SEO professionals are such an amazingly generous community. From knowledge share to new discoveries and recommended strategies, the SEO industry is full of experts who can help any SEO - whether beginner or expert - gain valuable insights to propel them forward.
Social media networks are the vehicle that make this happen. It’s simply a great place to learn all about search marketing, keyword research, search engine optimization, link building and new approaches to SEO strategy.
To help you on your SEO journey, we’ve assembled this list of SEOs who have deep technical SEO experience, real-life experience optimizing websites and general digital marketing knowledge. Advanced SEOs will find their content and frequent shares useful in keeping pace with the ever-changing world of search. Beginners who follow them will quickly find themselves understanding SEO and content marketing in profound ways.
There are a lot of people who claim to be an "SEO expert". We wanted to cut the noise and provide a targeted list of the top technical SEO experts. There were three main criteria for everyone on this list:
Now, there are plenty of great SEOs out there with tons of experience and incredible insight. The key here, however, wasn’t just their rock star status. For our purposes, this list is all about the depth, quality and frequency of the content shared with the community.
We also want to mention that this list is ordered alphabetically, so position on the list does not indicate better or lesser – we think all of these SEOs are awesome!
Follow on LinkedIn and @ajkohn on Twitter
What we love about AJ: AJ blends his deep technical understanding of SEO with his 20-plus years of online and offline marketing experience to strategically drive user experience with solid data-driven analysis. He regularly shares valuable insights into how technology can be used to build bridges between data and user experience like in his post, “My Perfectly Healthy Obsession with Query Syntax.”
Insight to take with you:
“Target the keyword, optimize the intent.”
— From AJ’s January 2019 post titled “What I Learned in 2018”
Technical SEO Manager at Merkle; Follow on LinkedIn and @AlexisKSanders on Twitter
What we love about Alexis: Alexis immerses herself daily in technical SEO at Merkle, sharing ideas, insight and knowledge of what works, what doesn’t and where the industry is going. She contributes at the Moz blog, Search Engine Land, and more, connecting the complexity of bots, code and machine-learning to the human experience.
A new mantra for web page optimization: will this requested resource spark joy in users? ✨☺️
— Alexis Sanders (@AlexisKSanders) January 23, 2019
If not, thank it for its function 🙏 and remove it from the page. 💙 👋#KonMari #PageSpeed
International SEO Consultant & Founder, Orainti; Follow on LinkedIn and @aleyda on Twitter
What we love about Aleyda: Frankly, with Aleyda’s track record, what’s not to love? Aleyda is an internationally-recognized and award-winning SEO consultant, blogger, and speaker, and was awarded the European Search Personality of the Year in 2018. She applies her knowledge of systems engineering and ecommerce digital marketing strategy to help international brands overcome the toughest SEO challenges and create highly-personalized search experiences.
Insight to take with you: You can’t go wrong with any of her “Crawling Mondays” blog content. In a 2017 Huffington Post interview, she also shared that
“An excellent SEO should be…willing to be the first one to test certain things, otherwise, you’ll never be an actual leader.”
CEO & Founder, LocalSEOGuide.com; Follow on LinkedIn and @localseoguide on Twitter
What we love about Andrew: Andrew’s direct take on SEO is like a shot of espresso followed by another where you get incredible knowledge and insight that comes from running his SEO company, LocalSEOGuide.com, from the birth of SEO to where we are today. Plus, he’s always happy to help out fellow SEOs and marketers, sharing his expertise regularly.
Insight to take with you:
“Some Of Your Clients May Actually Ask For Bing SEO Help” from his post, “10 Local SEO Predictions for 2019: Job Security for Local SEOs”
Follow on LinkedIn and @aysunkarsu on Twitter
What we love about Aysun: We believe Aysun understands the nuances of SEO better than the bots themselves. As a data scientist with specialization in machine learning, author, speaker, SEO consultant and so much more, you could get an excellent education in technical SEO simply by reading her shares, posts and articles.
Insight to take with you:
The problem in SEO today is that we don't have common metrics... every body has their own metrics.
— From Aysun's guest appearance on the Experts on the Wire podcast in December 2018.
Founder, Polemic Digital; Follow on LinkedIn and @badams on Twitter
What we love about Barry: Barry specializes in technical SEO for internet marketing companies that demand success to survive – ecommerce brands and news publishers. He’s been a high-demand speaker on SEO at conferences around the world. His social shares offer no-nonsense insight and valuable knowledge for the SEO community.
Insight to take with you:
My key piece of advice for website migrations: NEVER change a URL unless you REALLY have to.
— From @badams on Twitter
CEO, RustyBrick; Follow on LinkedIn and @rustybrick on Twitter
What we love about Barry: Barry abundantly shares with the SEO community news, updates and his insight gained from 15 years working and writing about search. You might recognize him as the news editor of Search Engine Land or the Search Engine Roundtable.
Insight to take with you:
Director of SEO for Business OnLine; Follow on LinkedIn or @SEOCatfish on Twitter
What we love about Catfish: Catfish always has a fresh and insightful way to understand data, search results and the user experience. His contributions to SEO and the search community continue to improve the way SEOs work.
Insight to take with you:
Head of Evangelism for Search, Bing; Follow on LinkedIn or @ChristiJOlson on Twitter
What we love about Christi: Christi constantly shares thoughtful insights from her more than a decade of SEM and SEO practice and experience, news and new shifts in search. As Head of Evangelism, she’s lives and breathes the search industry.
Insight to take with you:
Experiments and tests aren't failures -- they are only failures if you choose not to learn from them!
— Christi Olson (@ChristiJOlson) February 14, 2019
How to Turn PPC Failure Into Success by @robert_brady @sejournal #ppcchat https://t.co/h2dkphIFSe
Research Direction, ClickZ; Follow on LinkedIn or @clark_boyd on Twitter
What we love about Clark: Clark prolifically shares his deep understanding of the nuance that unites SEO, content, SEM and data together from his over a decade of work in agencies and as a Digital Strategy Consultant and featured technology expert with groups that include Google and Forbes. You can find his articles in Search Engine Journal, BrightEdge, Towards Data Science and many other places as he regularly contributes, speaks, teaches and produces podcasts.
Insight to take with you:
Founder, Zyppy; Follow on LinkedIn or @cyrusShepard on Twitter
What we love about Cyrus: Cyrus got his start in online marketing a decade ago, led Moz’s SEO and content team for several years and has recently started his own digital media company. He knows how to drive traffic for Fortune 500s and small business. SEOs will find his Twitter feed a rich source of information and shares both from his own knowledge and that of other leading SEOs.
Insight to take with you:
Q. Does improving CTR increase my organic traffic (irregardless of ranking)?
— Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) February 12, 2019
A. Every. Single. Damn. Time. 💯
Q. Is it true that improving CTR is one of the quickest, easiest, + most direct way of improving organic traffic?
A. I'm starting to think you're smarter than the rest.
For even more great content, check out the entire thread on Cyrus' tweet.
Owner, Evolving SEO; Follow on LinkedIn or @dan_shure on Twitter
What we love about Dan: Dan’s passion and knowledge of all things SEO and how to drive traffic comes through in the search success he’s brought his clients and the way they rave about his work. He produces regular podcasts on digital marketing and SEO featuring interviews with industry leaders, constantly shares incredibly useful information on Twitter and has a great sense of humor which just makes it fun.
Insight to take with you:
“My approach to SEO never forgets that it’s about more than just links and rankings – it’s about your marketing goals and bottom line!”
— From his LinkedIn page
Search Consultant & Technical Account Director, SALT.agency; Follow on LinkedIn or @TaylorDanRW on Twitter
What we love about Dan: Dan has quickly become an award-winning international SEO superstar recognized as on the top 20 technical SEOs to follow in 2017 by OnCrawl. He easily turns data and analysis into strategy and can present both in the language of his audience.
Insight to take with you:
“Google is not a finished product. It is constantly changing and evolving on a daily basis…”
Marketing Scientist at Moz; Follow on LinkedIn or @dr_pete on Twitter
What we love about Dr. Pete: Armed with a computer science and psychology and humbled by his banishment from Mt. Olympus, Dr. Pete transforms digital marketing data into numbers that explain audience behavior and interests, making them immediately useful to marketers and SEOs. He regularly contributes on the Moz blog, at various industry sites, and shares generously on Twitter.
Insight to take with you:
“Focus more on the science part and a little less on the data part some days.”
General Manager, Perficient Digital; Follow on LinkedIn or @stonetemple on Twitter
What we love about Eric: Eric founded digital marketing firm Stone Temple Consulting (now a part of Perficient Digital) over 20 years ago (before there was Google) and has been an active SEO thought-leader as search has evolved over the years. As an award-winning search marketer, his contributions have helped shape the industry and he remains a sought after speaker, author, and columnist.
Insight to take with you:
"Great content is useful content."
— See more from this Tweet from Eric.
Senior Program Manager, Search & AI, Bing; Follow on LinkedIn or @CoperniX on Twitter
What we love about Frederic: Frederic was the team lead on the development of the Bing crawler. To say he knows and intimately understands search is the epitome of understatement. Frederic’s social shares are a wealth of valuable knowledge on big data, AI, machine learning and everything an SEO needs to know.
Insight to take with you:
Even for "milder" applications, I think it's healthy to question whether machine-generating a long-form article from a tweet-length sentence brings positive value to humanity. There are already enough places in the world where image wins over substance.
— Frédéric Dubut (@CoperniX) February 15, 2019
More from this Twitter stream here.
Director of Online Marketing, Houzz; Follow on LinkedIn or @geoffkenyon on Twitter
What we love about Geoff: Geoff’s lived the world of online marketing for over 10 years with experience in SEO, content marketing, ecommerce, analytics and more. His personal website, especially the learn section, is a wealth of useful while his social streams are a source of current and expert search content.
Insight to take with you:
A decrease in “bad” directives isn’t always good – if you see your noindex tags or pages blocked by robots.txt dip, you need to investigate. Controlling crawling and indexation is a critical component of SEO. The noindex command exists for a reason. If the noindex got removed from pages, this could have a negative impact.
— From geoffkenyon.com
Vice President of Search at DealerOn, Inc; Follow on LinkedIn or @GregGifford on Twitter
What we love about Greg: Greg makes SEO fun! He brings a unique background in marketing and web design to his work as an SEO, and his specialty in local SEO. Through his social platforms he regularly shares useful SEO tips-and-tricks along with industry news in way that both informs and entertains his audience.
Insight to take with you:
"Don’t trust anything on blind faith.... test things for yourself — you’ll be a better SEO, and you’ll get much better results for your clients."
—From an April 2017 piece on Search Engine Land
CEO & Founder, RankSense; Follow on LinkedIn or @hamletbatista on Twitter
What we love about Hamlet: As the inventor of the RankSense platform, Hamlet intimately understands the challenges facing SEOs. He lives his statement, “We believe amazing SEO results should take 6 weeks, not 6 months!” and contributes to the SEO community continually via social, through article contributions, at conferences and more. Following him is an education in itself.
Insight to take with you:
“Being an 'expert' is an enormous asset in starting and growing a business. Staying an expert is something else again.”
—From his article in Entrepreneur, “Overcoming ‘Expert Bias’ in Order to Innovate.”
SEO Product Owner, Arrow Electronics; Follow on LinkedIn or @jammer_Volts on Twitter
What we love about Jamie: Jamie’s social feeds are a wealth of valuable marketing and SEO insight that come from her advanced technical knowledge gained in more than 10 years of practice (and success!). She shares expert opinion and content constantly from her own experience and from her network, helping the SEO community adapt with the ever-changing world of search and stay focused on what’s important, the user.
Insight to take with you:
Organic traffic is more than an acquisition. It's a reflection of overall site health. pic.twitter.com/OhhRsQvX7s
— Jamie Alberico (@Jammer_Volts) February 22, 2019
Mentor for Growth, German Accelerator, Inc.; Follow on LinkedIn or @Kevin_Indig on Twitter
What we love about Kevin: Kevin began his career in technical SEO and as he says, “then ventured into Growth.” Kevin’s analytical approach delivers a lot of value to his clients and the SEO community as he’s earned an international reputation and continues to speak at conferences, do podcasts, and write articles when he isn’t sharing via his social presence.
Insight to take with you:
— Kevin_Indig (@Kevin_Indig) February 24, 2019
Internal linking best practices are not universally applicable. Instead, they depend on the type of site, which is a product of the company's business model.https://t.co/RMNy8P5fPq
SEO Consultant and Author; Follow on LinkedIn or @LukaszZelezny on Twitter
What we love about Lukasz: Lukasz is an internationally-renowned, UK-based SEO consultant with more than 15 years of experience. He shares, writes, and speaks prolifically on everything from technical SEO to how to create audience-centric content, empowering his clients and the wider SEO community to deliver the best user experience possible.
Insight to take with you:
“Regardless of the industry you represent, a proper analysis and constant optimization should be one of the basic and, above all, obligatory elements of the whole strategy.”
— From his article “Business Intelligence Tools for Marketing”
Founder, MOG Media Inc.; Follow on LinkedIn or @searchmartin on Twitter
What we love about Martin: Martin’s has done SEO for nearly two decades now and understand enterprise technical SEO, which is probably why so many Fortune 500s have consulted with him. He shares great SEO content daily with a great sense of humor making work fun.
Insight to take with you:
Common SEO issue:
— Martin MacDonald (@searchmartin) February 26, 2019
’Data’ is NOT the plural form of anecdote
Founder and Managing Director, iPullRank; Follow on LinkedIn or @iPullRank on Twitter
What we love about Michael: Michael describes himself as a “Marketing Technologist,” a professional who blends “equal parts marketing and technology.” As Founder of iPullRank, Michael and his team apply data to drive creative successes as they connect brands with their audiences. He’s always contributing to the SEO community through the iPullRank blog and his social shares are thoughtful, honest and informative.
Insight to take with you:
My genuine question is this:
— MyCool King (@iPullRank) February 22, 2019
If Search is using ML at this point and clicks/CTR is not the response variable, then....what is? Sure, there’s abandonment rate, dwell time are options, but they are all functions of a click or non-click.
Genuinely curious as to what it would be.
Technical SEO, IBM; Follow on LinkedIn or @patrickstox on Twitter
What we love about Patrick: Patrick sums up why SEOs like us love him: “I live and breathe SEO.” Not only does he have a deep understanding of all things technical SEO, spending so much of his time “understanding the weird and interesting issues,” he regularly contributes via social shares to the community, plus he started the Beer & SEO meetup!
Insight to take with you:
Edge SEO is probably the next big thing in SEO and this article from @contentking addresses some of the issues around risk and access/permissions that will have to be had before this sees more mainstream adoption. https://t.co/omYZkZuDHZ
— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) February 26, 2019
Partner, Director of Strategy & Innovation, Catalyst; Follow on LinkedIn or @fighto on Twitter
What we love about Paul: If you check out Paul’s Twitter feed, you’ll see he’s connected to today’s SEO thought-leaders. Many contribute to his blog searchwilderness.com. And we haven’t even gotten to his incredible insight and contributions as a “technical marketer” to the SEO community, not to mention his clients.
Insight to take with you:
I love @hamletbatista for writing all of these. It’s about time the SEO community got on the Python bandwagon.
— Paul Shapiro (@fighto) February 12, 2019
Using Python to recover SEO site traffic (Part one) https://t.co/3pNmQ2mMW1
CEO & Lead Strategist, Outspoken Media; Follow on LinkedIn or @Rhea on Twitter
What we love about Rhea: As CEO of her own agency for over 10 years, Rhea’s focused on delivering digital marketing, content and SEO solutions to her clients, yet she always finds time to share valuable information and knowledge from her experience or from her amazing and well-connected network.
Insight to take with you:
What is SEO? It's a simple question. So, why are there 40 answers? Because a smart SEO at @ahrefs probably decided to rank for "what is SEO" using long-form informational content + egobait to do it. Now THAT is SEO. 😉
— Rhea Drysdale (@Rhea) November 2, 2018
SEO Director, SapientRazorfish; Follow on LinkedIn or @RyanJones on Twitter
What we love about Ryan: As the SEO Director at one of the leading digital agencies in the world, Ryan is pretty plugged into everything SEO. His approach and insights really simplifies SEO and we could see a lot of new and advanced SEO experts getting a lot from following him. He shares a lot of his unique insights and up-to-date on thoughts from others regularly with his community. He's also spoken at a number of different SEO and Analytics events and conferences.
Insight to take with you:
Build your own site. Learn how to fix basic technical SEO issues first hand that way. https://t.co/jdkye4klCS
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) February 26, 2019
Director of Strategy, UpBuild; Follow on LinkedIn or @ruthburr on Twitter
What we love about Ruth: Ruth’s been doing SEO for almost 15 years and understands how data-driven content leads not only to big results but enables brands to connect and build a community with their audience. Her social feeds are a constant and valuable source of powerful SEO insight.
Insight to take with you:
I'm of the opinion that none of your GA Views should still be labeled "All Web Site Data."
— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) February 21, 2019
Performance Consultant, Tim Kadlec Consulting LLC; Follow on LinkedIn or @tkadlec on Twitter
What we love about Tim: Tim focuses on website performance, ensuring site functionality regardless of device or network. His perspective unites SEO with web design and web components, going beyond simply technical SEO factors to help brands deliver the best user experience to all their potential audiences.
Insight to take with you:
“I spend a lot of time in WebPageTest. A lot of time.”
— From his post “An Alfred Workflow for WebPageTest”