Simo Ahava is a recognized expert on customizing web analytics and tag management solutions to improve the entire “life cycle” of data collection, processing, and reporting. His main areas of expertise lie with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, and Google has appointed him as a Google Developer Expert in these fields. He is especially interested in the interface between marketing and development, and his main focus is on increasing awareness, skills, and critical thinking around data.

Simo is a partner and co-founder at 8-bit-sheep. He also writes a popular blog on all things Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager development at www.simoahava.com. An experienced speaker and prolific blogger, Simo can be seen and heard in conferences, product forums, support communities, and developer meet-ups alike.

After launching Distilled's R&D team, Tom now runs the product team at SearchPilot (formerly DistilledODN), an SEO split-testing platform that is helping bring about a new era of data-driven SEO. Tom has over 20 years experience building websites, and does a lot of research around technology trends and the future of search. He works with the Distilled & SearchPilot teams to try and forecast the impact those trends will have on SEO and Digital Marketing.

With over a decade in performance online marketing, Steffen started in SEO back in 2009. Having studied psychology at university, he soon became fascinated with marketing technology and how it can help us to understand a user’s decision-making process and patterns of behaviour. This combination of his passions for data, psychology and marketing saw Steffen delve into the world of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and digital analytics. He has been instrumental in building up these departments at two leading performance marketing agencies, increasing the percentage of winning A/B tests by 30% at his last company.

After joining Peak Ace and spearheading the development of its MarTech department, Steffen now works closely with Peak Ace’s other teams to optimise sales funnels for national and international brands.      

He has also shared his knowledge and expertise at conferences, giving talks on marketing technology at SEACamp events in Jena and Hannover. Currently Steffen is looking forward to further investigating how data and psychology can be used to optimise sales funnels and websites in the future.

Matt has been working in Search for well over a decade, and is the co-founder of Aira - a UK based digital marketing agency. With a strong understanding of the more technical side of things - focusing on SEO, PPC and Analytics - he loves nothing more than hacking some code together (which usually involves some copy/paste from Stack Overflow), pulling data from an API, or using Tagman to do something that his family would never understand.

Rachel is a Technical SEO Consultant at Builtvisible who spends her time researching and communicating the latest developments in search, as well as working with clients on maximising the organic performance of their websites.

Her origins were in the creative space, but her interest in the technical side of SEO was sparked early on in her career. She has since been on a journey to research everything technical with a focus on crawling, indexing and web performance, while maintaining a keen interest in the written word, design and user experience.

Rachel is an international conference speaker, having spoken at events including BrightonSEO and SMX, and is also a regular columnist for Search Engine Journal. She also previously managed the production of training courses, white papers and research pieces for DeepCrawl.

Dana is President & Partner at Kick Point, where she helps people and teams do better marketing. After working with clients of all sizes for the last 19 years, Dana knows that our industry has an accountability problem. She’s now teaching people how to better communicate how they bring value, and then deliver that value to their organizations. Dana speaks at conferences around the world about reporting and analytics, SEO, and brand building. In her spare time, Dana is the weekly technology columnist on CBC Edmonton AM. She also enjoys drinking fancy beer and yelling at football players.

While others wanted to become professional footballers, Julian has always been fascinated by online marketing. Although he still studied history and archaeology, he started blogging on www.Seokratie.de in 2007 and turned his passion into his profession. Over time, the blog became an online marketing agency. Today, the Munich-based agency employs around 20 people in the fields of SEO, SEA, content marketing, social media and usability.

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.

For already twenty years Stefan Fischländer has been advising clients with a focus in technical and strategic SEO. The graduated physicist founded together with partners from the publishing industry the German web search engine Neomo in 2004, which has been sold at the end of 2007. With his many years of theoretical background and his practical experience, he now supports the SEO tool TermLabs.io as a tech-evangelist and is a consultant for the digital agency Gipfelstolz in Passau, which he co-founded in 2010. He worked for several well-known companies, such as the Heinrich Bauer Verlag, the Yellow Pages and the soccer portal fupa.net. Stefan also speaks regularly at German SEO conferences and publishes articles in renowned specialist media. https://fischerlaender.de/

Christian Frei works as Project Manager Digital Marketing at the international full-service digital agency Dept and is responsible for a portfolio of renowned Swiss companies. Christian supports his clients in all aspects of search engine advertising with a lot of passion and commitment. He is particularly interested in feeds and automation. Apart from work, his heart beats for football, his second great passion.

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.

As founder and owner of Büro für gute Websites and TechnicalSEO.de, André Goldmann is an expert in online-marketing, UX/UI- and SEO with 20 years of industry experience. He developed and marketed his first website at the age of 14. Among other things, he worked for Unister GmbH and worked for several web and advertising agencies as an in-house SEO and consultant. From 2012 to 2017 he was CTO and COO of 121WATT GmbH.

André mainly supports his clients with SEO audits, Google Analytics and Conversion Rate audits as well as UX and Landingpage audits to optimize their new and existing websites. He is also a mentor for online marketers and SEOs of mid-sized companies.
As a lecturer at Steinbeis University, he has held more than 80 seminars on website usability and experience, online marketing, advanced SEO and technical SEO as part of the Certified Digital Marketing Manager (SHB) training program.

Bastian Grimm is the Director of Organic Search at Peak Ace and a renowned expert in large-scale, international SEO – managing sites of almost any size in highly competitive industries. 

Always eager to expand his knowledge, with more than 15 years’ experience in online marketing, technical and global SEO, Bastian currently oversees Peak Ace’s search engine optimisation as well as content marketing initiatives. 

Striving for efficiency is one of Bastian Grimm’s key guiding principles. It has shaped his entire career. His belief that understanding a target market means not only getting to grips with the language, but also the culture, has held him in good stead. Bastian leads a thriving team of expert native speakers, able to serve clients in 20+ languages, and the results speak for themselves.

A full-service performance marketing agency with a focus on “all things search,” Peak Ace has a flair for over-achieving. Having been named a FOCUS growth champion for multiple years in a row, as well as scooping up trophies at both the European Search and Drum Search Awards, Bastian is proud to lead such an innovative, ever-expanding company. His secret? Dynamic, decisive processes, a phenomenal team and going to bed with inbox zero.

Christopher Gutknecht is Head of Performance Marketing at Bergzeit GmbH. Prior to that he was Head of Online Marketing at the Munich eCommerce agency norisk GmbH. He describes himself as a “SEA child” – his heart has been in this area since 2008. After a stopover at intelliAd, he and his team have been supporting shop customers in the area of performance marketing since 2013 and are passionate about developing new tools and innovations in the area of SEA automation so that team and customers can concentrate more on the actual mental work.

Robin Heintze is managing director of the online marketing specialist morefire. The 80-person international team of sympathetic specialists uses all relevant channels in online marketing to achieve sustainable growth for customers. The interdisciplinary teams deliver the strategy and the interlocking implementation of several channels from a single source. Customers include B2B and B2C companies from many different industries and countries. SEO, SEA, content marketing, social media, display, marketing automation and web analysis are used to win new customers for the customers. Current online marketing know how from the experts can be found on the agency blog more-fire.com/blog

Markus Hövener is founder and Head of SEO of the online marketing agency Bloofusion (www.bloofusion.de). As managing partner of Bloofusion Germany he is responsible for all activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Markus Hövener is also a book author (including "International SEO"), writes many articles for the Bloofusion Blog, editor-in-chief of the magazine suchradar, podcaster ("Search Camp" and "Alles auf Start"), shares knowledge (especially on www.omcampus.de) and appears as a speaker at many conferences.

Since 2011 Philipp Klöckner focuses on mentorship for startups and search consultancy to share his experience in search marketing, comparison shopping und business intelligence. As an independent consultant and angel investor he's helping portfolio companies of Berlin's Rocket Internet AG, publishing houses and eCommerce giants worldwide. Before starting his consultancy business, Philipp has been working 6 years at Germany's market leading comparison search engine Idealo.de

Jana Lavrov is Head of Editorial SEO at ZEIT ONLINE. Her focus is an editorial search engine optimization. Since 2014, she has been in charge of the editorial SEO department in the Berlin newsroom of the online news portal, where she built up the SEO team and integrated search engine optimization into the editorial workflows. Previously, Jana worked as a freelance writer for radio, print and television, did press and public relations work for internet start-ups and volunteered in film and television productions. 

Having joined SIXT at the end of 2018 as Senior Professional SEO, one of my areas of expertise is local SEO. I love looking deeply into user intent and am passionate about ensuring a smooth and engaging user experience as well as sharing my work and knowledge with my colleagues.

Philipp Mainka has 10 years of experience in PPC and is Head of Online Marketing at zooplus AG, an online retailer of pet food and supplies with headquarter in Munich.

Having worked in startups and as well corporate environments, he has seen tons of accounts and been down many rabbit holes. His specific area of expertise is retail PPC and automation of campaign management processes, mainly with the Google Cloud. Philipp has spoken at several conferences such as Hero Conf London, PPC Masters Berlin and SEA Camp Jena.

André Morys is founder and CEO of Web Arts AG, a German based company specialising in conversion optimisation. André is a contributing author for several German ecommerce magazines and is a blogger and publisher of konversionskraft.de. His work focuses on neurosciences and behavioural economics to increase the persuability of ecommerce systems.

Ivana Nikic has a foot in all areas of online marketing, but SEA has been her focus for over 5 years. In her role as Teamlead SEA at the eCommerce agency norisk Group, she specializes in the retail sector. She supports customers who are in the heart of Munich and customers who have over 50 accounts internationally and therefore knows every level of complexity. Performance marketing, Google shopping, automation and ads scripts are not just a term for her, but pure passion, which she shares as a speaker at SEA Expert Day, SEACamp in Jena and Hanover and also here at SMX in Munich. She also loves dogs.

Lars Osthoff is Head of SEO at 1&1 IONOS SE with a team of 11 in-house SEOs and is responsible for the international sales of all products in 9 country shops via Organic Search. In addition, his team operates two high-reach content portals, which reach millions of users in over 150 countries. Because of his academic background, Lars is enthusiastic about very different thematic disciplines from analytics to sustainable organizational development.

Lennart Paulsen is founder and managing director of Trakken Web Services. After studying business administration in Hamburg, Sydney and Bern, Lennart joined Google in Hamburg, where he advised companies in the media and entertainment industries. In 2008 he founded Trakken together with Timo Aden and advises companies on how to use the Google Marketing Platform and the Google Cloud Platform.  

As Head of SEO at BurdaForward GmbH, Valentin Pletzer is responsible for websites such as CHIP Online and FOCUS Online. Anyone who follows him on Twitter at @VorticontCmdr will notice that he has turned his hobby into a profession.

Larissa Ramsauer works for Norisk Group in Munich in the field of online marketing. She is focused on PPC and  specialized in search and shopping. Larissa also has an extensive know-how in social media, especially Instagram and Facebook. In all these areas she has an explicit focus on automation in daily business. As a result, the optimization of scripts has become a passion and a big part of her work.

Martin is Head of SEA at online marketing agency Bloofusion Germany. As a PPC geek, he loves to take things a bit further – by digging into the mechanisms of Google Ads, building tools, or doing cool things with data.

He blogs regularly at the German Bloofusion Blog. In English, he blogs at PPC-Epiphany.com, but only when he feels that something is advanced or exclusive enough to be worth sharing internationally. He is best known for his Google Shopping segmentation strategy, the Quality Score Tracker script, and his work on Customized Ads.

Martin has spoken at numerous conferences over the years, including SMX, Marketing Festival, ADworld Experience and Heroconf.

Alexander Rus is the founder of the Innsbruck-based SEO agency Evergreen Media®. Since he got into the business in 2009 with his first affiliate marketing projects, he has been dealing with search engine optimization on a daily basis. As a passionate SEO, he publishes new videos about search engine optimization and content marketing on his YouTube channel every week since 2016. 

Ilenia landed SEO and Content Marketing after 6 years in traditional & digital PR in one of the Big 4 Fashion capitals. Since the beginning of 2018 she is Head of Brand & Content Marketing at fashion & lifestyle search platform Stylight, after being for 3 years in charge of its PR & content activities in several regions. She used to look at SEO with skeptical eyes, until she realised that there's a wonderful world behind keywords, search intent and linkbuilding: her team counts over 15 international talents in charge of the content strategy and its promotion to Stylight's users in 16 markets worldwide. 

The SEMY nominated "Stylight Insights" project represents what she likes the most: data analysis and creativity.  

Dan has worked in marketing for 16 years. Within Ingenuity Digital, Dan works closely with the directors and heads of service to identify new business opportunities. Generating quality leads, following these up and consistently obtaining a high conversion rates. Alongside this Dan has worked on his own ecommerce and Amazon store promoting other products & services. 

Dr. Martin Schirmbacher is a lawyer and specialist lawyer for IT at HÄRTING Rechtsanwälte in Berlin, a law firm specialised in media and technology. There he is head of the IT and data protection team. Schirmbacher advises many well-known agencies and companies from the online industry as well as advertising and software companies. In his work he deals a lot with the legal aspects of new forms of online advertising. Schirmbacher and his team focus on contract drafting and negotiations as well as data protection.

Schirmbacher is a well-known speaker at numerous industry events. At the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) and Data Driven Business, Schirmbacher has given presentations on legal aspects of online marketing for many years. In addition, Martin also gives seminars for 121WATT and many in-house workshops.

Dominique Seppelt is Head of Content Marketing at Peak Ace AG. Together with her team, she develops internationally scalable, innovative content marketing concepts and strategies. She ensures brand awareness, traffic increase, lead generation, customer conversion and customer retention for her customers through target group relevant content and dynamic outreach strategies. Peak Ace AG is an internationally active performance marketing agency founded in 2007 and based in Berlin. With more than 100 employees, the agency implements campaigns in over 20 languages at native speaker level and is one of the fastest growing technology companies in Germany.

Izzi is a Technical SEO Analyst at Ryte, and has previously worked as a consultant, and in-house SEO for Sixt rent a car. In her work, she loves spending time solving technical SEO mysteries, sharing her knowledge, and helping companies create even more awesome websites for users and Search Engines. Izzi has spoken at many top industry events and conferences across Europe, and has been rated the best speaker several times.

Martin is a developer advocate on the Webmaster Trends Analyst team at Google Switzerland. In this role, he helps developers and content creators to build great content on the web. He is involved with the web standards community as well as the global web and JavaScript developer community, working to keep the web open.

Philipp earned his doctorate with a thesis that dealt with both marketing and psychology. Today, he works as a principal at elaboratum, the Munich-based digital business experts. For about 10 years he has been analyzing digital customer behavior and supports successful companies from medium-sized businesses to DAX-listed companies on their way to digital excellence. His focus is on understanding user decisions, holistic UX concepts and the behavioral psychological optimization of interfaces. Philipp's current book "PsyConversion" (SpringerGabler 2018) is already being used by over 1,000 companies. 

Kai Spriestersbach is owner and editor-in-chief of SEARCH ONE and partner of eology GmbH, an online marketing agency based in Volkach that specializes in search engine marketing. He has 15 years of experience in online marketing and web development. Kai specialized in the training of employees and gives seminars and lectures. He has a Bachelor of Science in E-Commerce and has helped numerous clients develop and implement successful search strategies. He is particularly interested in user-centered search engine optimisation and technical SEO.

Nicole's journey in digital marketing started 8 years ago in an agency. She has gained experience in various channels, but her focus has always been on search engine optimization and the right content for the respective target group. She is now Head of SEO & Content at the full-service digital agency BlueGlass Interactive in Zurich, which she actively helped to build up. Within her work she develops strategies, gives workshops and together with her team of SEO engineers and content experts she supports various clients. When she is not dancing or doing yoga, she passes on her digital marketing knowledge at a Swiss business school.

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.

Jens Wollesen is Data Protection Officer at Scout24 Group, where he manages data privacy matters for the European online platforms AutoScout24 and ImmobilienScout24. Jens focuses on online advertisement, direct marketing and employee data privacy matters. He has hands-on experience in data privacy management and risk reporting. Having previously worked at international law firms in Berlin and Frankfurt, Jens also advised on complex M&A, post-merger integrations and internal investigations.

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.