Top 10 Influential People In Search Engine And Search Engine Optimization Industry

Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000 and currently he is the head of Google’s Web spam team. Before joining Google, he worked on his Ph.D. in computer graphics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has done M.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill, and B.S. degrees in both mathematics and computer science from the University of Kentucky. He wrote the first version of Safe Search, which is Google’s family filter, and he has worked on search quality and web spam at Google for the last several years.

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan is the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a blog that deals with news and information about search engines, and search marketing. He graduated from the University of California, Irvine and for a year he was in England working for the BBC.

Sullivan started Search Engine Watch in beginning of June 1997. Search Engine Watch was a website with guidelines on how to get good search engine results. Matt Cutts of Google considered Search Engine Watch as “must reading,” and Tim Mayer of Yahoo! as the “most authoritative source on search”. Search Engine Land is a news web site that deals with search engine marketing and search engine optimization. It was founded in 2006 by Sullivan after he left Search Engine Watch.

Brett Tabke

Brett Tabke is an American programmer and SEO professional. Brett Tabke has worked in the computer industry for almost three decades. Tabke is at present the CEO and founder of Webmaster World Inc. He is also the founder of PHD Software Systems, a specialty software manufacture that produced a line of software for Commodore computers in the 80’s and 90’s.

Tabke gave several SEO staples as “Link Farm”, “SEO Themes”, and the classic “SERP” (Search Engine Results Page). He was also a founding board member of SEMPO. He also wrote a chapter for the best selling “Google Hacks” book. He is also the first identified person to have fully decoded the Excite and most of the Altavista search engine algos. Tabke’s document “26 Steps to 15k a Day” is one of the most widely read in SEO history.

Shawn Hogan

Shawn Hogan is currently the President and CEO of Digital Point Solutions. He is also a very good programmer, analyst, technical writer and artist. However, around these parts he’s perhaps better known as digitalpoint, webmaster of the DigitalPoint Forum. In the world of eCommerce, Shawn is known for numerous things, not the least of which is his very popular SEO Tools. These extremely regarded tools are accessible free of charge and belong in the arsenal of every serious webmaster, including forum owners and administrators.

Aaron Matthew Wall

Aaron Matthew Wall a, California-based blogger and search engine optimization expert who writes the popular blog SEOBook. He is a recurrent speaker at the Search Engine Strategies and PubCon conferences.

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin is the CEO and Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a head in the field of search engine optimization tools, resources & community. In 2009, he was called among the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs below 30 by Business Week, and has been written about it in The Seattle Times, Newsweek and the NY Times among others. Rand has keynoted conferences on search from Sydney to Reykjavik, Montreal to Munich and spoken at dozens of shows around the world. He’s predominantly passionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by more than 40,000 search professionals each day.

Michael Grey

Michael Grey, another man “in the know” when it deals about Search Engine Optimization. He blogs on the subject of SEO at Graywolf’s SEO Blog. He is a SEO although he does work in a lot of different areas of internet marketing. He has traditional SEO projects and works as well as managing his own PPC campaigns for some affiliate products and a few e-Books which he sells.

Loren Baker

Loren Baker is a graduate in Mass Communications (marketing and advertising) from Towson University seems to do good justice to his graduation by entering into Search Engine marketing. His interest in SEO and web world made him the Director of Search Engine Marketing in his same organization, WebAdvantage.net where he managed Search Engine Marketing and SEO team. And with the his learning and experiences, in July 2003, he launched his own Search Engine Journal where he is the editor now.

Darrin J.Ward

Darrin J. Ward leads the Darrin Ward team, a group of SEO & SEM professionals that propose top-tier professional SEO and search marketing services. Darrin has been greatly involved in the SEO industry since day one. Darrin has founded a number of successful SEO and search related Websites and search companies.

Jeremy Zawodny

Jeremy Zawodny is currently a Technology Evangelist at Yahoo. Formerly he was part of Yahoo’s platform engineering group. He’s been at Yahoo ever since then, helping to put MySQL and other Open Source technologies to use in amusing, interesting, and often very big ways. In 2000, he started writing for Linux Magazine and continues to do so today as a columnist and contributing editor.

9 Comments to Top 10 Influential People In Search Engine And Search Engine Optimization Industry

SEO services mumbai

Nice information on top 10 peoples in SEO industry…

Anonymous

Jeremy Zawodny doesn't work at Yahoo anymore… and I wouldn't have ever called him someone to watch for SEO. MySQL maybe, but not SEO.

Shardul

Nice article, btw how much did it cost you to get those mascots done ?

seg

We have in house designers who can do these cartoons pretty fast. Also there are softwares which help you create these kind of stuff.

Gregg Banse

Love the images! I like the idea of recognizing the people that have been influential in our industry and giving credit where credit is due. There are many half-truths and grey areas in this industry and unfortunately it hard for a layperson to tell the difference between the wolves and the sheep. Posts like this helps spread the names of people who have been working hard at their craft to better themselves and their immediate projects. In the end, their generosity helps us all.

Lloyd Herrera

Matt cutts is in the number one in the list. How about Ray Cumstock?

Team Creatives

These are the people who practically wrote the rules of SEO work. They are also the ones who helped get SEO into the big industry that it is now. However, as it continous to grow, there are more people that are likely to be added to the list.

Search Engine Optimization

Nice information on top 10 peoples in SEO industry.As i am a newbie in SEO i found this information very useful.
Thanks for sharing, I have learned so much here on your site.

Fred

I have a few more which deserve some attention: Bruce Clay, Dave Harry, Stephen Spencer, Ann Smarty, Jill Whalen, etc. Nice post.

Leave a comment

Request a Free SEO Quote