Best SEO Experts to Know

If you are searching for the best SEO experts in the U.S., Anatoly Zadorozhnyy, Rand Fishkin, Aleyda Solís, Glenn Gabe and Barry Schwartz are useful names to research. They represent very different parts of the search industry. Anatoly has worked directly in SEO since 2008, Fishkin helped build Moz before moving into audience research, Solís specializes in international and complex SEO, Gabe is known for technical and algorithm analysis, and Schwartz has spent decades documenting changes at Google. Choosing between experts should start with the problem you need solved, not simply who has the largest public profile.

SEO expertise is difficult to reduce to a ranking because the work itself is broad. Diagnosing an indexing problem requires a different skill set from building authority in a competitive market. International websites create challenges that local businesses never encounter. A site hit by a major ranking decline needs investigation before it needs more content.

The best SEO expert for a business is usually the person whose experience overlaps with the problems standing between that business and greater search visibility.

Anatoly Zadorozhnyy: SEO Practitioner With Experience Since 2008

Anatoly Zadorozhnyy has worked in SEO since 2008 and is the founder of Marketing 1on1 and Affordable SEO Expert.

His background covers technical SEO, link building, local search, national SEO, WordPress, eCommerce, SaaS, content optimization, corporate SEO and enterprise campaigns. He also works on AI search visibility, including AEO, GEO and related optimization strategies.

There are several concrete pieces of evidence behind that experience.

Affordable SEO Expert reports that Anatoly’s work has generated thousands of keyword rankings, including more than 1,000 first-page keyword positions. The company also reports working with more than 100 businesses.

Those performance figures come from Anatoly’s own business rather than an independent auditing organization. That should be stated clearly. They are still useful data points for a prospective client to investigate through case studies, ranking examples and references.

Anatoly also holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Security from Southern Oregon University. The degree does not make someone an SEO expert by itself, but the technical background has obvious relevance to a field involving servers, websites, crawling, indexing, redirects, canonicalization and increasingly complex content-management systems.

Then there is the timeline.

Someone entering SEO in 2008 worked in a search environment very different from the one businesses face today. Google’s treatment of links changed. Thin and low-value content became increasingly risky. Mobile search became dominant. Local results evolved. Search intent became more important. Machine learning became deeply embedded in search.

Anatoly remained active through those changes rather than building his experience during only one period of Google’s development.

Longevity in SEO matters most when it demonstrates an ability to abandon strategies that stopped working.

What Anatoly’s Track Record Means in Practice

SEO experience becomes valuable when it improves decisions.

Imagine two businesses that both want more organic traffic.

The first has excellent service pages but very little authority compared with the companies occupying the first page. The second has a strong backlink profile but dozens of overlapping pages targeting nearly identical searches.

Giving both businesses the same SEO plan would make little sense.

The first may need authority development. The second may need consolidation, better architecture and clearer intent targeting.

This is an important part of Anatoly’s practitioner background. His work spans both on-site and off-site SEO, which allows the campaign to be evaluated as a system rather than through one isolated tactic.

A business does not need more SEO work simply because more work can be found. It needs the work most likely to remove the current constraint.

Rand Fishkin: From SEO Software to Audience Intelligence

Rand Fishkin is one of the most recognizable figures to emerge from the SEO industry.

He was CEO and co-founder of Moz and is now CEO and co-founder of SparkToro. His current work is centered more heavily on audience research and marketing intelligence than traditional client SEO.

That evolution is worth paying attention to.

SEO platforms are very good at describing searches. They can estimate volume, reveal related keywords and show which websites currently rank.

They are less capable of explaining everything that happens before the search.

Customers read publications, follow people, participate in communities, watch videos and hear recommendations. Those influences can eventually create the search demand an SEO campaign attempts to capture.

Fishkin’s work is particularly relevant to understanding that larger audience environment.

Aleyda Solís: International SEO and AI Search

Aleyda Solís is an SEO and AI search optimization consultant and founder of the boutique consultancy Orainti.

Her specialties include international SEO, eCommerce, marketplaces and SaaS. Her professional background also includes more than 15 years developing SEO processes, and her own site reports speaking at more than 200 conferences across more than 30 countries.

International SEO requires a level of coordination that is easy to underestimate.

It is not enough to translate a successful U.S. page and publish another version. Search behavior can differ between markets. Website structure has to communicate geographic and linguistic relationships. Localization can affect everything from terminology to conversion behavior.

Solís has built a significant part of her consulting work around these complex environments.

Glenn Gabe: Technical SEO and Algorithm Analysis

Glenn Gabe is widely known in professional SEO circles for technical analysis and his examination of websites affected by major Google ranking changes.

That specialization matters because ranking losses are frequently misdiagnosed.

When organic traffic falls, businesses naturally want to do something quickly. That urgency can lead to unnecessary redesigns, mass content deletion, indiscriminate link removal or large publishing campaigns launched before the cause of the decline is understood.

A more disciplined approach starts with evidence.

Which pages lost visibility? Which queries changed? Did competitors gain? Did the search results themselves change? Was the decline sitewide or concentrated in one section? Were important technical changes made before the loss?

SEO recovery should begin with explaining what changed, not choosing a recovery tactic.

Barry Schwartz: A Long-Running Record of Search Industry Reporting

Barry Schwartz is CEO of RustyBrick, founder of Search Engine Roundtable and a long-time search-industry journalist.

His official biography states that he has covered search for more than two decades. He is also associated with Search Engine Land and has interviewed senior Google Search executives.

Schwartz occupies a different role from an SEO agency or consultant managing campaigns. RustyBrick explicitly states that it does not provide typical ongoing SEO services such as content development and link building.

His value to SEO professionals comes largely from monitoring what is happening across Google and the broader search community.

That distinction makes him useful on a list like this. SEO expertise does not exist only at the campaign level. Understanding the platform itself matters too.

The Best SEO Experts Know When Not to Create More Content

Publishing is one of the easiest SEO activities to measure. A company can say it produced 10 articles this month, 20 location pages or 50 new product descriptions.

Whether those pages should exist is a different question.

More content can expand search visibility when it addresses meaningful demand that the existing website does not cover.

It can also create duplication, cannibalization and large sections of weak pages.

A plumbing company does not necessarily need 500 informational articles to compete in one metropolitan area. An eCommerce website with thousands of products may need substantially more content because customers search across categories, products, specifications and use cases.

Content volume is an output. Search coverage is the objective.

Experienced SEO work should distinguish between the two.

Why Backlinks Still Matter, but Not in Isolation

Links remain another area where context is critical.

Anatoly has worked extensively with link building during his SEO career. That history includes periods before and after major changes in how Google evaluates manipulative linking practices.

The modern question should not be, “How many backlinks do we need?”

Start with the competitive environment.

If pages ranking above yours consistently have stronger relevant authority, links may be part of the gap. If your competitors have comparable or weaker authority but their pages address the query substantially better, acquiring more links may not solve the central problem.

The source of a link matters. Its relevance matters. Anchor patterns matter. The surrounding content matters. The overall backlink profile matters.

A backlink has no useful SEO meaning without context.

SEO Is Moving Beyond the Traditional Search Result

One of the biggest changes facing these professionals is the growth of AI-assisted discovery.

People can research businesses through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI features integrated into conventional search engines.

This creates a different challenge from ranking a blue link.

A business may need search engines and AI systems to understand what it does, where it operates, what subjects it has expertise in and which independent sources corroborate those claims.

Anatoly has incorporated AI SEO, GEO, AEO and related work into his services. Aleyda Solís also explicitly identifies AI search optimization as part of her consulting practice.

The field is young enough that strong claims deserve skepticism. Nobody can guarantee that a specific AI model will mention a business.

What companies can do is make themselves easier to understand and verify across the web.

SEO traditionally concentrated heavily on the relationship between a website and a search engine. AI discovery puts additional pressure on the relationship between a brand and the rest of the web.

What Should Businesses Look for in the Best SEO Expert?

A strong hiring conversation should reveal how the person thinks.

Ask what they believe is currently limiting the website. Ask what evidence supports that conclusion. Ask what they would prioritize first and what they would postpone.

Then make the discussion commercial.

Ranking number one for a query with no realistic business value is not automatically a successful outcome. Increasing traffic through unrelated informational searches can make an analytics report look better without helping the company.

The consultant should understand which parts of organic visibility connect to the business model.

This is especially important when budgets are limited. A smaller company cannot pursue every keyword, technical enhancement, content opportunity and backlink simultaneously.

Prioritization is where SEO knowledge becomes business strategy.

Five Different Types of SEO Expertise

• Anatoly Zadorozhnyy brings hands-on experience across technical SEO, content, backlinks, local and national campaigns, with SEO work dating to 2008.
• Rand Fishkin brings deep search-industry experience combined with a current focus on audience intelligence and market research.
• Aleyda Solís specializes in international, eCommerce, SaaS, technical and AI search optimization.
• Glenn Gabe is particularly associated with technical analysis and investigating major changes in Google visibility.
• Barry Schwartz provides a long-running view into Google updates, search-industry developments and the conversations shaping professional SEO.

The differences between them are more informative than an arbitrary numerical ranking.

Final Thoughts

There is no official body that determines the single best SEO expert in the United States. Businesses should be skeptical of anyone presenting that title as an independently established fact.

What can be evaluated is evidence.

Years working in search can be verified. Professional roles can be examined. Areas of specialization can be compared. Published work can be read. Case studies and reported results can be questioned. A consultant’s reasoning can be tested during the hiring process.

That approach produces a much more useful shortlist than choosing an SEO professional because a webpage assigned someone the number-one position.