The SEO community is supportive. As an industry, the nuances of SEO change frequently while the fundamentals stay the same.
Last year in honor of Mike King’s 40th birthday (who celebrated in style by releasing his rap EP, iCONIC), iPullRank wanted to shine the spotlight on the SEOs that are innovating, breaking new ground, and finding new ways to succeed at SEO.
With such a fantastic turnout last year, we decided to make this an annual event! This year, we’ve received a ton of great new submissions.
I appreciate everyone who participated. Creating a video and publicly supporting someone in your field takes courage. We spend so much of our days behind avatars and computers. It’s beautiful to see the genuine and heartfelt appreciation of our colleagues in video form.
To all of the SEOs who have just joined the industry (no matter their age) and to all of the SEOs who have been giving back and supporting their colleagues after all of these years.
Here’s to you! Thank you for lifting others up. Let’s continue to pay it forward.
So without further ado, here are the 2022 SEO that we support…
Have questions? Want to nominate someone? Please email garrett@ipullrank.com and send them my way. You can fill out the submission form.
Want to chat Enterprise SEO and how iPullRank can help? I’m happy to do that as well. Contact us.
Local SEO
SEO for therapists
Kristie Plantinga is kind, ambitious, passionate, and smart. She works with all different types of therapists to educate them on how organic search can help get more traffic to their site so they can get more clients, but more importantly, she wants them to be paid what they deserve. She does trainings, webinars, 1:1 consulting. She’s also taught me a few things about lead generation and speaking to your target audience. For all these reasons, and more, I believe Kristie is deserving of being listed as a top 40 SEO under 40.
Darwin has an amazing attitude and an insatiable desire to learn.
Taylor is the type of person who doesn’t say things she doesn’t believe. She tests out hypotheses with experiments, reporting back when she has something to share. She is a bridge-builder for new and underrepresented members of our industry and is always willing to lend a helping hand when asked. She is hands-on in her approach to SEO, building out dashboards and processes in Python to assist her in getting great work done in a timely manner.
Lorrin is an SEO lynchpin at Angi and Homeadvisor. He is very knowledgeable on both strategic and technical SEO fronts. Additionally, he spearheads our SEO forecasting and has recently undertaking the development and standup of the SEO groups data automation and data visualization. Lastly, he has been responsible for the SEO group’s tool selection, architecture, configuration and ongoing management. I feel personally grateful for the opportunity to work with Lorrin and am happy to nominate him today.
Vijay:
Alina is an incredibly talented, focused, detail-oriented growth SEO marketer. She is a thoughtful listener and coach to early-stage marketers via First Round Capital. You don’t come by a lot of folks in SEO who are user and search-driven while still owning a pipeline. In 2018, she helped directly influence Sales Hacker’s organic search program that ultimately led to their acquisition. Over the last three years, she also helped bring in over $40M in ARR at Nextiva as their Content SEO Lead. She’s one to watch!
Joe:
Alina is a Swiss Army knife on Nextiva’s marketing team. She’s pivotal in how our company became a top cloud communications provider with more than 700,000 users.
I’ve worked with her since 2019, and she can always make any content idea better.
Her work includes crafting landing pages, content outlines, and editing blog posts. She also is unrivaled in performing keyword research so our lean team can focus on the right growth opportunities. In addition, her search engine optimization expertise makes her invaluable to the company’s marketing program. She’s also a brilliant editor who sculpts profoundly helpful marketing, customer service, and business sales advice.
Quite candidly, her playbook is how the company continues to grow at a meteoric pace (ARR: $200M). She hasn’t always had it easy. Yet, she applies herself at the highest level to scale our business and support others that work with her. As a result, Alina has earned accolades and has been featured on several business growth podcasts. I firmly believe she needs to top your list for 40 SEOs under 40.
She’s an absolute breath of fresh air in this industry that’s very (white) male led. Not only is she passionate about delivering great information about content + SEO, she cares deeply about wider topics that impact the industry such as DEI, salary transparency, and helping to educate more Black people to get into the industry. She deserves to be a part of this list.
Tasha is a trail blazer! She is very inspirational to me as a Black woman because she is able to combine her love for fashion and beauty with SEO. Absolutely making headways with Insights and fitting it into SEO Approaches, she continues to be the epitome of what a lot of Black women look up to that wants to come into SEO. From sharing her knowledge in clubhouse spaces and winning MediaBrands UK Spotlight Award, it is very clear her drive and passion for what she does has truly made her a remarkable person to watch and be inspired by.company, SpyFu
Zac has done an incredible job of levelling up the SEO community and adjacent ones as well (content). He’s helped the Hypercontext team tremendously, especially when it came to our company’s content claim to fame (https://hypercontext.com/goal-examples). Zac continues to be an incredible SEO mentor to those around him and that’s something that will propel the community forward. Not to mention he’s done an incredible job on the SEO front at his past company, SpyFu
Chris:
Jess is an expert Technical SEO who bridges the gap between the SEO and Web Development world. As well as being a champion for accessibility and the modern web, she’s created a hugely invaluable resource on Cumulative Layout Shift. If you’re not already using it to diagnose issues with CLS you should remedy that right now!
Kim:
Jess has a knack for making complicated concepts more approachable for the rest of us (just read her “almost-complete” guide on CLS to see what I mean.) She’s not afraid to experiment and break things in order to understand why and how to make them better, and she tackles these explorations with a sense of humor that reminds us that SEO can be a lot of fun.
Garrett Sussman | iPullRank
Jamar is a voice to be reckoned with. He’s one of those guys that consistently puts others before him. He lifts up underrepresented people in our industry. He promotes and supports them. He’s always connecting people. Jamar speaks out when he sees a social injustice. He’s making the online world a better place every day.
Content SEO — specifically product-led.
Alina Benny | Nextiva
Dr. Fio Dossetto is one of the most meticulous, audience-driven search marketers I know. I consider her to be an expert on product-led content — her very successful run at Hotjar as their SEO/Editorial Lead is a testament to that. Whether it’s her newsletter, community posts, or even DMs — she never fails to be intentional and articulate. I love her subtle, yet hyper-consistent brand — always learning something new from Fio!
Chima is great at breaking down ideas like “topic clusters” and content in ways that are engaging themselves. She uses Twitter threads to explain ideas in a really easily accessible way! Check out her Enterprise SEO page for iPullRank.
There are so many things… One of the things I love about Carolyn is when she was running Search Hermit she would write content for non-SEOs that was so clear and to their level without being “thin.” She’s also just a great advocate for women in the industry, particularly around their being paid fairly.
Lily’s observations on the shifting trends of Google SERPs are second-to-none. She has an approach of a human-eye analyses, and everything she reports and writes on when sharing SEO news and advice is thorough and well done. Lily is a true expert.
Vanessa can not only lead SEO efforts and work within a large org (like Upwork), but also has extensive client (senior agency consultant) and CPG experience (team lead at Nestle). I think she’s inspiring because she makes SEO more accessible for the people she works with.
From purely a work perspective, Jess is an SEO powerhouse. She started as an organic search specialist at Yoghurt Digital in Australia when she was in college, working on some of Australia’s biggest international brands. Within two years, her work earned her finalist nominations in three categories at the 2018 Semrush Search Awards. In her current role as SEO Manager at Uproer, she continues to do case study level work while also hiring and mentoring new team members.
However, Jess doesn’t often talk about her own accomplishments. She’s too busy highlighting the work of others and finding ways to make the search community a better place to work. There’s no shortage of examples, but here are a couple of highlights:
Jess is a co-founder of the Minnesota Brain Trust, an organization that helps non-profits find search experts in the Twin Cities, and helps search experts volunteer without sacrificing work. She is also passionate about making search marketing more diverse and inclusive. She’s helped our agency grow our relationship with local organization The Brand Lab, whose mission is to change the face and voice of the marketing industry to be more diverse. Jess is a driving force in our agency’s hiring process, and always champions gender and racial equality in our candidates.
TL;DR: Jess is awesome. Not only is she an A+ SEO, but she is kind, hard-working, and motivated to make the industry one of the most accessible.
Tech SEO, structured data, SERP analysis
Carolyn Lyden | Search Engine Land
Crystal, along with being an absolute gem of a human, is always teaching me something. From her sessions at SMX and Brighton and beyond, I feel like she’s always on top of the latest in SERPs and what we can do as SEOs to ensure our clients are the beneficiaries of these changes.
Abby is a content mastermind. She is constantly thinking of new ways to integrate and expand content from the human perspective. It’s been a huge part of her successes with clients and out of work. From UGC content to creatively thinking around the maker SERP squeeze, she’s got ideas for days.
Christina has been beating the drum for SEOs to give a damn about accessibility.
Sematic SEO, Tech SEO, Off-page
Aman Maurya
I want to nominate Koray Tuberk Gubur for the 40 SEOs under 40. He has contributed many great learnings, case studies, sematic SEO, and off-page SEO to the SEO community.
And for that reason I nominate him. He is an incredibly great asset to the community. THINK like SEO, CODE like DEVELOPER. Thank you.
He is young, motivated, get to Head of SEO by the age of 27. He is an awesome manager and constantly developing the team’s knowledge, working process and A/b testing different strategies and stuff especially for Tech & cognitive SEO
Former CEO of Searchmetrics turned SEO consultant to enterprise brands.
Areej has built an entire community around SEO, diversity, and lifting up others. She invests so much of herself mentoring and creating a welcoming and safe community for women in tech SEO.
I admire her dedication to making our industry a welcoming place. She’s created an unmatched wealth of resources that inspires other women to build their SEO careers on a day to day basis.
Benjamin is the most technical savvy SEO experts I have ever met. For VUE DMS, he launched a full website and was able to use SEO best practices to quickly achieve the highest ranking in our business category. He is also focused on obtaining tangible business successes through his website optimization. Not only does he strive to get the most traffic to our website, but the right traffic that aligns with the business objectives. Most importantly, he does this with an extremely ethical approach. He is the BEST ambassador for the digital marketing professional. VUE DMS is lucky to have him on our team.
Adam’s SEO work, from strategy to planning and optimization, has resulted in a number of good collaborations together and has lifted blog metrics since starting the republishing program.
I had an incredible chat with her about how she drove organic traffic using one piece of content here. Plus she is amazing!
International SEO & Content Marketing
Orit Mutznik | Data Camp
She’s not incredibly active on Twitter, that’s cause she’s busy consulting HUGE clients, running her own incredibly successful websites, speaking (BrightonSEO, SMX Semrush webinars), and writing (for rank ranger) all whilst being a wife and a mom of 3.
Last year she had a severe health issue, but she pushed through coming out of it even stronger making her clients and websites even more successful. Liraz is a wonderful human and one of my closest friends, I’ve known her for almost a decade.
She’s always empowered & supported others beyond me, she’s actually helped top names in the industry upgrade themselves by using her connections and getting them a better job. For her “be kind” is not just a motto, she lives by it.
I’m very proud of her for everything she does, but I’m proudest of her recently becoming a university lecturer in digital marketing and if you ask her what makes this even more special she’ll say that she never attended university, she’s purely self-taught, as she spent her university years in acting school so she’s a talented actress as well. Also, she’s an amazing singer who appeared on “Israel’s Got Talent” about 15 years ago.
She also sang at the BrightonSEO event… I could go on… I love her, and it would mean the world for me to ser her on the list
This year, everything I’ve read and understood about SEO forecasting and using data to improve SEO results has been either written or talked about by Miracle. She’s become the authority on SEO forecasting and data strategy. Her speaker sessions at Moz, Women in Tech SEO, and BrightonSEO combined with the results she’s achieved for clients as the head of SEO at Erudite sets her worlds apart from everyone else in this extremely niched section of SEO
Kristina is found everywhere. She’s all over Twitter, LinkedIn, she has a newsletter and even runs courses to help level up SEOs in their skill set. Kristina is always sharing her knowledge and helping others which makes her a gem in the SEO community.
Arman Advani | LinkGraph
Manick Bhan has contributed a great deal to the SEO community after 10 years in both agency and in-house roles. He is the founder and CTO of LinkGraph – an award-winning mission-driven SEO and digital marketing agency – and the creator of the SearchAtlas Software Suite. As a growth hacker, data scientist, and skilled programmer, growing brands through SEO is his greatest passion and life’s work.
Manick has taught both startups and Fortune 500 companies how to scale their brands through data-driven SEO strategies that can help any brand break into any market with ease and outrank even the biggest of competitors. LinkGraph now works with 200 clients across all sectors.
His passion for search is evident in his varied skill set in both of his roles as an agency leader with LinkGraph and as a full stack web developer leading a growing team of 30 globally-distributed engineers with SearchAtlas.
Manick’s dedication to innovation in SEO can be seen by LinkGraph’s SearchAtlas Software Suite – an all-in-one digital marketing and SEO toolkit. He and his team of engineers are working to continually improve on our cutting-edge software by analyzing and studying Google’s core search signals.
His unofficial motto is “SEO in service of others” which really speaks to his mission to make SEO approachable and accessible to all. He has built a software platform that not only provides better tools and bigger data, but teaches digital marketers how to make strategic optimization decisions that produce real results.
As an animal rights advocate and humanitarian, philanthropy is extremely important to Manick and is one of LinkGraph’s core values. The company regularly donates our services and software to nonprofits. Through our LinkGraph Cares program, we also donate a percentage of our monthly revenue to social justice and environmental organizations.
Manick loves SEO because it’s the most democratic form of digital marketing. He believes that anyone can win as long as they are willing to put in the work with a data-driven approach. He is always willing to share his insights with others and contributes to outlets like Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, Content Marketing Institute, and WordStream, among others.
Manick would make an excellent addition to this list of ambitious SEOs because of his drive to innovate in the space and his commitment to the community!
Claire is constantly making local seo better by sharing amazing finds, resources snd best practices. Her UTM guide for local SEO and GMB is our gold and such a valuable resource.
SEO + content marketing strategy
Elise Dopson | Peak Freelance
Mike is one of the most knowledgeable SEOs I know. He has tons of SEO + content marketing case studies up his belt–like this round-up post that he refreshed and is now worth $306K per month. Plus, he always goes out of his way to teach other people what he knows. He’s just a good egg 🙂
International SEO, General SEO
Ramesh Singh
Praveen is one of the brightest minds in SEO from the India SEO Community and is always ready to help fellow SEOs with his great experience and useful tips. He advises you on how to improve the creating for user’s search intent and how to be successful with your organic strategies. Praveen has been working in the SEO industry for more than 10 years. He has experience working on agency and in-house product-based companies. I’ve known Praveen for the last 5 years now and I can vouch for his work and the kind of value he delivers on his projects. Praveen recently did an article to connect SEOs around the world through long hours of research and creating a list of SEOs to connect and follow. Here is the link.
Everything but tech and international SEO.
Derek Whitney | SALT
I have been working with Dan Taylor and the SALT team for the past year and a half and he has helped our team tremendously with our SEO efforts. He is an expert in all aspects of techincal SEO and helped me through very difficult Salesforce migrations. I felt like he knew how to handle every obscure SEO issue we came across with ease. His team also has helped build a ton of quality content that has improved our blog performance. If you look at what he has done with Edge SEO, his work speaks for himself. He belongs on this list.
Sean’s detailed understanding of SEO data helps tell a story around our efforts. This story helps drive value for our clients. Sean has helped .edu sites drive more leads and has helped make education more accessible and affordable.
Have questions? Please email garrett@ipullrank.com and send them my way. Want to chat Enterprise SEO? I’m happy to do that as well.
Sign up for the Rank Report — the weekly iPullRank newsletter. We unpack industry news, updates, and best practices in the world of SEO, content, and generative AI.
iPullRank is a pioneering content marketing and enterprise SEO agency leading the way in Relevance Engineering, Audience-Focused SEO, and Content Strategy. People-first in our approach, we’ve delivered $4B+ in organic search results for our clients.
