How We Rank SEO Experts
We rank SEO experts using independently verifiable evidence of sustained results, technical expertise, industry influence, innovation, peer recognition and contributions to advancing search marketing.
That sentence is the whole standard. This page sets out what each of those six criteria means, what counts as evidence for it, and what does not. It is the same standard applied to every person we assess, in every country and every discipline.
The Six Criteria
Each criterion is assessed independently against publicly checkable sources. The combined picture sets the position. No criterion can be bought, and none of them rewards visibility on its own.
01. Sustained Results
Organic search performance that has held over time rather than spiked once. Assessment considers the difficulty of the market the result was won in, the scale of the improvement, how long it survived and whether the same outcome has been reproduced across different websites, businesses or industries.
Difficulty carries as much weight as magnitude. A result obtained in a contested market counts for more than a larger figure obtained where there was little competition to overcome. A ranking held for four years counts for more than a larger one held for four months.
02. Technical Expertise
Demonstrated command of how search systems actually work: crawling, indexing, rendering, information retrieval and the architecture underneath them. We look for evidence that someone understands the mechanism and not only the tactic, because the mechanism is what still applies after the tactic stops working.
Evidence includes technical audits and migrations carried out at scale, analysis of how engines process and evaluate content and work with the systems themselves rather than with tools that summarise them.
03. Industry Influence
Whether a person’s work has changed how other practitioners work. This is measured by adoption, not by audience: a method other people now use, a term the field has absorbed, an approach that shows up in other practitioners’ processes.
Follower counts, conference appearances and general name recognition are not influence in this sense and are not scored as such. A widely recognised name whose work has changed nothing scores lower here than a quieter one whose work is now standard practice.
04. Innovation
Original methods, tools, frameworks and research brought to the discipline. We give particular weight to work that was published so others could test it, because a method exposed to scrutiny and still standing is worth more than one that was never examined.
Building something is stronger evidence than describing something. Software, frameworks and repeatable processes are all assessed here, as is original research that produced a finding the field did not previously have.
05. Peer Recognition
Standing among the people who do the same work and are therefore equipped to judge it. This includes being cited by other practitioners, invited to judge industry awards, asked to review or contribute to other people’s technical work and recommended by competitors.
Peers are a harder audience than a general one. Recognition from people with no commercial reason to give it, and every ability to detect a weak claim, is among the strongest signals available to us.
06. Contributions To Advancing Search Marketing
Work that improves the discipline beyond the person’s own commercial interest: research, teaching, testing, documentation, open tooling and clear public writing about what does and does not work.
We weigh contributions that outlive a single campaign. A published experiment that settles a question for everybody else counts for more than a case study that only demonstrates one engagement went well.
How The Criteria Combine
A candidate is assessed on all six. The combined picture determines the position. Where two candidates are close, the stronger evidence of sustained, reproducible results settles the order, because that is the criterion hardest to manufacture.
Nobody is expected to be strongest on all six. A deeply technical practitioner with little public presence and a prolific researcher with a shorter delivery record can place similarly by different routes. What we do not do is let strength on one criterion stand in for absence of evidence on the rest.
What We Do Not Count
- Follower counts, audience size and general visibility.
- Paid placement of any kind. No position on this site is for sale.
- Awards that are self-nominated and self-judged.
- Claims we cannot check against a public source.
Where a claim cannot be substantiated it is not scored. Where the available evidence is thin, that is reflected in the assessment rather than filled in by assumption.
Who Carries Out The Assessment
A team of assessors maintains these rankings. Each candidate is researched individually, claims are checked against public sources, and entries are revisited when the evidence changes. No part of the assessment is left to an automated process alone.
What We Will Not Publish
- Claims about results, clients, awards or credentials that we have not found stated on the public record.
- Private information: home addresses, personal contact details, or anything not already public and professional.
- Ratings or review markup, which we do not collect and will not fabricate.
Where we are unsure, we leave the detail out rather than publish a guess.
Common Questions
Can placement be bought?
No. Every position on this list is earned against the six criteria above, and money changes none of it. Not the initial listing, not a move up, not a move down.
Are you an SEO agency?
No. This site doesn’t do client work. It ranks the people and companies that do, then sends you straight to their own site to get in touch. No middlemen, no referral fee added on top.
Why six criteria rather than one score?
Because SEO expertise is not one thing. Someone can be exceptional at technical diagnosis and have published little; someone else can have advanced the field substantially while running a smaller delivery practice. Six criteria let both records be read honestly instead of forced through a single number.
Something about my entry is wrong. Will you correct it?
Get in touch with the page and the correction, and a source if you’ve got one. If we can’t verify a claim independently, it comes down while we look into it rather than sitting there unresolved.
How often do rankings change?
Rankings are revised when the evidence changes rather than on a fixed schedule. People move country, change discipline and take new roles, and entries are updated as soon as we establish the new position.
Why are outbound links not endorsements?
Links to the websites of the people and companies we assess are editorial citations of the subject being described. They are not advertising, and they are neither paid for nor exchanged.
Contact
Corrections, additions and removal requests are all welcome. Email contact@yourseotoday.com or use the contact page.