Advises companies across industries on organic search with a holistic approach: off-page, on-page, UX, page speed, landing page optimization. Dubbed a "Master of Technical SEO" in the German-speaking market; associated with saastec.
Notable: SMX Munich speaker (incl. 2026); 121WATT trainer on technical SEO, relaunches, page speed.
Carolyn Shelby
In the industry since 1994 — one of the longest-tenured SEOs anywhere. Former Director of SEO at Tribune Publishing (Chicago Tribune, LA Times) and SEO Lead for ESPN. Now focuses on how LLMs and AI-driven search reshape visibility and authority.
Notable: Frequent keynote speaker; SEJ and SEL author.
Christopher Shin
15+ years in SEO and search marketing. Founded Digital Asset Directors in Seoul, now 20+ SEO professionals and $1.7M+ annual billings. The industry's go-to expert on Naver SEO — how Korea's dominant search engine differs from Google.
Notable: Featured in Aleyda Solis's Crawling Mondays ("Naver SEO"); the most visible international voice on Korean search.
Ryan Sit
Bootstrapped PicClick (visual search for eBay) into an SEO-driven giant: 40–50M monthly uniques and ~$1B annual GMV at peak — the #1 eBay affiliate of 26,000+, driving ~2% of eBay's total sales. Formerly founder/CTO of DropShots, VP Social at MySpace, founding partner at Science.
Notable: One of the most successful solo operators of a large-scale organic-search business; former eBay Partner Network board member.
Metehan Yesilyurt
10+ years in search; since 2022 focused on AI — prompt engineering, LLM visibility, and how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews find, rank, and cite sources. Runs metehan.ai and a widely read SEO & AI/ML Substack.
Notable: Viral experiments ("I built a 60,000-page AI website for $10"); brightonSEO speaker; hosts the Turkish "Dijipod" podcast; SEL author.
Honorary Attendees
9 honorary attendees
Dennis Goedegebuure
25 years running marketing for eBay (10 years, ending as Director of SEO for all global marketplaces), Airbnb (Head of Global SEO), Fanatics (VP Growth & SEO), PayPal, and Bitdefender (VP Marketing). M.A. Economics, University of Amsterdam.
Notable: Fanatics team won Best In-House SEO Team at the US Search Awards plus a Webby; blogs at The Next Corner.
Bastian Grimm
25+ years in SEO. Co-founded Peak Ace in 2007 and scaled it into one of Europe's leading independent digital agencies — 200+ employees in Berlin and Paris, campaigns in 25+ languages for Airbnb, TUI, AutoScout24. Recognized authority on technical SEO and web performance; recent talks focus on AI and platform shifts.
Notable: "Search Personality of the Year" (European Search Awards); "SEO World Champion" at the G50 Summit; 100+ conference talks.
Brian Hale
Over a decade at Facebook/Meta, rising to VP of Product Growth, helping scale Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. At DoorDash since 2021; his growth org helped drive DoorDash + Wolt past 10 billion lifetime orders.
Notable: Frequent growth thought-leadership interviewee; C100 member.
Robert "RSnake" Hansen
~30-year security veteran with deep SEO roots — early career at eBay, ValueClick, and Realtor.com before founding ha.ckers.org and SecTheory, then co-founding Bit Discovery (acquired by Tenable). Sits at the intersection of hacking and search.
Notable: Credited with Slowloris, clickjacking, and the Fierce DNS tool; SEO Week 2025 talk "NEGSEO — SEO for the Bad Kids" on negative SEO.
Curt Simon Harlinghausen
20+ years in digital. Serial entrepreneur: founded agency akom360 (acquired by Publicis in 2015), then CEO of Digitas and Chief Digital Officer at Starcom EMEA. Most recently ran Miele X, Miele's digital innovation hub. Bridges business transformation, e-commerce, data, SEO, and IT.
Notable: Speaker at CES, DMEXCO, SXSW, TEDx, and SEOktoberfest; lecturer at German digital academies.
Michelle Robbins
Software engineer in web/search since the mid-90s. Headed technology at Third Door Media, rising to SVP and Editor in Chief of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and MarTech Today. Later led Decision Science in LinkedIn's Global Business Organization before Microsoft. MSBA, UC San Diego (2024).
Notable: Rare editor-in-chief who was also a working engineer; guest on Google's Search Off the Record.
Alex Schultz
Joined Facebook in 2007 and pioneered the integration of product, data, and direct-response marketing. Built and ran Meta's data science and data engineering organizations; as CMO led global marketing. Now leads Meta's transition to AI-led analytics as its first-ever CDO.
Notable: Founding figure of "growth hacking" at Facebook; author of Click Here.
William Sears
25+ years in growth and digital marketing: LinkedIn (GPM Growth), Disney SEO leadership, VP of SEO at Slickdeals, CouponFollow, iGaming.com, Idealab. 3x founder with 4 companies acquired. Built Semrush's Enterprise Professional Services team spanning SEO and GenAI marketing.
Notable: Launched Semrush's Enterprise Professional Services program; USC Entrepreneur Program grad.
Joost de Valk
Founded Yoast (2010); Yoast SEO became the world's most popular SEO plugin, active on 13M+ websites. Sold to Newfold Digital in 2021 with Marieke van de Rakt, then founded Emilia Capital (~€3M across 11 companies incl. Patchstack, Atarim) and built Progress Planner, which joined Your.Online in June 2026. Long-time WordPress core contributor.
Notable: Yoast SEO; Emilia Capital; prolific writer at joost.blog.