After a rather unsuccessful career as a professional musician, Tom began building websites while still studying in the 90s (computer science, English and German). Early in his career, Tom led the development of search engines including Lycos, HotBot and Fireball. After the rollout of the European search engine Seekport, he worked for Ask.com as Director International Search Products before becoming Director of Search at uniquedigital in Hamburg. From 2011 to 2016, Tom worked at Google, heading the sales efforts for Enterprise Analytics products in DACH and CEE. From 2017 to 2018, he was the Director Data and Analytics at Interone and headed bbdo’s Data Academy. Today, he is Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Euler Hermes.
Tom is also author of the first German book on Web 2.0, and has also published on SEO, professional blogging and mobile web. He is a certified project manager (PMP) of the Project Management Institute and a lecturer at HAW Hamburg.

Matthew Brown is focused on ensuring SEOmoz products help customers stay on top of marketing analytics. The search world evolves at lightning speed, and Matthew knows that listening to customer challenges and iterating quickly is the key to staying ahead of the online marketing curve.

His previous venture was AudienceWise, acquired by SEOmoz in 2012. AudienceWise specialized in search engine optimization for publishers and news sites, data-driven marketing, and semantic web strategy. He has worked with some of the most complex sites on the web, including NYTimes.com, About.com, American City Business Journals, Sports Illustrated, Golf.com, United Press International, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portfolio.com, University of Phoenix, ESPN.com and ToysRus.com.

Prior to launching AudienceWise, Matthew was Director of Search Strategy for the New York Times Company from 2005-2010. His area of focus was driving the research and technology side of the search marketing effort for NYTimes.com and The Boston Globe (Boston.com). After joining the New York Times Co, his team helped exponentially grow search traffic to the newspaper's websites.

In his spare time, he serves on the Advisory Board of SEMPDX: Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland, where he holds a black belt in knowing where to eat and drink at any time of the day or night.

Pascal is managing partner of cogito ergo GmbH & Co. KG. He is publisher and author of q48.de, a German online marketing and e-business blog for online executives eager to discuss. 

His focus is primarily on online business models and their optimization, so he helps various companies and well-known brands to improve their ROI within the entire Internet activities. He also works as a consultant for various companies, helping them to build in-house e-commerce expertise. As an investor he supports start-ups with innovative business models in the area of online and media.

Prior to his step into self-employment with cogito ergo, he spent three years at FriendScout24 as Head of Business Development, responsible for the entire online marketing area at FiendScout24. Previously, he was responsible for business development in the Consumer Generated Media and User Tracking divisions at FOCUS Digital AG (now TOMORROW FOCUS AG), where he held the position of Chief Executive Officer.

Pascal studied computer science and economics at the Technical University of Munich, then obtained a BAW diploma in communications and finally received a bac. Phil. from the The Munich School of Philosophy.

Jens Fauldrath is founder and managing director of get:traction GmbH. He supports his clients in the development, implementation and realisation of their SEO strategy. Prior to that, he managed takevalue Consulting GmbH from 2012-2016. From 2008 to 2012 he also built up and led the SEO team of Deutsche Telekom AG P&I. Jens is a lecturer in search engine marketing at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and a member of the SEO expert advisory board and the executive board of the BVDW's Search focus group. He also runs the German podcast network for online marketing podcasts, www.termfrequenz.de There he moderates the podcast SEO House on current topics in strategic SEO.

Brad Geddes is a co-founder of AdAlysis, an ad testing & recommendation platform. Brad is the author of Advanced Google AdWords, the most advanced book ever written about Google's advertising program.

Brad has worked in PPC since 1998, and over those years he was worked with companies who manage tens of thousands of small PPC accounts and other companies who spend millions on marketing each month. His experience ranges from owning his own agency, to managing a boutique agency, to overseeing programs that were official resellers of Google and Microsoft. Some brands he has worked with include: Amazon, Yahoo, Google, YellowPages.com, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Salesforce.

One of his trademarks has been demystifying the complicated aspects of SEM. Not one to hold secrets, Brad prefers to educate his readers on the various aspects of crafting successful marketing campaigns to ensure the success for all parties involved.

Timon Hartung is CEO of apex Traffic. Previously he was Managing Director DNTX at Team Internet AG and CTO at 121WATT where he advised international and national companies on their online marketing strategies and technical solutions.

Starting as a PHP and Java software engineer, he has been involved in online marketing and web project visibility for 8 years. One of his other positions was Head of Online Marketing at XING subsidiary amiando, where he was responsible for SEO, SEA and Social Media.

Markus Hövener is founder and Head of SEO of Bloofusion (www.bloofusion.de), an online marketing agency specializing in SEO and SEA. As managing partner of Bloofusion Germany he is responsible for all activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Markus Hövener is editor-in-chief of the magazine suchradar (www.suchradar.de), active SEO blogger (blog.bloofusion.de) and has his own podcast Search Camp (www.searchcamp.de). He is also the author of two books („International SEO“ und „SEO - Die neuen Regeln“) as well as many articles and studies and speaks at many online marketing conferences (SMX, SEO Day, SEO Campixx, SEOkomm, Search Conference, iico, ...).

Before joining Bloofusion, he developed some of the first search engines in Europe before focusing on search engine optimization in 2001 and founding Bloofusion in California in 2002.

Alexander Holl, born in 1964, is founder and managing director of 121WATT , which focuses on seminars on online marketing, SEO and Google AdWords in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin. More than 20 years Internet and 15 years search machine marketing & Web analysis coin the CV of the learned business economist. In this time Holl was among other things managing director kalaydo.de, in the European management of Yahoo! and in responsible positions with AltaVista and Cable & Wireless. Alexander Holl is a member of the SEO expert council of the BVDW and teaches online marketing and search engine optimization at Steinbeis University. Holl is also a Google Analytics consultant at the Google Partner Academy. 

Jake Hubert is a Business Product Manager at Google Inc, based in Mountain View California, where he’s worked since 2007. As a member of the Search product team, his focus areas are Authorship, Google Trends and transparency. Among other initiatives, he helped lead the launch of keyword-based search notices in China and regular publication of hundreds of algorithm changes.

Before joining the product team, Jake worked in communications and public affairs, where he helped launch a number of initiatives including Google Instant, Realtime Search, YouTube automatic captions, Social Search, Google Fiber, and others. Jake graduated from UC Berkeley as valedictorian of the political science department, with a second major in legal studies.

Karl Kratz has been developing holistic online marketing strategies for his readers and clients since 1996. The entrepreneur founded and developed several companies and many successful medium-sized brands. In 2009 Karl Kratz retired from the operative business and has been looking after his online marketing readership even more intensively ever since.

He specializes in potential development and conversion optimization through the use of deconstructivist strategies.

Malte Landwehr is a Product Marketing Manager at Searchmetrics. He studied computer science and cofounded the SEO agency seoFactory in Münster and on Crete, where he was head of SEO and responsible for building the SEO team. At the University of Muenster, Malte was involved in research projects with/for IBM and Vodafone in the areas of social network analysis and social media analytics. After that he worked as a project manager and digital strategy consultant at a management consultancy in Düsseldorf.
Searchmetrics is a platform that enables small companies and large enterprises alike to develop, execute and measure a data-driven search and content marketing strategy.

David Mihm is the Director of Local Search Strategy at SEOmoz. As a co-founder of the Local University conference series, he is first and foremost an advocate for sustainable digital marketing techniques for small businesses. David writes frequently about Local Search on the SEOmoz Blog. His Local Search Ranking Factors survey is among the most important studies of Local Search Engine Optimization. David also speaks regularly about Local Search Marketing at the Search Marketing Expo and Search Engine Strategies conference series, and he is a former contributor to Search Engine Land.

Johannes joined Google in 2007 and works as a Webmaster Trends Analyst with Google Zürich. He works closely with the teams Teams Webmaster Central, Sitemaps and Search Quality and looks after the English speaking Google Webmaster Help discussion forums.

Michael Praetorius, geboren 1978 in München ist Publizist, Berater und Unternehmer.

Gemeinsam mit seinem Auftraggebern entwickelt Praetorius digitale Medienkonzepte, Vermarktungsmodelle und digitale Geschäftsmodelle.

Zudem unterrichtet Michael Praetorius als Dozent für Journalismus, Medienmanagement, Online-Marketing und Social Media bei unterschiedlichen Bildungseinrichtungen. An der Bayerischen Akademie für Werbung war Michael Praetorius bis 2016 Fachbeirat für Digital Media Management und Lehrgangsleiter für Digitalmarketing. Zudem ist Michael Praetorius langjähriger TV- und Hörfunkjournalist. Bei Antenne Bayern leitete Michael Praetorius die Online- und New Business-Abteilung und war als Chef vom Dienst und Sprecher in den Nachrichten zu hören. 
Heute publiziert Michael Praetorius auf dieser Website und in mehreren Social Media Formaten bzw. YouTube Kanälen - darunter  die Münchner Isarrunde und die Kreativ Lounge des MIZ Babelsberg.
Offene Seminare zum Thema YouTube Marketing und Social Media Marketing mit Michael Praetorius gibt es bei 121Watt.

As founder & CEO of smec - Smarter Ecommerce GmbH and creator of Whoop! - a specialized bid management software for Google Shopping Ads - he has been active in e-commerce and PPC marketing for more than a decade. He has been an entrepreneur since before finishing university and has been involved in several startups. Jan is a regular speaker at national and international conferences.

Kai Radanitsch is an eBusiness consultant with a degree in IT. For over 12 years he's supported companies such as Red Bull, Nokia, T-Mobile, Renault with their eBusiness strategy.

The Profit-Tuning model came into being after many years of usability testing, both in business and the world of academia, and through experience gained from over 500 web projects. It serves as an orientation grid for decision makers in the field of eBusiness and puts the creation of value at the centre of all advertising activities.

Over the past 13 years, Wil Reynolds has dedicated himself to doing two things well: driving traffic to sites from search engines and analyzing the impact that traffic has on the bottom line of companies. Wil’s career began at a web marketing agency in 1999, where he spearheaded the SEO strategies for companies like Barnes & Noble, Disney, Harman Kardon, Debeers, Doubleclick, Hotjobs, and Mercedes Benz USA. For the last 6 years, Wil and the team of search professionals at SEER Interactive have been assisting clients in maximizing their visibility and sales using search engines in both SEO and SEM. You can catch Wil speaking with anyone who wants to learn about search, whether it is in a coffee shop or a major conference, it just runs through the veins! His goal at every speaking engagement is simple: Make sure everyone walks out with at least 1 new piece of information or perspective on an SEO topic.

Manny Rivas is an online marketing account manager at aimClear®. His areas of expertise include blogging, online journalism, demographic research and all-things YouTube. In addition to writing for aimClear blog, Manny is a contributor to SearchEngineWatch. He has spoken about YouTube, Facebook & Linkedin at national and international industry conferences, and recent university speaking engagements include University of Minnesota,College of St. Scholastica and University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.

Manny's client work includes YouTube production for Siemens, multiple (cherished) American food brands, video contest production for the academic sector of The Washington Post company, and a variety of both local and international companies ranging from hospitals to .edu sites, B2B and travel.

As Head of SEM, Martin Röttgerding is in charge of search engine advertising at Bloofusion, an online marketing agency specializing in SEO and SEM. He is responsible for all SEM activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In addition, the business information scientist researches in the field of search engine advertising, in particular Google AdWords. On the one hand, he pursues theoretical questions such as the functionality of quality factors, on the other hand, he also continues to work on one or the other campaign and tests the subtleties and limits of the AdWords system. He regularly writes about new findings, tips and current developments in the search radar, the Internet captain blog and the professional blog "PPC Epiphany".

Martin Schirmbacher studied law in Berlin and London and has been a lawyer with HÄRTING Rechtsanwälte in Berlin since 2005. He advises companies in many areas of technology and, for example, accompanies software companies in contract negotiations, examines online business concepts, advises on the introduction of innovative forms of online advertising and shows ways to the legally secure business ideas. Schirmbacher regularly publishes in relevant trade journals and online in search radars, at OnPage.org and Absolit on various online advertising topics. His practical handbook "Online-Marketing- und Social Media Recht" has just been published in a new edition. Further information is available here: www.online-marketing-recht.de

Dominik Schwarz is Chief Inbound Officer at HomeToGo, the search engine for vacation rentals and holiday apartments. The internationally operating company is one of the fastest-growing start-ups in Germany (Gründerszene). The Berlin-based SEO team is winner of the SMX Advanced Seattle "In-house Team of the Year" award 2018 as well as the "Organic Team of the Year" and "Chair's Selection" (THE DRUM).

Previously, Schwarz worked at KAYAK, a flight and hotel comparison company, where he oversaw more than 30 local US-based markets as Director SEO Europe. Schwarz is publisher of the In-House SEO platform VERTICALINHOUSE (DE). He lives and works in Berlin.

Dr. Siddharth Shah, director of business analytics for Adobe’s Digital Marketing Business, and his team oversee the performance and strategic development of its client accounts. He has a background in algorithm development and statistics which he formerly used to push biomedical imaging boundaries and now uses it to enhance the performance of his clients’ campaigns. Although Dr. Shah has a penchant for bad nerdy one-liners ("Don’t drink and derive, alcohol and algebra don’t mix"), he is always interested in explaining complex mathematical methods in simple, elegant ways to business audiences. When he is not working with business models (which he finds more beautiful than super-models), he can be found hanging off cliffs in some of California's National parks. Previously, Dr. Shah was director of business analytics at Efficient Frontier, which Adobe acquired in January 2012. He has a double masters and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Widely considered a leading “search engine guru,” Danny Sullivan has been helping webmasters, marketers and everyday web users understand how search engines work for over a decade.

Danny’s expertise about search engines is often sought by the media, and he has been quoted in places like The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker and Newsweek and ABC’s Nightline.

Danny began covering search engines in late 1995, when he undertook a study of how they indexed web pages. The results were published online as “A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines,” a pioneering effort to answer the many questions site designers and Internet publicists had about search engines.

The positive reaction from both marketers and general search engine users caused Danny to expand the guide into Search Engine Watch, where he served as editor-in-chief through November 2006. Now he heads up Search Engine Land as editor-in-chief, taking it into the next generation of search coverage. Danny also serves as Third Door Media’s chief content officer.

Marcus Tandler, also known as "Mediadonis", is co-founder and co-managing director of RYTE (formerly OnPage.org), a multiple award-winning software for sustainable website quality management. Marcus loves SEO and has been active in SEO since 1998. With the launch of Google in Germany in 2000, he grew up with Google and its search algorithm. He is a frequent speaker at conferences around the globe such as TEDx, LeWeb, The Next Web, SMX and O´Reilly´s web2.0expo. In addition, he has also given lectures at in-house events of large corporations such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Marcus holds a master's degree from the University of Augsburg and a diploma in media marketing from the Bavarian Academy for Advertising and Marketing in Munich. Today he is a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, the University of Applied Sciences Munich and the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg. In April 2017 Marcus was awarded "European Search Personality of the Year" at the European Search Awards in Krakow.

Marcus Tober studied computer science in Berlin. During his study he developed the well-known SEO platform linkvendor.com in early 2005. At the same time he built the largest online greeting cards platform in Germany with millions of visitors every month. Because of his passion to SEO he decided to focus on Searchmetrics and its Enterprise SEO platform and sold the Ecards and more GmbH in 2008 to the largest European company builder Rocket Internet. Today Searchmetrics is a leader in Enterprise Search Analytics solutions with more than 180 employees and offices in Berlin, San Mateo, London and Paris. Searchmetrics mission is to deliver the knowledge and the platform to successfully increase companies organic and social search traffic. Companies like Siemens, ebay, Verizon, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, T-Mobile, Symantec and Lufthansa trust Searchmetrics.

Julius van de Laar is a digital media strategist and communications expert with strong campaigning experience.

He consults for politicians and political parties, non-governmental organizations and private sector corporations by providing strategic advice as they develop strategies to achieve their goals: win elections, growing and engaging their audience and shaping public opinion.

During the 2012 US Presidential election, Julius van de Laar served on President Obama's winning presidential campaign as regional GOTV director in the battleground state of Ohio. There, he focused on targeting voters and gaining supporters by combining proven campaigning strategies with the latest new media and big data tactics. In 2007 and 2008 he worked for Obama for America in nearly a dozen states and served as Missouri Youth Vote director.

Since then, van de Laar has served as a senior strategist to Germany's Social Democratic Party as well as other parties and candidates across Europe. He has consulted for major NGO's including Amnesty International, Change.org, Greenpeace, WWF and Avaaz.org, providing strategic communications advice. Van de Laar is a frequent TV and radio pundit, providing analysis on current political events, campaigning and digital communications. He lectures at conferences and universities, gives workshops and trainings on campaigning and social media and advises politicians and business leaders on strategic communications.

In 2002 Evert Veldhuijzen booked his first search engine advertisement: “Holiday” was the keyword, AltaVista was the search engine. Evert has been passionate about digital marketing ever since. Being an internationally recognized expert in the field of search engine marketing, Evert regularly speaks at conferences and blogs for State of Digital (www.stateofdigital.com). Evert began his career in 1992 during his studies of law in Groningen (The Netherlands). He built his first company in 1999 in Italy: A web design agency for tourism companies.
In 2001 he moved to Berlin and specialized in digital marketing. He then began to manage search engine marketing campaigns for international clients with his company Netlead. Due to his international focus (Evert speaks five languages fluently) he has worked on European SEO and SEA campaigns for brands such as BMW, Microsoft, MasterCard, Symantec, Deutsche Telekom, KLM and Epson within the past 15 years. In the summer of 2015 Netlead and three other companies were merged into The Reach Group. The company offers user centered performance marketing across all channels, as well as smartly used reach and carefully balanced technology all along the customer journey. As Managing Partner at The Reach Group Evert is responsible for the departments Search, Social Media & Administration.

Fili Wiese is a renowned technical SEO expert, ex-Google engineer and was a senior technical lead in the Google Search Quality team. At SearchBrothers.com he offers SEO consulting services with SEO audits, SEO workshops and successfully recovers websites from Google penalties.

Oliver Zenglein is managing director at SEM Boutique. Before that, the business economist (Diplom-Betriebswirt (FH)) and advertising merchant managed the online marketing of windeln.de, was responsible for the worldwide online marketing of the dating agency be2 and worked as online marketing manager at Scout24.

Oliver has been giving Google Ads seminars for professionals at 121WATT since 2009 and is blogging at http://sem-boutique.de/magazin.