Best SEO Experts to Follow in 2026 | Top SEO Specialists

James Dooley and Karl Hudson discuss the SEO experts shaping 2025. Their focus on proven testing, topical authority and automation shows how expertise drives rankings because consistent experimentation produces dependable results. Their insights highlight why following practitioners who test daily matters as algorithm shifts demand applied knowledge.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

James Dooley: The best SEO experts to follow in 2025. He has ranked successfully 46 different times with online casinos. I'll name you, but I'm not going to name you just now cuz otherwise gets a bit sobby, doesn't it? Obviously, he's got over a million subscribers on YouTube and he does a very good job when it comes down to testing the algorithms of what is working and what isn't. Listen to talk. is always like a bit of a for story always grabs your attention. Corore is unbelievable at the semantics and digging deep in topical maps and I just see every one of these ite start encountering some sort of problems with regards to the culture of the business. We never had any issues with Filipino probably one of the best devs. Apple automations.

Karl Hudson: Hi guys, it's Carl from Searcher and I'm joined today with James Douly. So in today's video, we're going to chat about the best SEO experts to follow in 2025. Obviously, it's it's mid 2024 where very active in you know masterminds in various different networking events across the world. So I think it's quite a relevant time to mention, you know, SEO experts that we should be looking to follow or currently following into 2025 with the whole age of AI and all the new algorithm updates and things like that. So we're wanting to find experts who we know are working dayto-day um within SEO, you know, ranking websites, testing the search engines and algorithms. Um, so Dulie, off the top of your head, let's let's just try and rhyme off some different guys and then we can dig a bit deeper later on.

James Dooley: Yeah. Right. So, best SEO experts to follow for 2025. So, first and foremost, if I didn't do this, you'd shout at me. I'm going to throw your name in the mix straight away. So Carl Ludson at Searcheroo, I would strongly recommend people to connect with you on Twitter, LinkedIn, and now YouTube. You've now started to become a bit more of an influencer. Previously, you've always been building building brands and not done too much for your own personal branding. But I would mainly say if anyone's looking to follow KL, he has ranked successfully 46 different times with online casinos. Now, there's sometimes you could fluke ranking in the online casino space with a one-off site. I'm not saying you can fluke it. still, but you might go and get some decent back links that you didn't realize just how powerful that they was. Um, you might follow the same type of content outline and go and do it, but Carl's done it 46 different times. So, definitely needs to be someone that I would follow in 2025 as being an SEO expert. So, now over to you. You can do and name the next one.

Karl Hudson: I'll name you, but I'm not going to name you just now because otherwise gets a bit sobby, doesn't it? Obviously, we've got like the likes of so for Black Hat SEO, you probably got like Charles Floyd still very very active in the whole Black Hat scene, as well as, you know, Craig Campbell, he's doing quite a few suspect talks and a few devious little tactics and things. So, I'll definitely be hitting them guys up on, you know, the very active social media. I know Charles has a very active Gum Tree account and YouTube account, etc. And so does Craig obviously getting his um one was it one million subscribers recently he just got his trophy for.

James Dooley: Yeah. So he's over he's got over a million subscribers on YouTube. He's scaling. He actually tests a lot more than what people think. So he's continuously obviously on um talks with people like Randy Road um who does a lot of like press releases. um is always speaking to people like Holly Starks who's always looking to break the algorithms and see what you can do with not just web pages but ranking in let's say within Amazon R um ranking images ranking videos and is continuously on a weekby week basis on with Chris Palmer. Chris Palmer is another one to throw out there for local SEO and black art that people should be following. He's very very advanced and he does a very good job when it comes down to testing the algorithms of what is working and what isn't.

Karl Hudson: So obviously you've named a few there. So away from black app, um there's some I just I'd like to name a few people that whenever someone does a list of SEO experts to follow for 2025, the names that would pop up would be people like Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, Ela Solas, Lily Ray. Now these are all good SEOs and initially there was the OGs like Yust Vulk who who set up Yoast SEO. What an amazing WordPress plug-in that it is. But for 2025 SEO experts, you also want to be trying to throw a few, not saying new people, but people that are doing well on affiliate, rank and rents, lead generation, e-commerce, SEO, and there's a few people that don't get a big enough mention. So, I'm going to throw one out there that he has got a massive following on like YouTube, but he's only really kind of followed via the affiliate marketers, it seems. Um, that's Matt Diggity. Matt Diggity needs a bit more praise. He's the founder of um, Chai SEO Conference, the Affiliate Lab, Leadspring. He produces content every single week on his YouTube channel that's cutting edge. So, he's definitely someone I would say is an SEO expert to follow in 2025. He's a very good dancer as well. So, good dancer.

James Dooley: Yeah. Um, is anyone anyone else or your is your throne into the re into the mix?

Karl Hudson: Yeah. So, I would say obviously from an on page SEO perspective, you've got the likes of Kyle Roof. He's very much goes on to I love listening to Kyle Roof's talks. It's always like a bit of a story. It always grabs your attention. Um, Kyle Roof and then you've also got Cory. Now Cory if these two people couldn't be more opposite when it comes to the talks obviously because Cory goes into such a level of detail it is quite hard to you know stay fully focused for the 45 minute session however you know the details have all kind of been confirmed from algorithms and things like this and it's just such high level and definitely worth you know he's a nice guy well he's a sort of a nice guy I wouldn't say I'm not going too far into it but these two guys obviously for on page SEO I believe um Kyle Page Optimizer Pro tool, he's always testing algorithms. He I tend to think Kyle or I see Kyle more as a local um you know he's very very active in like the local side and testing the algorithm that way whereas Cory I would say he's definitely more of a national SEO if not international SEO you know he does different languages and things like that.

James Dooley: Um well what about domains do they who would do so just just just on just on the point of um onpage SEO. So the page optimizer pro is a great tool with regards to edge analysis. Some people think that page optimizer pro is just correlation of content but it's not. It's edge analysis which is that what what needs to be done to win in the SERs. So that that is a great tool. It's got a few features like watchdog. So if ever you're dropping rankings, it can alert you to say there's been an intent shift and you need to be changing part of your content. So that's great. So Kyle's a tester. Kyle's good. I would actually say Kyle's good international as well. I think he's a very good an allround SEO. Um he can do it in local lead genen. He can do it in affiliate space. He can do it in the market the affiliate marketing space. Cororey is unbelievable at the semantics and digging deep in topical maps, topical authority, um doing like semantic triples, talking about the source context of your site, building proper semantic content networks, the macro, the macro and the micro semantics that are needed. So, I'll not blow your mind because like I I'll be honest with you, a lot of it goes above my head. A lot of the niches I'm in, it's not needed. I'm in a lot of local spaces and it's not needed. But I've been in his Google search console and I just see every one of these sites going boom boom boom boom. I've never ever seen a search console like it if I'm being honest. It's so impressive. It's so so and and you know what? He gets a bit of grief in the industry because people say he tries to over complicate things, but he actually doesn't. He's just very very intelligent and he just says the words as the as they should be presented. He doesn't he doesn't add any extra fluff into it. He just tells you this is where the painting comes from and this is the linguistics and the semantics of how you should be doing it. The fact that I'm defining the terms that you know people come up with like make belief terms to try and educate the masses but actually he's just defining the actual terms of what it is.

Karl Hudson: Exactly. that the part that just because I'm partially in content it I just think I just wind him up and say like oh you're making this up but he is very very good I if no one's done the course go and do that course if you want to learn on page because it's by far the best course there is out there from a business growth perspective I would definitely say follow James he's been on a bit of a for the last probably two years been on a bit of a crusade on tackling his own personal brand and and obviously stepping into the limelight a little bit because we're we're very much both had a very similar opinion of you know just work away in the trenches but James is great at business business coaching you know he's probably considered to me more like a brother but I would also say like a business mentor if I have anything business-wise that I need to run by him I often run it by him and I know he's also done a lot for people in the industry um where you know people just come up to him randomly and ask for business advice and stuff like this and is very quick to give it and never really expects anything in return. Um, which is obviously it's great. It's not always great for James, but it is a great um great guy to have on your sort of side.

James Dooley: I appreciate it. Bit I feel a bit sick now though. I think I think another one to follow with regards to business. If you're looking to scale your business, we'll throw into the mix um Mad Singers. Yeah, I think Mad Singers is a great guy. If ever if you've only got four or five staff, you don't need to speak to Mads. But if you start getting to a point where you starting getting above 10, 12, especially 15 members of staff, you're going to start encountering some sort of problems with regards to the culture of the business, the hierarchy, because now you can't deal with more than 50. I'd say you can't even deal with more than 10 members of staff. So you need to then start setting some middle management in place and this is where Mads can help you scale. I don't know if you can expand on it further than that about MADS.

Karl Hudson: Yeah, well we used Mads when when I was involved in the gambling business and it was great for us. You know, he had a team in the Philippines at the time. I think he primarily works now South Africa um which I dare say would probably be even better again. But you know, we never had any issues with the Filipinos. He helped us align, you know, a good working strategy with them. And we had middle tier managers and things for um, you know, keeping an eye on holidays, all of this sort of all the mundane stuff that really you just you have to offhand this because you it you can spend all day focus on all the mundane and the sort of HR side of the business and not actually focus on the growth of your business. So that's yeah I think it's kind of vital when you chat with him and you know a lot of um a lot of SEOs are more entrepreneur um and they don't like speaking out they don't like sharing things so sometimes is that trust issue um but you he helps coach you through that and then you start to understand actually even if I outsource this and it gets done 80% correct or 60% correct it's still not on my shoulders anymore and can then be you know that 60% can start to accumulate very quickly when it's done multiple multiple times whereas when it's on your own back it can be a little bit yeah more daunting.

James Dooley: Yeah for sure. I think with regards to you touched upon um before about the domain aftermarket so where to buy expired domains or age domains. For me the two people that stand out is um Ken and Alex Drew. But in my opinion Alex Drew just has it sewn up. his quality control measures are just on another level. So over at Odys, if anyone's looking for an age domain or an expired domain, check out ODIS. Alex Drew has done an amazing job. What's quite interesting is the amount of people that shares a private mastermind with Alex Drew and then comes to me and say, "Wow, Alex Drew is so much more than just a domain guy." cuz I used to think years ago he was just a domain guy, but he's super intelligent in business as well. He's somebody else that understands like just like basic things for business people to understand, but so many people don't seem to get it right like lifetime value, average transactional value, sales funnels, afterare sales, and just things like that of what he just does to perfection. So, he's definitely an SEO expert that I would recommend to follow in 2025. Mainly because if you're looking to potentially build a new site or get an age domain, if you can get an age domain, it's like you're going having a 100 meter sprint, but you're getting a 60 meter head start and it's just going to give you a better chance to go and win that race and get yourself to number one. And that's where I think age domains, even expired domains, as long as they've got a clean backlink profile and it's relevant to what you want to build the site out for, age domains and expired domains still work great. Forget what Google leak tells you. Trust me, they're still working very, very well. I would say the one other guy that we probably should mention, then we might as well reel off a whole bunch of them because there is a lot to follow. Um, obviously it's a big industry. Um, I would say for website recovery, big shout out to Kasra, you know, he often goes on stage, he talks about website recoveries. We know he's recovered quite a few websites with, you know, our brands that we work together on. Um, so yeah, Kazra's top guy and I believe he's just started his own sort of mentorship group where you can pay monthly for and things like this and you get little bits of knowledge from him and weekly webinars and various different experts coming in on there. Um so yeah top guy for website recovery as well.

Karl Hudson: Yeah I think website recovery is so important nowadays. I think the amount of penalties that people are getting manual action penalties for thin content for pure spam for unnatural link penalties. Now, obviously the big one for us is unnatural link penalties is kind of where we excel in because we own backlink doctor and we're able to do the disavows and be able to get people out of an unnatural links penalty and then follow up on the disavow to do a link rejuvenation pack which I also think if anyone ever gets an unnatural links penalty the most important part to lift afterwards. If you don't do this, it's it's like you're having a heart attack and the first meal you go back to, you're going getting a massive big double cheeseburger. You've got to go and get some salad and eat healthy, right? So, make certain you're looking at that link rejuvenation pack afterwards. If you don't know how you're doing an unnatural links penalty, leave it to the experts. There's a lot of moving parts than just doing the disavow. You need to be outreaching to your existing backlink profile. And this is why using somebody like Kazra that does it day in day out and uses our team to be able to implement what's needed. That's for an unnatural links penalty. But the next big one, so many people have been hit with the HCU update, the helpful content update. Now, there's not many if any that have recovered from it. But one thing that I would say about any of these experts that we've mentioned is if you go and ask them what the number one thing is that you would ask you what you would give advice to your 16-year-old self again, it would be to network at a younger age. Go and get yourself in the inner circles to the people that are testing and that are doing well within Google algorithms or Bing algorithms or YouTube algorithms because they're the ones who can start telling you what's working. Not any of the myths or not any of the information that was shared five 10 years ago. These are people testing today. So the networking with the SEO experts that we've got in this list of 2025 is also very very important.

James Dooley: I I would also say on that front is actually do some of the tests yourself as well. So you can contribute in these groups because you know we do do a lot of networking and often you go in and you you see people come in and they're only there to try and take knowledge and you get more respect out of these groups and better connections if you're actually able to give knowledge as well.

Karl Hudson: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it is expensive for people to be running their own test. But yeah, if they if you can enter a room and be sharing value, guess what? You're going to get invited back to the room with those people. If you sit there and don't say anything and don't share any knowledge, I can pretty much guarantee you, you won't be back invited in that mastermind again. You'll get booted out. And a mastermind is there for everyone to try and level up. You need to come with some sort of knowledge. So, if you're not at that stage yet, go and do everyone's courses. Go and try to learn from what blogs they're doing and the Twitter and the LinkedIn and the YouTube. And then hopefully in time once you start earning some money, you can start running some other websites where you're running certain tests and pushing the boundaries of what can work and what can't.

James Dooley: So, obviously, I'd like to throw your name in though, Carlson, as well. With regards to website recovery, you've recovered a lot of sites. So, I know I've already thrown you in there thing, but as an SEO expert to follow in 2025, if someone's looking for website recovery, I'd definitely say um to get you. But mentioning a few other names because I've got a list here on on on my computer. I've got Steve Tough, SEO Notebook. If anyone's not subscribed to SEO notebook, where have you been hiding? Steve every single week goes and does a note and it's packed full of knowledge bombs. So head on over there, get subscribing. It's completely for free. seen notebook.com. Steve Toto is another great guy who's testing. He's definitely an SEO expert that I'd throw out there to follow in 2025.

Karl Hudson: I would say Kevin Indig. Yeah, is a guy that, you know, especially from an e-commerce um SEO perspective, you know, he's a guy that you want to follow. He goes really in depth. He's very active on his LinkedIn more than anything else, but he goes very ind depth on just general top level knowledge of e-commerce, you know, how things are running efficiently, what they could be doing better, etc.

James Dooley: Yeah. And then you've got others like Barry Schwarz, um, who more reporter, journalist, um, on SEO type blogs. You've got Cyrus Sheepard. Um, used to be a Google quality raator guid raider and he was the SEO strategist at Moz when he used to work alongside Ran Fishkin. You've got Gail Britain from Authority Hackers. Um, they do a lot of testing. They've got a a very lively community in there where people are always testing things out. So I would probably say Ferry as well, you know, Ferry Kazan.

Karl Hudson: Ferry for digital PR like probably one of the best in the industry. You know, he's very much put digital PR in the limelight. Made it very easy if you wanted to try and do it yourself. You know, he's he explain he literally gives you all the tools you want or need, answers all your questions to go do it yourself. He's very open and honest like that. Um, and some of the links in some of the videos and people have probably seen videos by him like funny little sketch videos and things that just yeah translates day in day out.

James Dooley: I think if you're mentioning digital PR I think you you're going to have to mention then Carrie Rose at Rise at 7. Um she's made like what Ferry said to me was um Carrie Rose has made digital PR sexy for SEOs and then when he says he's industrialized it all what he meant is he's made it cheap is being able to put tools together and make it cheaper because all those SEOs are right tight gets we want it as cheap as possible. So Carrie Rose is a more of a premium. She'll go out of her way and do bespoke kind of campaign. Amazing the digital PR campaigns of what she can put together. Very very good at like expert commentary almost like link inserts into existing articles um of what you can do. Scales it out. Does a lot for like in the eye gaming sector and stuff like that. But yeah, he's a he's he's the most creative entrepreneur I have ever met. He's definitely someone to follow specifically for digital PR in 2025.

Karl Hudson: One one or two others to um throw out there like Spencer. He's got Link Whisper, Niche Pursuits. He's a great guy. Um Link Whisper is a great tool. Um and then another one I throw out there is um Jason Barard, the brand SER guy. So very much about knowledge panels. Cali cube is an amazing tool that can help you get knowledge panels as long as you if long as you can connect the dots with regards to you as being an entity and pull everything together with like schema. It can also tell you where you're missing to be you like go and do a podcast on this specific podcast. go and get yourself as being an author profile on entrepreneur.com or on Forbes or inc.com or whatever it is that might be needed specifically for your knowledge panel. So, he's very very good at branding and controlling your brand ser.

James Dooley: Awesome. I think a few more just to mention, you know, we've got a few other businesses and Julian Goldie, absolute awesome guy, bit of a OG in the industry, just not um I guess he's just not as well known as the others, but he's definitely been doing a hell of a lot of brand, especially since the dawn of VI, you know, he's very pretty much the chatbt guy when it came to SEO. He's one of the first in there, but absolutely, if you ever get the pleasure of meeting him, he's an absolute awesome guy. his processes are slick, like everything's just processed to a tea and yeah, his back end SOPs are great. And then a guy who I think doesn't get a lot of mentions as well is probably Leo or Lefarius. Now, anyone who's met him in the top end circles, very much, you know, absolutely love him because he's a very, very cool pragmatic mind, you know, probably one of the best devs you can have for automations, things like this. Um but he just does not he's a typical dev mindset and you know you try to bring him out of his closet a little bit but he likes to be sat back on his computer just programming type thing. Um but yeah top top guy terrible at massages though.

Karl Hudson: Yeah the um on terms of you two mentioned so Julian gold very very like you said very good at automation very good at leveraging artificial intelligence. So for anyone that's going into 2025, you need to be looking at automation and artificial intelligence. Julian Gold is definitely someone that you want to be following for that. And then the fairy Sulas um or Leo as a lot of people call him. I can't stand him. I hate him. No, I'm only messing. I've got um I've got several businesses with Leo. He's a cool guy. He's very very good at automation as well. Um very good Python developer. understands wants to automate everything at times the I'm like he can't automate that and he just automates making my tea or brushing my teeth or any you know what I mean can automate anything that guy so no he's another like goes under the radar but again if you're wanting certain things to be set up Leo is your guy for that like he's helped me no end in scaling the backends out with regards to some of the brands and stuff like that that we've set up I think what we'll do now cuz I I know the video is going harder because there's obviously you can see we know quite a lot of people and we know what they do, how but how they can benefit you. But what we'll probably do is just very quickly name some that we haven't mentioned.

James Dooley: Um so Cyrus Shepard obviously top guy. I believe you've met him at a few conferences before James. Um Tim Solo obviously age refs um owner another nice guy and worth knowing. Um, Brian Dean, although probably a little bit more removed nowadays since the Samrush purchase, he's still got exploring topics, which is a great tool um for new trending kind of keywords. That's a good tool. So, Brian Dean's definitely someone to look out for on trending topics and I think that's about it. Um, we know some we've got we've got certain others like Nathan Gotch is a great guy. Um, so he's another one to throw out there. um Jason Hennessy. Um but he's very very specific to like law firm SEO. So he'll only do SEO for lawyers. So there is plenty of others we could start going out there. But like you said, we're just going to end up naming hundreds of people that that's out there.

Karl Hudson: Three hours later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's that's our list for who we think are the best SEO experts to follow in 2025. Now, I'm sure we have missed some off. So, you let us know. Leave a comment in the comment section. Let us know who you think that we've missed off that we might not even know about to be fair who's absolutely crushing it on search engine optimization because then it could be someone who we need to understand that we need to be following for SEO specifically in 2025 and beyond.