Judges

Barry Adams has been building and ranking websites since 1998. He was named the Digital Industries Person of the Year at the 2014 DANI Awards and in the same year he founded specialised SEO consultancy Polemic Digital to deliver world-class SEO and digital strategy services to clients worldwide. In 2016 his work was recognised with two UK Search Awards, including Best Small SEO Agency.

Barry is passionate about educating the next generation of marketers, and lectures on SEO and digital marketing for Ulster University, Queen's University Belfast, and the Digital Marketing Institute. He travels the world to speak at digital conferences such as Learn Inbound, BrightonSEO, Pubcon, and Digital DNA, and serves as Co-Chief Editor at award-winning European digital marketing blog State of Digital.

Past roles at Carat and Latitude, working on search marketing campaigns for major brands. 

International Search Marketing Conference speaker on SEO and Digital Marketing Strategy.

International SEO Consultant to brands in-house teams covering ecommerce, sports, travel, food and nutrition, legal, finance and insurance.

A decade in SEO.  Researcher into search engine crawling and crawl efficiency.

Jim has over 17 years of digital advertising experience, establishing one of the first digital marketing agencies focused on paid advertising in 2000.

Since then he's spent in excess of £190 million buying traffic for over 1000 companies, from small one person businesses to household High Street names.

Jim is a keynote speaker invited to speak at industry events around the world, including Pubcon, Retail Global, Marketing Festival, Friends Of Search, Hitpath Masters Conference, a4uexpo, SES, SMX and Affiliate Summit. 

Spades Media, the company that Jim set up in 2012 manage large scale pay per click campaigns for advertisers and paid social media campaigns as well.

Spades Media is a HubSpot Partner helping businesses generate inbound traffic, leads and sales.

Jim has been a regular fixture on the judging panel at the UK and US Search awards for the past three years and is a returning judge for this years European Search Awards.

Never one to shy away from giving an opinion or pulling punches Jim enjoys critiquing entries at the Awards and seeing what the search community thinks is worthy of winning.

Chris has been a digital marketer since 2000, starting in-house in the insurance space and subsequently assuming growing leadership roles across large agencies and SEM firms. In 2014 he founded WebTrafficAdvisors.com in upstate New York. Chris consults with and coaches business and agency teams ranging from senior executives to technical, brand, content and legal groups; helping to improve validation, efficiency, internal acumen and implementation. Chris has diverse experience across major ecommerce platforms, pharma, retail, and other industries.

Since 2004 Chris has been a highly rated speaker, moderator, and content advisor at conferences and partner events all over the world, covering search engine marketing, social media, analytics and evolving tactics including the promotion of better SEO integration across marketing channels. He has served on the Global Board of Directors of SEMPO.org since 2006, co-hosts the weekly podcast SEO Rockstars, and is a two-time judge for the US Search Awards. Chris also blogs for various industry publications but most of his writing involves analysis and recommendations for clients, while fostering integrated online marketing and branding to a qualified target audience.

Elmer is Director, Organic Search (SEO) with GTB. Following a career in the U.S. Army, he has worked in digital marketing for over 20 years doing everything from coding web sites to managing online reputation management efforts as both an independent contractor and a corporate webmaster. Now with GTB, a global advertising agency and strategic marketing partner for Ford, he leads the team doing organic search optimization on websites for Ford and other clients.

Christine Churchill is the CEO & President of KeyRelevance, a full service online marketing company offering search engine optimization, pay per click management, and usability / conversion enhancement services for web sites.

Ms Churchill was a member of the founding Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) and the Dallas / Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association.  In addition to over 15 years marketing experience, she  has a Master’s Degree in Business.  

Ms. Churchill is a regular speaker at PubCon, Search Marketing Expo, and other marketing conferences. Christine and her experienced team of online marketers specialize in helping businesses succeed online by providing a holistic approach to marketing: increasing a site's visibility, improving the user experience on the site, and maximizing the site's conversion potential.

Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Internet Marketing. Dave and his wife Mary started Beanstalk in 2004 and have grown it from a purely organic SEO firm to one offering a full range of services including SEO, SEM, social media marketing as well as training and consulting. Dave is a regular author on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and the Beanstalk blog. He also hosts a weekly radio show on WebmasterRadio.fm and has spoken at a number conferences over the years.

With over 15 year of experience in internet marketing Dave has seen a lot of SEO strategies come and go resulting in a passion for what's working today and an apprecaition for the brilliant ideas coming from some of the great minds in the industry. He's proud to be a judge in this year's US Search Awards to be included among the many great names he joins.

Kevin Gibbons is Managing Director of Re:signal, a digital marketing agency specialising in SEO and content marketing. 

With offices in London, Zurich and Tallinn, Re:signal helps clients such as Expedia, Totaljobs and the Financial Times by acting as an extension to their teams.  Kevin has been involved in digital marketing since 2003 often speaking at industry leading conferences and writing for high profile marketing and digital publishers.

Greg Gifford is the Vice President of Search at DealerOn, a software company that provides websites and online marketing to new car dealers all over the country. He's got over 16 years of online marketing and web design experience, and he speaks internationally at both automotive and SEO conferences, teaching thousands of small business owners and marketers how to get their sites to show up higher in local search rankings.

Greg also spends his time doing freelance website design and SEO for local businesses. He graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BA in Cinema and Communications, and has an obscure movie quote for just about any situation.

Keith Goode is the SEO Manager for Security at IBM and brings over 20 years of experience in the online sphere and over 10 years of experience in In-House and Enterprise SEO. He has worked for small and large enterprises including HomeAway, BDX, Dell, and IBM, and he has presented at dozens of conferences worldwide, including Pubcon, SMX, Cross Forum, and Clarity. A big proponent of democratizing SEO, Keith helped build the Search Certification program at Dell University and regularly presented a Technical SEO class, and he currently is building a virtual courseware for SEO at IBM. 

Bill Hartzer is an independent SEO Consultant. He relies on his 20 years of direct SEO experience to provide technical SEO audits of websites, as well as technical link audits and link cleanups of websites. Mr. Hartzer is known worldwide for his research on the topic of search engine optimization and the New gTLD domain names, as well as Dot Brand domain names. He provides research and marketing of white papers and case studies related to the New gTLDs, as well as consulting related to domain migrations.

Scott Hendison is the founder of Search Commander, Inc., an internet consultancy with multiple services and brands.  He began selling software online in 1999, attended his first Pubcon in 2004, and is a founding board member of SEMpdx, hosting monthly events and an annual conference in Portland Oregon since 2007.

Simon Heseltine is the VP of Audience Growth at Trader Interactive in Norfolk, VA. His team is responsible for all traffic channels for industry leading sites such as Cycle Trader, RV Trader, Equipment Trader and Commercial Truck Trader.

Simon has led US Search Award winning teams at ForRent (2017) and AOL (2014), also working in-house at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and for several years on the agency side.

Simon taught digital marketing for 5 years at Georgetown University, and was on the board of SEMPO for 4 years, 2 as VP of Education.

Simon is a frequent speaker / trainer / moderator at conferences around the world on a variety of online marketing topics. He has a BA (Hons) from the University of Humberside, and a Masters in IT from Virginia Tech.

Anders Hjorth is a digital marketing strategist, entrepreneur and a frequent speaker and writer on Digital Marketing as well as a judge on various Digital Marketing Awards.

Anders was the Founder of several Digital Marketing agencies in Paris: Relevant Traffic [Search Marketing], BDBL MEDIA [Biddable Media] and aznos [Content Marketing] acquired by Altima in 2016 and then Accenture in 2017. Anders was also COO at GroupM Search across EMEA. He has worked for almost 2 decades across SEO, Paid Search, Affiliate marketing, Social Media and Social Ads, Display and RTB/programmatic as well as web development, hosting, domain names and more recently Content Marketing & Content Curation. 

Anders works out of Paris as a Digital Marketing consultant and researcher in his new company Innovell.

Matt is Head of Search & Performance Media at Distrelec – a European distributor of electronic components for engineers in the world of robotics, electronics design and automation. He also acts as Executive Editor of Current, Distrelec’s online magazine which shines a light on the technology transforming our world and the people making it happen.  Formerly Head of Paid Search at Emirates, he specialises in guiding international, multi-lingual brands through times of digital transformation. Matt is passionate about pushing what’s possible in digital marketing through making the best use of tech, data, people, and processes.

Motoko has been providing the online marketing services targeting Japan, Asia, and other markets to companies from around the world for since the mid '90s. Her search marketing consulting services with her extensive knowledge of Asia and Japanese market have been highly valued and made a big impact on some of the world’s popular multi-national brands’ search marketing campaigns.

A number of her articles have been published on industry websites and printed media. She also writes about the Search Marketing and SEO on her blog and other websites. She is a frequent speaker at the search marketing conferences globally and gives seminars and training about International search marketing, In-House SEO, and Enterprise SEO.

In 2014, she received the Best Consulting Awards form the US Search Awards. 

Stephen is strategy director at St. Ives Group-owned performance marketing agency Branded3 – the best large SEO agency in the UK according to judges at the UK Search Awards – and works with brands including Confused.com, Travelex and Vue Cinemas. He organises SearchLeeds – the largest digital conference in the north of England – and is a mentor at Sheffield Hallam University, where he graduated with an MA in Renaissance Literature.

With decades of experience and hundreds of software and web marketing and development projects under his belt, Mark Knowles has an in-depth understanding of web marketing, design, development, and search engine optimization (SEO). 

His professional background includes developing technology solutions for companies such as JELD-WEN, Intel, adidas Golf, PacifiCorp and many others. And as an entrepreneur, Mark has built several technology companies into multimillion-dollar organizations. 

During the past several years, Mark's focus has been founding and developing the first-ever SEO-friendly content management system (CMS), Pixelsilk. At Pixelsilk, Mark leads a team that combines the Web CMS with SEO best practices for client websites across the globe. Industry luminaries like Adam Audette, Bruce Clay, Eric Enge, Laura Lippay, and others have publicly endorsed the value Pixelsilk in their writings and on stage.

In addition, Mark is also a speaker at leading search marketing conferences including Search Engine Strategies™ (SES), Search Marketing Expo™ (SMX), PubCon™ and others. He also serves as an advisory board member at SEMpdx in Portland, Oregon, and is co-chair of the annual web marketing conference, Swivel in Bend, Oregon.

On a personal note, Mark Knowles is known for having a relentless energy and a passion for craft beer.

Topher Kohan came to The Weather Company after 2 years at Rockfish Interactive and after 5 years as the in-house SEO coordinator at CNN.com, a division of Turner broadcasting and a Time Warner company. Prior to CNN, Topher spent two years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta performing site maintenance and SEO.

As the SEO coordinator for CNN's digital news properties (including CNN, CNN International, HLN, CNN Mexico and iReport), he realized a 25 percent increase in traffic from search year to year and oversaw the two largest volume search traffic days in CNN's history in the days leading up to the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. He also managed the technical design and SEO for the fall 2009 re-launch of CNN.com as well as the design, implementation and migration to the current Content Management Systems (CMS). He managed and monitored the largest percentage of search referrals to CNN.com for the 2012 Presidential election, launched HLNtv.com, and the managed the migration of iReport to the CNN.com platform during his tenure.

Topher is a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta with a degree in web development and interactive media design with an emphasis on SEO/SEM.

Topher is very proud to be a Eagle Scout.

Topher served two years on the SEMPO Atlanta board. He was a keynote speaker at the 2011 PubCon Vegas, and a featured speaker at multiple SMX, SES, PubCon and Digital Summit conferences.

Judith Lewis is the founder of the deCabbit Consultancy specialising in integrated digital marketing consultancy and execution. She is a specialist integrated online marketer with skills in SEO, PPC, and Social Media Marketing as well as other digital marketing techniques. She has been doing SEO since before it had a name and has worked both in-house and agency-side. 

She has judged both UK & EU Search Awards, is a founding everywoman Modern Muse and is the coordinator for London Girl Geek Dinners.  Having both an in-house and agency background, her clients have included Google, Virgin, NSPCC, Zopa, Slendertone, the Guggenheim, SAP, Amadeus, Blue Cross, & ShareThis. She works from planning through to execution, integrating her digital expertise through research & analysis, design & build through to deployment.

Judith writes for the SEO Chicks and Mostly About Chocolate as well as the Huffington Post.  She speaks at various conferences around the world and is passionate about teaching and helping businesses large and small (as well as chocolate).

Carla Marshall is the Editor in Chief of TubularInsights.com (formerly ReelSEO.com), the world's leading resource for video marketing tips, tricks and strategies. She is YouTube Certified in Audience Development, and specialises in video optimization and organic video marketing. She has provided video marketing consultancy services to clients across the world, and is part of the marketing team at TubularLabs.com, the global leader in video intelligence for the cross-platform world. She divides her time between Manchester, UK, and Mountain View, California. 

Originally from Stockholm, Sweden (but now based in Dallas, TX), Manuel is a search marketer who has worked within the digital marketing space for a decade, focusing mainly on driving customer acquisition through organic search. While his focus has been on SEO in the online gambling industry, he is now a product manager, working for one of the largest retailers in the U.S. 

Jesse McDonald is the Director of Operations at TopHatRank, a full-service digital marketing agency based out of Los Angels that specializes in innovative digital marketing for modern brands of all sizes.

After receiving his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with an Emphasis in Graphic Design from the University of Southern Mississippi, Jesse moved to Austin with his wife, Jennifer McDonald, to pursue a career as a print-focused graphic designer.  During his quest to find a job in this field, he stumbled upon SEO and fell in love with the industry, especially with how similar the graphic design and SEO skill-sets relate to each other.

Jesse has been a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as Pubcon Las Vegas, Pubcon Austin, Pubcon Florida, State of Search, and Rocks Digital. He has also been a featured guest on several industry podcasts including Search Talk Live and #SocialChat.users.

Brian McDowell in an industry leader for enterprise level digital marketing and is the Principal Digital Strategist at BloomReach, Inc. Brian works with the worlds largest E-commerce brands on their strategies, forensics, process and team structures.  He has been building and promoting websites since 1997.

Brian has a true passion for technical application and has established primary revenue streams for multiple startups including LendingTree, RealEstate.com, Red Ventures and Conductor. He has designed and built multiple in-house proprietary technologies and platforms for natural search and established large in-house teams consisting of developers and junior level SEO practitioners. Brian often speaks to large enterprise level decision makers as well as advertising agencies about how to build, recruit and sustain natural search focus within their organizations. Brian holds a BS in Computer Science from UNC Charlotte.

Matt has worked in digital marketing for over 20 years, alongside many of the world’s leading brands, agencies, and technology companies. Before joining Adestra, Matt headed up strategy for Google’s Ad Agency business. Prior to Google, Matt served as MD of Incisive Media and before that he was COO of PropertyRoom.com. Earlier in his career he led commercial strategy at Headland Digital Media when it was sold to Pearson in 2001. Matt has an MBA from the University of Oxford and a BA from Lafayette College.

Lexi Mills is a multi-award winning digital marketing expert, specialising in integrating PR and SEO at both a strategic and tactical level. Her research work focuses on the opportunities, ethics and risks of machine learning and AI within the sector of internet search.

Lexi combines technical search algorithm knowledge and psychology to create data-driven measurable communications strategies that maximise influence on human behaviour.  She applies this to external and internal communications strategies.

She has been part of core teams responsible for the communications, marketing and investment strategies of clients and agencies for over eight years. She focuses on e-commerce, music and technology sectors. Working with start-ups, SMEs and big brands across the US, UK, Europe and African markets in both the B2B and B2C environment.

Kate Morris is the Director of SEO for Craftsy, an NBCU company. She has been in the industry for about 15 years, working with companies like Staples, EA, Shutterstock and more at top agencies like Distilled and Outspoken Media. International SEO is her favorite topic and technical SEO is her daily life. 

Head of Global Search Marketing at The LEGO Group, Luis defines the strategy for organic and paid search activity globally for LEGO. A regular writer and speaker about Search Marketing, his main focus is to enhance the user experience when users search for the LEGO brand in different markets and platforms. Coming from a technical background Luis has more than 13 years' experience in Search Marketing with cross-functional expertise in technology and management.

Zbigniew has been working in digital industry for more than 20 years, advising to market leaders and innovators. Co-owner of Bluerank, awarded “Best Large Integrated Search Agency” in 2017 European Search Awards. Founder of BlueAlliance and DALL Int. - international business partnerships of independent agencies from Europe. A pioneer in the research of customer experience and user satisfaction, co-founder of opiniac.com platform. Speaker at digital conferences in Poland and abroad. Privately – double happy dad, ultramarathon runner, a fan of hard rock and Labrador Retriever dogs.

Ant is the founder of digital growth agency Pure Optimisation and the former Head of Search and Social at FTSE 250 listed AutoTrader UK. As a previous UK Search Awards winner Ant has extensive technical and hands on expertise delivering integrated campaigns across SEO, Social Media, PPC & Conversion Rate Optimisation.

Ant is a keen advocate of data lead decision making and the integration of the silos that often exist between the primary digital channels.

Eli Schwartz is the Director of Organic Product for SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading People Powered Data platform enabling curious individuals and companies – including 99% of the Fortune 500 – to have conversations at scale with the people who matter most. He oversees SurveyMonkey’s SEO and viral product strategies for the entire product portfolio. Prior to his current role, Eli was the Director of APAC Marketing for SurveyMonkey based out of Singapore. In this role, he oversaw a significant expansion of SurveyMonkey’s user penetration all across the Asia and Oceania regions. Eli is also a frequent speaker at marketing and growth conferences and a regular author for popular business and marketing publications HuffingtonPost, Business2Community, SearchEngineJournal, and Business.com.

Carolyn Shelby is the Director of SEO at tronc, Inc. and is responsible for ensuring the optimization of 9 daily newspapers around the US, including the Chicago Tribune, as well as optimizing the company’s other e-commerce and digital marketing revenue channels.

Carolyn started working with Internet related technologies in 1994 when she co-founded an Internet Service Provider and web hosting company. She is an internationally recognized speaker and trainer, and frequently can be found at conferences like SEJ Summit, PubCon, ClickZ Live, and SMX. Carolyn also contributes to a variety of digital and print publications, writing about search, digital marketing, and social media use by large corporations.

Patrick Stox is a Technical SEO for IBM. He writes for many search blogs and speaks at conferences. He's an organizer of the Raleigh SEO Meetup (the most successful in the US) and the Beer and SEO Meetup and was founder of the Technical SEO Slack group.

Grant is a Senior Growth Product Manager at CROmetrics. Throughout his career, he has led experimentation programs at a number of high-profile organizations across a variety of industries including higher education, SaaS, e-commerce, hospitality, and media. He’s based in Jordan, Minnesota where he enjoys spending time with his wife and three girls, staying fit, and participating in local community events. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Pinar Kılıç Ünsal has spent more than 12 years within the Search Engine Marketing Industry. Her agency Kubix Digital, is a search-focused Digital Marketing Agency based in Istanbul & Berlin. She has participated as a guest speaker & opinion leader at various universities, conferences & roundtables internationally.

Pınar started her career at bwin in Gibraltar managing a team of 18 international Client Account Managers. In early 2005 she joined Google’s European HQ Dublin/ Ireland as Account Manager & Strategist for the German & Turkish Market. Before founding her own agency in 2007 Pınar was part of the ‘landing crew’ for setting up the Google Turkey office in Istanbul back in 2006.

Today, Kubix Digital is one of Turkey‘s leading and award-winning search-focused digital marketing agency.

Pinar Kilic Ünsal studied Business Administration und International Business at the University of Trier (Germany) and at MSSU (USA).

Her hobbies are running, mountain biking, travelling and her 3-year old daughter Mira. 

Lisa Williams is the Associate Director of Digital Engagement for Oregon Health & Science University and author of When Everybody Clicks: Sustainable Digital Marketing. She is a 21-year veteran of online marketing and has been featured in Kiplinger Magazine, Glamour Magazine, Boston Globe and The Oregonian. Lisa is on the SEMpdx (Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland Oregon) Advisory Board and member of SEMPO. She speaks at regional, national and international conferences including SMX, SMX Advanced, SES/ClickZ, SearchFest, Online Marketing Summit, SEMPO and BrightEdge Share. 

Rob is an SEO and online marketer with 18 years of experience. He spent 13 years in-house in both e-commerce and publishing, and has been an SEO consultant (http://robwoods.org/) for 6 years. Rob currently consults with medium to large sites in e-commerce, travel, software, and publishing. He specializes in SEO technical site audits, strategy, and coaching. Rob has spoken at numerous marketing events including Pubcon, SMX Advanced, SEMPO Canada / Bing Search Summit, BlueGlassX, IIMA Fusion Conference, DMA Retail, ACCM (Annual Conference for Catalogs & Multi-Channel Merchants), Endeca Discover Conference, numerous marketing and SEO Meetup events, and served on the Advisory Board for SMX Toronto. He is also the Technical Editor of 2 SEO/E-commerce books from O'Reilly "Social eCommerce" and "The Art of SEO".

Murat Yatagan is a distinguished international freelance SEO Consultant with more than 10 years of expertise on SEO and UX, of which 5 years derives from his Senior Product Analyst role at Google Search Quality Team in Ireland. Murat was involved in several sub teams at Google, such as web spam fighting with a specialized approach on manual actions, reconsideration requests, site recoveries, backlink profile analysis and community management. Apart from that, Murat gained expertise on technical SEO, high quality content creation strategy, outreach and international SEO throughout leading an SEO team at Global Savings Group (Germany) and Brainly (Poland), plus managing 65+ clients globally from various business verticals as a freelancer.

Murat is a member of Advisory Board at two startups from Turkey (KTH and Indisera) focusing on growth strategies and technical consultancy. He has been a Judge for UK Search Awards, European Search Awards and MENA Search Awards since 2016. He's a regular speaker of industry events, podcasts and meet-ups. As an active member of the SEO Community, he is authoring on organic search and digital marketing. Plus, he offers in-company SEO trainings and occasionally gives lectures on SEO at universities.