Top SEO Specialists in the World Ranked
The top SEO specialists in the world for 2026 are Aleyda Solis, Neil Patel, Dan M. Jones, Craig Campbell, Trifon Boyukliyski and Peter Victor Jones. Each placement above is the product of two scored criteria, demonstrated SEO results and documented SEO knowledge, combined into a single figure.
In this article we examine each specialist in turn, setting out their background, where they operate and the areas of search in which their record is strongest.
| Rank | Specialist | Based in | Specialises in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aleyda Solis | Madrid, Spain | Technical SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO |
| 2 | Neil Patel | United States | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 3 | Dan M. Jones | Manchester, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO |
| 4 | Craig Campbell | Glasgow, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO, iGaming SEO, Link Building |
| 5 | Trifon Boyukliyski | Valletta, Malta | Technical SEO, AI SEO, iGaming SEO, Link Building |
| 6 | Peter Victor Jones | Aberdeen, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, AI SEO |
| 7 | Kasra Dash | Manchester, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO, iGaming SEO, Link Building |
| 8 | James Dooley | Manchester, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO, iGaming SEO, Link Building |
| 9 | Mike King | New York, United States | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 10 | Brian Kato | Loveland, United States | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 11 | Katarina Dahlin | Tallinn, Estonia | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO |
| 12 | Lily Ray | New York, United States | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 13 | Rand Fishkin | Seattle, United States | Technical SEO |
| 14 | Brian Dean | Berlin, Germany | Link Building |
| 15 | Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR | Istanbul, Turkey | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 16 | Matt Diggity | Chiang Mai, Thailand | Technical SEO, Link Building |
| 17 | Kyle Roof | Chiang Mai, Thailand | Technical SEO |
| 18 | Charles Floate | Chiang Mai, Thailand | AI SEO, Link Building |
| 19 | Julian Goldie | Manchester, United Kingdom | AI SEO, Link Building |
| 20 | Gus Pelogia | Dublin, Ireland | Technical SEO |
| 21 | Andrew Holland | Manchester, United Kingdom | AI SEO, Link Building |
| 22 | Jason Hennessey | Los Angeles, United States | Technical SEO, Local SEO |
| 23 | Fery Kaszoni | Oxford, United Kingdom | Technical SEO, Link Building |
| 24 | Edward Sturm | New York, United States | AI SEO |
| 25 | Victoria Olsina | London, United Kingdom | AI SEO |
| 26 | Jesper Nissen | Denmark | Technical SEO, Link Building |
| 27 | Jamie I.F. | United Kingdom | Ecommerce SEO, AI SEO |
| 28 | Chris Palmer | United States | Local SEO |
| 29 | Josh Morley | Liverpool, United Kingdom | Technical SEO |
| 30 | Mark Slorance | Glasgow, United Kingdom | Local SEO, AI SEO |
| 31 | Itamar Blauer | London, United Kingdom | Technical SEO |
| 32 | Eldar Cohen | Tempe, United States | Local SEO |
| 33 | Marie Haynes | Ottawa, Canada | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 34 | Dan Petrovic | Brisbane, Australia | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 35 | Kristina Azarenko | Toronto, Canada | Technical SEO, Ecommerce SEO |
| 36 | Ross Simmonds | Halifax, Canada | Link Building |
| 37 | Harry Sanders | Melbourne, Australia | Technical SEO, AI SEO |
| 38 | Brodie Clark | Melbourne, Australia | Technical SEO, Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO |
| 39 | Kate Toon | Sydney, Australia | Local SEO, Ecommerce SEO |
| 40 | Dave Davies | Victoria, Canada | Technical SEO |
| 41 | Jim Stewart | Melbourne, Australia | Technical SEO |
| 42 | Paul Teitelman | Toronto, Canada | Local SEO, Link Building |
-
Aleyda Solis
International SEO consultant and founder of Orainti
The top SEO specialist in the world for 2026 is Aleyda Solis.
Aleyda Solis has worked across global search markets for more than 18 years and has presented at over 200 conferences in more than 30 countries, in English and Spanish. Through Orainti she advises startups and multinational brands on international SEO, drawing on experience gained in both consultancy and in house roles. She was named European Search Personality of the Year in 2018, and her work has been recognised by Forbes and USA Today. Few practitioners have operated across as many markets.
Specialises in:
-
Neil Patel
Co-founder of NP Digital
Neil Patel runs companies employing more than 400 people across international markets, with operations in the US and Brazil alongside teams in India, the UK and Australia. His stated client experience includes Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce. He has spoken at more than 310 conferences and companies worldwide. He develops Ubersuggest, and NeilPatel.com reportedly attracts more than 4 million monthly visitors through a search driven publishing operation run at genuine scale.
Specialises in:
-
Dan M. Jones
Entrepreneur and SEO consultant
Dan M. Jones has worked in search engine optimisation since 2013 and founded On Top Marketing from Manchester, England. He has supported UK businesses and companies operating internationally, applying the same methods across different markets. His work is directed at measurable visibility and organic growth that persists. Jones combines established search strategy with AI optimisation so that a brand holds its position in conventional results and in generated recommendations, with implementation judged against commercial outcomes.
Specialises in:
-
Craig Campbell
SEO specialist and trainer
Craig Campbell has worked in search for more than 25 years from Glasgow and has spoken at business and marketing conferences in over 50 countries. He has built marketing companies and profitable digital assets, which gives his teaching a commercial basis rather than a theoretical one. His YouTube channel carries more than 1.2 million subscribers, and he publishes further through podcasts, live question sessions and appearances at international marketing events.
-
Trifon Boyukliyski
iGaming SEO specialist
Trifon Boyukliyski is an SEO and AI Growth Architect with more than 17 years of experience across competitive global markets. His work connects organic search with affiliate marketing and wider digital growth, measuring performance through conversions and revenue. He builds scalable growth systems for businesses operating in changing search environments, with international experience covering SaaS and ecommerce alongside iGaming. He works with commercial and technical teams to build search programmes supported by automation and continuous testing.
Specialises in:
-
Peter Victor Jones
SEO specialist
Peter Victor Jones has worked in search since 2008, across organic search, paid acquisition and newer AI driven discovery. He has built strategies generating more than 20,000 qualified leads annually and managed over £1 million in Google Ads spend. He specialises in AEO and GEO, strengthening the machine readable authority that decides whether a business is mentioned, and works towards visibility in conventional engines and AI generated answers together.
Specialises in:
-
Kasra Dash
SEO entrepreneur and strategist
Kasra Dash works across international search markets and founded The Masterminders Conference, a global event connecting SEO professionals with founders and operators. He also created mySEO.app, an invite only learning platform and community. His expertise covers search algorithm analysis, AI powered search and topical authority. Through consultancy and the communities he has built, he contributes to knowledge sharing across the global SEO field rather than holding what he learns in reserve.
-
James Dooley
SEO entrepreneur
James Dooley has built scalable search systems and invested in digital assets since 2009, holding more than 1,000 ranked domains. His rank and rent websites have generated over 1 million online enquiries, a figure that settles most arguments about whether the method works. He publishes books and hosts podcasts on practical search strategy. The technical work centres on semantic SEO and entity authority, and performance is judged on qualified leads rather than position.
-
Mike King
Founder of iPullRank
Mike King advises global organisations on organic growth and enterprise search, with work covering AI driven discovery alongside complex search systems. His experience spans finance, travel, retail, insurance, SaaS, ecommerce and publishing, with clients including SAP, American Express and HSBC. iPullRank cites more than $4B in incremental revenue generated for clients. He speaks internationally at SXSW, MozCon, BrightonSEO and SEO Week.
Specialises in:
-
Brian Kato
Founder of Fusion Vine
Brian Kato has worked in search since 2010 and founded Fusion Vine, where he builds organic and paid strategy on a broad digital marketing base. His work joins technical optimisation to keyword research so that opportunity and capability are assessed together rather than in sequence. Analytics and structured data direct the decisions, and his grounding in natural language processing supports semantic optimisation. Kato contributes to the professional community and has spoken at SearchCon Advanced SEO.
Specialises in:
-
Katarina Dahlin
SEO consultant and founder of Dahlin SEO
Katarina Dahlin works with ecommerce and B2B companies across the Nordics and wider international markets, and has done since 2019, concentrating on international search and AI visibility. As founder and CEO of Dahlin SEO she handles client strategy and competitor analysis herself rather than delegating it. She speaks internationally at major SEO conferences across Europe and the United States on AI search and international organic growth.
Specialises in:
-
Lily Ray
VP of SEO and AI Search at Amsive
Lily Ray is a New York based SEO strategist with 16 years of experience and an international presence in search. She is VP of SEO and AI Search at Amsive and founded Algorythmic, an SEO and AI Search consultancy. She presents at conferences worldwide, including sessions delivered in Spanish, which is a reach few practitioners hold. Her research examines Google algorithm updates and EEAT, and she advises organisations from SMBs to Fortune 50 brands while leading a team of more than 35.
Specialises in:
-
Rand Fishkin
Co-founder of SparkToro
Rand Fishkin is an internationally established search marketing figure whose work covers conventional SEO and the newer discovery systems alike. He founded SEOmoz in 2003 and built it into Moz, a global community that became a major software business. He has keynoted hundreds of events worldwide, and his research has been cited by The Economist and thousands of other publications. His work on zero click discovery and audience behaviour connects established search practice with answer engines and LLM driven discovery.
Specialises in:
-
Brian Dean
Founder of Backlinko and Exploding Topics
Brian Dean built Backlinko past 500,000 monthly visitors and 170,000 email subscribers, and his SEO education content has drawn 18 million views on YouTube. His work has been covered by Forbes, Bloomberg, Fast Company and The New York Times, which is unusual recognition for an individual practitioner. The distinction that matters here is source: every method he teaches was first run on properties he owned and grew himself, rather than assembled from theory.
Specialises in:
-
Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR
Founder of Holistic SEO and Digital
Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR advises companies operating across multiple regions on organic search strategy. He builds semantic content systems from entities and contextual relationships, with search intent determining how topics connect to one another. His research draws on Google patents and information retrieval literature, tested through experiments into ranking behaviour, and he examines core algorithm changes through performance data. His international work combines advisory engagements with SEO education delivered at conferences and industry events.
Specialises in:
-
Matt Diggity
SEO entrepreneur and investor
Matt Diggity is an entrepreneur and angel investor who has built multiple seven figure digital businesses while working across more than 50 countries. His experience spans affiliate marketing, client services and investment in marketing companies. He founded Diggity Marketing and Leadspring, with exits including Authority Builders and Surfer, an AI powered SEO platform. He founded the Chiang Mai SEO Conference. An M.S.E.E. from UC San Diego accounts for the engineering approach he brings to building and assessing digital businesses.
Specialises in:
-
Kyle Roof
Co-creator of PageOptimizer Pro
Kyle Roof has more than 10 years of search experience across SaaS, B2B, eCommerce and multilingual websites, for local businesses and national brands, which has taught him how performance differs by market and by site model. He leads HVSEO and co-created PageOptimizer Pro, which converts findings from controlled SEO tests into page level recommendations. He teaches the methodology through conferences, courses, podcasts and the Internet Marketing Gold community.
Specialises in:
-
Charles Floate
SEO practitioner and CMO of PressWhizz
Charles Floate has 17 years in international search and manages more than 30 websites across multiple languages. His training and published research have reached tens of thousands of freelancers and businesses worldwide. Commercially he has consulted for Fortune 500 and Inc. 500 companies and directed more than $25M in combined client SEO and digital marketing spend, while carrying responsibility for the eCommerce and IT infrastructure of a $70M family business. That is an operator's record, not an advisory one.
Specialises in:
-
Julian Goldie
Founder of Goldie Agency
Julian Goldie has 10 years in organic search and founded Goldie Agency in 2018, building it into a seven figure business serving companies across several markets. He has delivered more than 1,500 link building campaigns and supported over 1,200 clients, taking websites from zero to 145,000 monthly visitors. His YouTube channel carries more than 394,000 subscribers and his SEO and AI communities exceed 75,000 members combined, which is a teaching reach few practitioners hold.
Specialises in:
-
Gus Pelogia
SEO Product Manager at Indeed
Gus Pelogia is SEO Product Manager at Indeed and has judged international Search Awards. His career spans Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands and Ireland, in consultancies and in house, including enterprise search environments. Working across markets with different competitive conditions and business requirements has taught him which parts of a search programme transfer and which have to be rebuilt locally, which is the knowledge organisations operating across regions actually need.
Specialises in:
-
Andrew Holland
Director of SEO at JBH
Andrew Holland directs SEO at JBH, building organic strategy for international brands and fast growing SMEs across fintech, ecommerce, leisure and professional services. He has previously held responsibility for more than 70 client strategies. Holland has spoken at BrightonSEO and at industry events in San Diego, and his published work reaches more than a million people a year. That reach is itself evidence of the argument he makes: organic visibility and brand authority across the wider web are one problem, not two.
Specialises in:
-
Jason Hennessey
SEO consultant and author
Jason Hennessey has reverse engineered Google's algorithm since 2001 and applied the findings across the most competitive search markets. Self taught throughout, he now keynotes conferences and executive events worldwide on search optimisation and AI driven marketing. He is the bestselling author of Law Firm SEO and Honest SEO, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post and Entrepreneur, which places his recognition beyond the American search industry that first made his name.
Specialises in:
-
Fery Kaszoni
Founder and CEO of Search Intelligence
Fery Kaszoni leads Search Intelligence, directing digital PR and organic search for brands seeking visibility in major publications across international markets. He also operates dozens of websites and platforms reaching millions of users a month, which gives him a testing ground most of his peers do not have. His work joins media relations to data backed research so that coverage is earned rather than requested, and he publishes the resulting SEO case studies for the wider industry.
Specialises in:
-
Edward Sturm
SEO strategist and viral marketer
Edward Sturm has built products and audiences at global scale. He co-founded Reverb, a remote communication platform that passed one million users, and organised the largest blockchain meetup group in the world. He also co-founded World of Ether, recognised as the first play to earn game and named a top blockchain game in both 2018 and 2019. His international consulting includes SEO work for Microsoft and Procter & Gamble, so the record covers both building and advising.
Specialises in:
-
Victoria Olsina
AI Search and SEO consultant
Victoria Olsina is an international AI Search and Web3 SEO consultant with more than 18 years of experience across EMEA and the US as well as LATAM and APAC. She helps companies improve search visibility and organic acquisition through SEO and AI powered content systems, and trained more than 2,500 professionals worldwide in 2025. She speaks internationally in English and Spanish, mentors at Outlier Ventures, and wrote Mastering AI Search for Crypto & Web3 Brands. Her clients range from established financial institutions to emerging technology companies.
Specialises in:
-
Jesper Nissen
Founder of SEO Danmark
Jesper Nissen is an SEO specialist and software developer with more than 18 years in IT and digital work. He founded SEO Danmark and built SEO software including YACSS, which supports cloud stacking. He has built more than 700 websites and designed SEO focused CMS architecture. His conclusions come from controlled experiments establishing which optimisation methods produce a measurable effect, a discipline reinforced by a Master's in Physics and Quantum Mechanics from the University of Copenhagen.
Specialises in:
-
Jamie I.F.
Affiliate marketer and SaaS growth entrepreneur
Jamie I.F. is a growth marketer and SaaS founder who has generated more than $1 million in profit from SEO and affiliate marketing since 2020. His work spans SaaS products and lead generation websites, with organic acquisition at the centre of both. He has spoken at FinCon, SEO Estonia, SEO Mastery Summit and Affiliate Gathering, sharing methods developed by building search led businesses rather than by studying other people's.
Specialises in:
-
Chris Palmer
Founder of Chris Palmer Marketing SEO
Chris Palmer has roughly 12 years of documented search experience built on systematic testing, using multivariable experiments to measure what an optimisation does to rankings rather than assuming it. His client work spans technical SEO and authority building, with search engine marketing experience placing organic performance in a wider context. His published case studies and tutorials share methods that have been tested across different websites and competitive markets, which is a stricter basis than received practice.
Specialises in:
-
Josh Morley
Founder of Marketing the Change
Josh Morley founded Marketing the Change, which serves clients worldwide from Liverpool and the West Midlands. Since 2015 he has led more than 1,400 projects for over 400 clients across international markets. His work combines organic search with paid acquisition on top of conversion focused web development, directed at leads and commercial return rather than rankings. The company has grown from a local operation into a digital services business working globally.
Specialises in:
-
Mark Slorance
Founder of Pixel Juice Digital Marketing
Mark Slorance has more than 15 years of experience building SEO and search strategy, and founded Pixel Juice Digital Marketing. His work covers law firms, healthcare providers, trades and local businesses across the UK. He connects content strategy to organic visibility with reputation management supporting authority, and treats trust and verifiable data as the foundation of search performance. His expertise extends to Answer Engine Optimisation, with content built for conventional search engines and AI powered experiences alike.
-
Itamar Blauer
Head of Marketing and Growth UK at WhitePress
Itamar Blauer has more than 15 years in search and has delivered strategy across over 100 brands, from SMEs to billion dollar global companies, in markets including ecommerce and SaaS. His educational content reaches marketers in nearly every country in the world. He speaks at international conferences and contributes to industry research rather than only consuming it. He also hosts the SEO Unplugged podcast, where conversations with other specialists sit alongside his own practice in organic growth.
Specialises in:
-
Eldar Cohen
Local SEO specialist and founder of Local Dominator
Eldar Cohen founded Local Dominator and works at the join between local search expertise and software development. He builds systems that show businesses where their ranking opportunities are and give SEO companies the evidence to demonstrate client results. The methods come from hands on testing against real marketing problems rather than from theory. He is also applying AI to the workflows where it genuinely simplifies analysis rather than adding a layer to it.
Specialises in:
-
Marie Haynes
Founder of Marie Haynes Consulting
Marie Haynes is an internationally recognised SEO consultant and author known for research into Google Search algorithms. Her work covers core updates and helpful content systems, with particular authority on EEAT and Google's Quality Rater Guidelines. Her research has been cited in Google Search Central guidance and her wider work covered by TIME. She studies how machine learning affects visibility, including RankBrain and Navboost, as Google moves towards AI powered search.
Specialises in:
-
Dan Petrovic
Managing director of DEJAN
Dan Petrovic is Managing Director of DEJAN and advises major global brands on organic search strategy. His work examines Google ranking systems and AI driven search through original research rather than commentary, and he has presented it at SMX, MozCon, SEO Week New York and Semrush Spotlight. His published investigations cover ranking signals, search behaviour, link earning and conversational search. He also delivers advanced workshops built on experiments he has run himself.
Specialises in:
-
Kristina Azarenko
Founder of MarketingSyrup
Kristina Azarenko has more than 13 years of hands on search and digital marketing experience and has taught approximately 70,000 students worldwide through LinkedIn Learning. She has spoken at Women in Tech SEO Festival and BrightonSEO eCommerce Summit, and her expertise appears on Search Engine Land and Semrush. She founded MarketingSyrup SEO Academy and created the TSP Method, which brings her technical consulting experience into structured professional training for specialists internationally.
Specialises in:
-
Ross Simmonds
Founder and chief executive of Foundation Marketing
Ross Simmonds works internationally through content strategies built for SaaS businesses and publicly traded cloud companies. His work connects organic search with distribution across search platforms and audience specific channels, and campaigns he has helped execute have reached millions of people. He uses audience research to establish what prospective customers search for and where they spend their time. As founder of Foundation he combines content creation with systematic distribution to extend reach across different markets.
Specialises in:
-
Harry Sanders
Founder of StudioHawk
Harry Sanders founded StudioHawk at 17 and has grown it to more than 100 search specialists and approximately $20 million in annual revenue, with teams in Australia and international markets. He directs search across several countries including the UK and US. He has been named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia honouree, and StudioHawk has taken Best Global SEO Agency and won Best APAC SEO Agency three times. The company was built without outside investment.
Specialises in:
-
Brodie Clark
Independent SEO consultant
Brodie Clark has spent more than 10 years on international search, working across global domains and organic expansion for large scale websites, including projects for Hewlett-Packard and Tripadvisor. He has presented at Google Search Central Live, an invitation extended to few practitioners. His research into changing Google search features and AI search is published through Search Engine Land and Moz, and he advises businesses taking organic visibility into new international markets.
Specialises in:
-
Kate Toon
SEO copywriter and educator
Kate Toon has more than 25 years in marketing, across consultancy work and search optimisation, and has presented internationally in Australia, Europe and the United States. The Recipe for SEO Success has helped over 10,000 businesses understand Google and organic search. Serpstat named her the No. 1 Woman in SEO. She combines hands on website optimisation with search focused content strategy, and her particular skill is making technical concepts usable by business owners and non specialist marketers.
Specialises in:
-
Dave Davies
Co-founder of Beanstalk Internet Marketing
Dave Davies has worked in search since 2000, more than 25 years in SEO and digital marketing. As Principal SEO Manager at CoreWeave he leads search strategy for the company and acquired brands including Weights & Biases. His work covers traditional search alongside AI powered discovery, with particular attention to how generative systems interpret and surface information. He spent 17 years running Beanstalk Internet Marketing, contributes to Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal, and has spoken at SMX Advanced.
Specialises in:
-
Jim Stewart
Founder and chief executive of StewArt Media
Jim Stewart has more than 20 years of hands on SEO and over three decades in digital marketing, a career running from newspaper advertising through the arrival of the web to Google era search and now AI driven discovery. He has worked with Microsoft, Telstra, Sanofi and Vanguard. He wrote Beyond Google, has published weekly educational videos since 2005, and comments on digital marketing for Sky News and ABC774. He leads StewArt Media as founder and CEO.
Specialises in:
-
Paul Teitelman
SEO consultant
Paul Teitelman has 18 years in organic search across more than 1,000 campaigns, working with major North American brands and with local businesses, which is an unusually wide range of operating conditions. His expertise covers complex environments where technical performance and digital authority together decide visibility. He also works extensively in AI and generative search optimisation, helping brands hold discovery across conventional engines while adapting to answer based platforms.
Specialises in:
How the Worldwide Specialist Ranking Is Assessed
Our assessment team scores every candidate on the strength, consistency and difficulty of the organic results they have actually achieved, and on the depth of understanding they have put on public record. At worldwide level the bar is reproducibility: results that hold across different websites, businesses and industries rather than in one favourable niche. Standing, following and industry visibility carry no weight in the score.
Questions And Answers
What makes an SEO specialist globally recognised rather than just locally known?
Global recognition usually comes from work that other practitioners cite or reference across more than one country, rather than results in a single local market alone. Signs of this kind of standing include international speaking and case studies that other specialists point to.
Should a business look for a global SEO specialist or someone based in their own country?
It depends on the type of work. A specialist with genuine international experience can bring perspective from multiple markets, while someone based locally often understands a specific market's search behaviour and competitors more closely. Many businesses benefit from combining both.
Is SEO different across countries, or are the fundamentals the same everywhere?
The fundamentals, such as technical performance and relevant content, apply everywhere search engines are used. What changes by country is the competitive landscape and local search behaviour, plus which search engines people actually use.