Rand dropped out of the University of Washington in 2000 to work full-time at his mother’s small business marketing firm as a web designer. In 2004, he created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world’s most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, Rand became CEO of SEOmoz, Inc (now called Moz), the software company he co-founded with his mom based on the blog’s success. That same year, he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Geraldine DeRuiter, with a TV commercial that received widespread publicity (and, later, an awkward appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show). The two married in 2008 in a move Rand consistently refers to as the best, luckiest one of his life.
Over 7 years as CEO, Rand grew Moz from 7 employees to 134, revenues from $800K to $29.3mm, and traffic from 1 to 30mm annual visitors. He raised two rounds of funding ($1.1mm in 2007 and $18.1mm in 2012), led three acquisitions, and, in 2013, re-branded the company from SEOmoz to Moz, shifting focus from exclusively SEO tools to broader web marketing software. Rand stepped down as CEO in February of 2014 during a rough bout with depression and left the company 4 years later. He remains chairman of Moz’s board.
Rand is also the co-founder of Inbound.org, a site to dedicated to sharing articles about marketing from across the web, alongside Dharmesh Shah. The site was sold (for no profit) to Hubspot in 2014.
Rand may be best known for his popular blogs and regular Whiteboard Friday series, watched by tens of thousands of marketers each week. Rand is also a frequent keynote speaker at marketing conferences around the world, averaging ~100 days on the road each year and 30-40 speaking appearances. He has, much to his own surprise, amassed a large following on Twitter, Pocket, Facebook, and Slideshare.
In 2018, Rand founded SparkToro (an under-development software company focused on audience and influencer intelligence) and published, with Penguin/Random House, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World.
Rand previously co-contributed to two books: Art of SEO, and Inbound Marketing & SEO. He’s been profiled in the Seattle Times, featured in Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, named to BusinessWeek’s 30 Under 30, written about in Newsweek, The Next Web, the Inc 500 (to which Moz was named 5 years in a row), and hundreds of other publications. He is, however, most proud of his prominent appearances in Geraldine’s first book, All Over the Place.

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.

Greg Gifford is the Vice President of Search Marketing at SearchLab, a boutique marketing agency specializing in Local SEO and PPC. He’s one of the most in-demand speakers at digital marketing and automotive conferences all over the world, with dynamic movie-themed presentations packed full of actionable tactics and information. He's got over 18 years of online marketing and web design experience, and his expertise in Local SEO has helped hundreds of businesses gain more visibility in local searches.

Greg graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BA in Cinema and Communications, and has an obscure movie quote for just about any situation.

Bartosz Góralewicz is the CEO at Onely, an SEO agency that specializes in preventing and curing technical SEO issues for businesses of all sizes, including renowned international corporations. He is passionate about sharing his expertise and frequently publishes thorough case studies. In his off time, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two young baby girls.

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

Alexander Holl 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. 

Kevin Indig leads SEO as Director @ Shopify and is the creator of the Growth Memo newsletter. Previously, he ran SEO @ G2 and Atlassian and worked with companies like eBay, Eventbrite, Samsung, Pinterest, and many others.

Astrid Kramer has been active in online marketing with a focus on SEO since 2007. For more than 6 years she has been advising market-leading and wide-reaching portals, publishing sites and shops. She has also lectured at the Bertelsmann Academy, Hamburg Media School, Good School and AFS. Her academic background includes a master's degree in information science, social psychology and legal informatics and a postgraduate course in business management.

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. 

Lily Ray is the Sr. Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital, where she provides strategic leadership for the agency’s SEO client programs. Born into a family of software engineers, web developers and technical writers, Lily brings a strong technical background, performance-driven habits and forward-thinking creativity to all programs she oversees. Lily began her SEO career in 2010 in a fast-paced start-up environment and moved quickly into the agency world, where she helped grow and establish an award-winning SEO department that delivered high impact work for a fast-growing list of notable clients, including Fortune 500 companies. Lily has worked across a variety of verticals with a focus on retail, e-commerce, b2b and CPG sites. She loves diving into algorithm updates, assessing quality issues and solving technical SEO mysteries.

Samuel launched his blog about SEO and Digital Marketing in 2019. In less than two years, he got a lot of traction and visibility, and his articles have been shared by leading SEO companies such as MOZ, Ahref or SEMRush. Even the SEO superstar John Müller shared his articles on Twitter. 

Besides being an avid blogger, Samuel works for One Inside, a Swiss Digital Agency, and he is in charge of business development, marketing and acquisition of new customers.

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.

Frederick Vallaeys co-founded Optmyzr in 2013 to give search marketers the tools they needed to make managing pay-per-click (PPC) accounts quick and simple. A former Google executive and one of the tech giant’s first 500 employees, Fred spent close to 10 years managing and evangelizing for the AdWords (now Google Ads) product, and is best remembered for his work on Quality Score.

Fred is also an accomplished speaker on PPC account management, automation, and scripts — having spoken at high-profile events like SMX and Hero Conf. He is also listed at #4 on PPC Hero’s definitive industry ranking of the 25 most influential PPC experts of 2020.

After publishing his first book "Digital Marketing in an AI World: Futureproofing Your PPC Agency" in 2019, Fred is currently working on his second book about automation and how to use it to gain a competitive advantage. 

Katja von der Burg is the founder and managing director of the online marketing agency Projecter. She has been dealing with online marketing topics for 15 years and is an expert in online marketing strategies, social media and influencer marketing. With 55 employees, Projecter advises and supports clients such as Messe München, Carhartt WIP and SportScheck in all online marketing disciplines. As a trained journalist, Katja is very interested in all content formats and is very active on LinkedIn. As a runner and extreme athlete, she also uses social media from the perspective of influencers.