Top Local SEO Specialists Ranked
The top local SEO specialists for 2026 are Craig Campbell, Peter Victor Jones, James Dooley, Kasra Dash, Dan M. Jones and Mark Slorance. Ranking above follows two assessed measures: demonstrated SEO results, and documented SEO knowledge.
In this article we examine each specialist in turn, setting out their background and the work on which their standing in local SEO rests.
| Rank | Specialist | Based in | Specialises in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Craig Campbell | Glasgow, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO, iGaming SEO, Link Building |
| 2 | Peter Victor Jones | Aberdeen, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, AI SEO |
| 3 | James Dooley | Manchester, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO, iGaming SEO, Link Building |
| 4 | Kasra Dash | Manchester, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO, iGaming SEO, Link Building |
| 5 | Dan M. Jones | Manchester, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO |
| 6 | Mark Slorance | Glasgow, United Kingdom | Local SEO, AI SEO |
| 7 | Katarina Dahlin | Tallinn, Estonia | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO |
| 8 | Eldar Cohen | Tempe, United States | Local SEO |
| 9 | Chris Palmer | United States | Local SEO |
| 10 | Paul Teitelman | Toronto, Canada | Local SEO, Link Building |
| 11 | Brodie Clark | Melbourne, Australia | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO |
| 12 | Jason Hennessey | Los Angeles, United States | Technical SEO, Local SEO |
| 13 | Kate Toon | Sydney, Australia | Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO |
| 14 | James Taylor | Manchester, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, AI SEO, Link Building |
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Craig Campbell
SEO specialist and trainer
The top local SEO specialist for 2026 is Craig Campbell.
Craig Campbell has helped businesses win organic visibility for more than 25 years from Glasgow. He founded his first business in 2001 and later built several marketing companies, which taught him how businesses actually use search to find customers rather than how they say they do. He trains businesses and marketing professionals across the UK, and his wider PPC and personal branding experience informs teaching focused on optimisation a business can carry out and sustain.
Specialises in:
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Peter Victor Jones
SEO specialist
Peter Victor Jones has extensive local SEO experience helping service businesses rank for high intent searches and convert local demand into enquiries. Since 2008 he has built acquisition systems now producing more than 20,000 qualified leads a year for UK service businesses. He built and sold a home services company before applying search at national scale through ADI Leak Solutions Ltd, and connects local organic visibility to paid search using lead performance to direct strategy.
Specialises in:- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- AI SEO
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James Dooley
SEO entrepreneur
James Dooley generates high intent enquiries through ranked digital assets. His rank and rent websites have produced more than 1 million online enquiries across a portfolio exceeding 1,000 domains. The model connects local visibility straight to commercial demand by targeting people actively looking for a service rather than reading about one. He pairs search intent analysis with semantic SEO to hold relevance, and judges local performance on qualified leads rather than position alone.
Specialises in:
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Kasra Dash
SEO entrepreneur and strategist
Kasra Dash improves organic visibility through search strategy informed by technical SEO and reputation management, both of which matter in local search where how a brand appears is inseparable from whether it is chosen. His work also covers strategic content and algorithm analysis. He builds scalable marketing systems that account for changing search technology including AI powered discovery, treating location visibility as part of organic performance rather than as a separate exercise.
Specialises in:
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Dan M. Jones
Entrepreneur and SEO consultant
Dan M. Jones learned SEO to generate leads for his own web design work, then outranked established companies for competitive local terms. Several of those companies subsequently approached him for help, which is a harder endorsement to arrange than a testimonial. Since founding On Top Marketing in 2020 he has applied that experience to businesses seeking local visibility, using search result analysis and performance measurement to identify what moves rankings and what does not.
Specialises in:- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- Ecommerce SEO
- AI SEO
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Mark Slorance
Founder of Pixel Juice Digital Marketing
Mark Slorance specialises in Local SEO for service based businesses, with more than 15 years developing strategy for law firms, healthcare providers, trades and other local businesses across the UK. His local work targets organic visibility and discoverability, with reputation management supporting authority. He treats credible information and verifiable business data as the foundation rather than the finishing touch, and his AEO expertise carries the same approach into AI powered search experiences.
Specialises in:- Local SEO
- AI SEO
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Katarina Dahlin
SEO consultant and founder of Dahlin SEO
Katarina Dahlin builds visibility inside defined Nordic and international markets, developing strategy around local conditions and the competitors already holding the positions worth having. Her work covers entity building and off page optimisation, strengthening how companies are recognised across search systems. She concentrates on the external brand signals that establish authority for AI generated answers, which supports companies targeting Finland and Sweden as well as those expanding further.
Specialises in:- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- Ecommerce SEO
- AI SEO
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Eldar Cohen
Local SEO specialist and founder of Local Dominator
Eldar Cohen founded Local Dominator and specialises in Google Maps rankings and Google Business Profile optimisation. His ranking analysis locates visibility gaps, and competition tracking establishes exactly where ground can be taken. The systems he builds replace guesswork with measured position, which is the difference between an opinion about local search and a report on it. His software helps businesses compete for stronger rankings and gives SEO companies the evidence they need when accounting to a client.
Specialises in:- Local SEO
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Chris Palmer
Founder of Chris Palmer Marketing SEO
Chris Palmer builds local search campaigns on roughly 12 years of documented experience, combining website optimisation with off page authority building. Systematic testing measures what each change does to rankings and organic traffic, so the work proceeds on evidence rather than convention. He documents local methods publicly through case studies and demonstrations. His client focused background connects technical improvement directly to measurable visibility in the results that matter to a business with a location.
Specialises in:- Local SEO
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Paul Teitelman
SEO consultant
Paul Teitelman has spent 18 years improving organic performance for businesses, with extensive work among local companies and SMBs. His local campaigns are built around relevant visibility that produces leads and revenue rather than impressions. He applies technical SEO alongside search intent strategy, tying content and authority work directly to performance. Experience across more than 1,000 campaigns also informs how a local business should adapt to AI generated answers.
Specialises in:- Local SEO
- Link Building
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Brodie Clark
Independent SEO consultant
Brodie Clark holds specialist knowledge of how businesses appear across Google's location based results, covering Map Pack visibility, Local Finder performance and the local inventory feeds that connect stock to search. He researches changes to the SERP interfaces that determine local visibility, publishes that analysis, and has presented at Local Search Summit. His structured data expertise underpins the work, since how business information is read decides how it is displayed.
Specialises in:- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- Ecommerce SEO
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Jason Hennessey
SEO consultant and author
Jason Hennessey has more than 20 years in search, much of it with law firms and service businesses fighting for location based visibility. Legal search is among the most expensive and contested categories there is, and his work concentrates on the point where ranking decides who acquires the client. He founded and scaled Hennessey Digital serving those markets, and helped establish Herringbone Digital, which acquires companies working in legal and dental.
Specialises in:- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
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Kate Toon
SEO copywriter and educator
Kate Toon helps small businesses win organic visibility through practical education and hands on optimisation. She created Australia's first DIY SEO course and built The Recipe for SEO Success, which has supported more than 10,000 businesses in learning how Google search actually works. Her own high ranking website generated a consistent pipeline of copywriting clients, which is the experience the teaching draws on. She joins website optimisation to customer focused copywriting so that traffic converts rather than merely arrives.
Specialises in:- Local SEO
- Ecommerce SEO
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James Taylor
Freelance SEO consultant
James Taylor's local SEO expertise is both studied and practised. He completed an honours degree in Advertising and Brand Management at Manchester Metropolitan University with a dissertation on local search, and has since spent more than 10 years applying it. His consultancy ties local performance to technical foundations and content strategy rather than isolating it as a channel, working across development and marketing functions with recommendations ranked by business opportunity.
Specialises in:- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- AI SEO
- Link Building
How the Local SEO Ranking Is Assessed
Our assessment team scores local search outcomes on difficulty and durability, favouring evidence of performance in contested markets over volume of accounts held. Documented knowledge is scored from published methodology, testing and analysis of how local ranking systems behave. Both figures combine into one score that fixes placement. Client counts, awards and social following are deliberately excluded from the assessment.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the practice of improving a business's visibility in location based search results, such as the Google Map Pack and "near me" searches. It covers Google Business Profile management, local citations, reviews and location specific content. It matters most for businesses that serve customers in a specific area, from single locations to multi location brands.
Questions And Answers
How is local SEO different from regular SEO?
Local SEO specifically targets visibility in a defined geographic area, such as a city or region, often through the Google Map Pack and Google Business Profile. General SEO covers broader organic rankings that aren't tied to a specific location.
Do online reviews actually affect local search rankings?
Yes. Google uses review quantity, quality and recency as ranking signals for local results, alongside how consumers respond to them. Businesses with stronger review profiles also tend to convert more of the traffic they already get.
How important is a Google Business Profile for a local business?
It's one of the most important tools available, since it's what determines whether a business appears in the Map Pack for relevant searches. An accurate, complete and regularly updated profile is usually one of the fastest ways to improve local visibility.