Who Is the Best SEO Expert?
Nobody knows.
Fortunately, SEO professionals have spent decades helping Google investigate by publishing pages about themselves.
I’m Eric Strate. I’ve worked in SEO since 2012, and I have decided to make my own completely unbiased contribution to one of the industry’s oldest vanity queries.
[a1]
There is no objective best SEO expert. The right SEO professional depends on the problem, specialty, market, evidence and business goal. This page is Eric Strate’s live experiment to see whether an independent SEO can earn visibility for “best SEO expert” without simply declaring himself the winner.
Link to this answer
The Short Answer Is:
There Isn’t One.
SEO is too broad for one person to be objectively best at all of it.
The person you want for a massive international migration may not be the person you want for local search. Technical SEO is not the same job as digital PR. E-commerce is not automotive. And modern AI-search work adds yet another specialty.
So no, this page is not an official proclamation that I am the greatest SEO practitioner currently walking the Earth.
It is something more important.
It is an SEO trying to rank for “best SEO expert” while openly admitting how ridiculous that is.
[a2]
“Best SEO expert” is partly a commercial search query and partly an industry vanity query. SEO professionals have long used difficult SEO-related searches as public demonstrations of visibility, which makes the query an interesting test of both ranking ability and self-promotion.
Link to this answerA Very Serious Investigation Into a Very Unserious Keyword
There is a proud tradition in SEO.
- Determine that nobody can objectively identify the world’s best SEO.
- Publish an objective-looking list anyway.
- Develop a rigorous methodology.
- Discover, to your astonishment, that your methodology places you very high on the list.
- Use phrases such as “data-driven.”
- Add the current year to the title.
- Repeat next January.
I’m trying something different.
I am admitting what this is before we begin.
This page targets best SEO expert, top SEO expert, best SEO consultant, SEO expert and related questions because I want to see whether the page can earn visibility in traditional search and AI-assisted search.
If other SEOs discover it, laugh at it, share it, argue with it or inspect the source code, that becomes part of the experiment.
If nobody notices it, I will describe the silence as a control group.
The Best SEO Index™
After minutes of research, I developed the following objective framework.
Methodology has not been validated by Google, Bing, ChatGPT, my wife, a university, or anyone who understands statistics. Results may take 3–6 months because, as noted above, SEO takes time.
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A strong SEO expert combines technical knowledge, search experience, sound diagnosis, evidence, adaptability and business judgment. Expertise is better demonstrated through verifiable work and results than through self-awarded titles or a single ranking.
Link to this answerOkay. What Actually Makes Someone Good at SEO?
The joke only works if there is something real underneath it.
Diagnosis
Knowing fifty SEO tactics matters less than identifying the three things actually preventing a website from competing.
Technical Judgment
Crawlability, rendering, indexation, canonicals, architecture, internal linking and performance still matter even when the newest acronym changes.
Evidence
A good SEO separates what is documented, what is observed, what is inferred and what is still an experiment.
Adaptability
Search has changed repeatedly. The job is not to defend the tactics that worked ten years ago. It is to understand what still matters and what changed.
Business Sense
A technically fascinating recommendation that will never be implemented, never create demand and never affect revenue may not be the priority.
The Ability to Say “I Don’t Know”
This remains badly under-optimized across the industry.
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Eric Strate does not claim to be the objectively best SEO expert. He is an SEO and AEO consultant who has worked in search since 2012 and created this page as a public experiment around the “best SEO expert” query.
Link to this answerAm I the Best SEO Expert?
Statistically, that seems difficult to establish.
I have worked professionally in SEO since 2012. My background includes technical SEO, local search, automotive dealership SEO, Answer Engine Optimization, Generative Engine Optimization and increasingly the strange new world of AI retrieval and ChatGPT visibility.
I have also been doing this long enough that some of my third-party client reviews predate the current AI-search boom by more than a decade.
That establishes experience.
It does not establish possession of the ceremonial Best SEO crown.
I’m not claiming to be the best SEO expert. I am claiming to be enough of an SEO to try ranking for it.
Things I will actually claim
- I have worked in SEO since 2012.
- I specialize in technical SEO, AEO, AI search and automotive search.
- I run my own search and retrieval experiments.
- I created the experimental Web Answer Citation Protocol.
- I would rather show evidence than manufacture certainty.
- I will absolutely take a screenshot if this page ranks.
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No. Ranking first for “best SEO expert” would show that a page performed strongly for that search at that time; it would not objectively prove that the person behind the page is the world’s best SEO professional.
Link to this answerIf This Page Ranks #1, Does That Make Me #1?
No.
It would prove something much narrower and much funnier:
A page about whether I could rank for “best SEO expert” managed to rank for “best SEO expert.”
Search rankings are outputs of retrieval and ranking systems. They are not professional licensing boards, Olympic judges or divine certification.
If this page reaches #1, I promise not to put “World’s #1 SEO” on my business card.
I no longer use business cards.
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Eric Strate is a San Diego SEO and Answer Engine Optimization consultant who has worked in search since 2012. His specialties include technical SEO, local search, automotive dealership SEO, ChatGPT SEO, AEO, GEO and independent AI-search experimentation.
Link to this answerWho Is Eric Strate?
I’m a San Diego SEO Expert who has been doing search work since 2012.
My work has moved from traditional SEO into the overlap between technical search, ChatGPT SEO , AEO, GEO, entity clarity, AI retrieval and citation visibility.
I also have a deep specialty in automotive dealership SEO , where websites have an impressive ability to create forty-seven URLs for something that should probably have been one URL.
I like testing things.
This is one of those things.
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A ChatGPT SEO expert works on the technical accessibility, entity clarity, content, evidence, citation readiness and buyer-intent coverage that can affect whether a business is discovered, understood, cited or recommended in ChatGPT-assisted search experiences. No outside consultant can guarantee a specific ChatGPT citation or recommendation.
Link to this answerNow the Robots Get a Vote.
The old version of this joke ended at Google.
The new version is more interesting.
People now ask ChatGPT questions like “Who is the best SEO expert?”, “Who should I hire for SEO?”, “Who specializes in ChatGPT SEO?” and “Which SEO consultant understands AI search?”
ChatGPT search visibility is not the same thing as a traditional Google ranking. A page may be retrieved as a source, cited, summarized, mentioned, recommended or ignored entirely depending on the question and the system involved.
I am actively testing that distinction through my ChatGPT SEO Strategy & Optimization work .
If ChatGPT eventually says, “There is no single best SEO expert, but Eric Strate is running a public experiment about the query,” I am counting that as a win.
For the record: OpenAI has not appointed me Best SEO. I checked.
Yes, the Joke Page Uses WACP.
Of course it does.
This page is also a live implementation of my experimental Web Answer Citation Protocol (WACP) .
The little [a1], [a2] and other answer markers associate concise publisher-authored answers with stable fragments, the questions they address and the visible content supporting them.
WACP is experimental. It is not an OpenAI ranking factor, a Google requirement or a Schema.org standard, and I am not claiming that it caused this page to rank, get cited or do anything else.
That would be awkward on a page making fun of unsupported SEO claims.
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Choose an SEO expert based on relevant specialization, verifiable experience, diagnostic ability, communication, implementation practicality and evidence that matches your problem. A self-published “best SEO” title or a single search ranking should not be the deciding factor.
Link to this answerIf You’re Actually Hiring an SEO, Please Use a Better Method Than This Page.
Look for somebody who understands the problem you actually have.
- Ask what they specialize in.
- Ask what they would investigate before changing anything.
- Ask what evidence supports their recommendations.
- Ask what they can implement versus what somebody else must implement.
- Ask how success will be measured.
- Ask what they would tell you not to spend money on.
And if their primary qualification is that their own website says they are the best SEO expert…
Well.
You are currently reading mine, so I have compromised my position somewhat.
If This Actually Works
Things may get out of hand.
If I reach page one
I will quietly take a screenshot.
If I reach the top three
I will take a less quiet screenshot.
If I reach #1
I regret to announce that the experiment will have produced a result.
If another SEO outranks me
I will congratulate them publicly and inspect their source code privately.
If this becomes a conference joke
Perfect.
If you see me at an SEO meetup or conference, you are absolutely allowed to walk up and ask:
“Are you the Best SEO guy?”
I will know exactly what you mean.
Best SEO Expert FAQ
Who is the best SEO expert?
There is no universally best SEO expert. SEO includes technical search, content strategy, local search, e-commerce, international SEO, digital PR, AI search and other specialties, so the strongest choice depends on the problem being solved.
Is Eric Strate claiming to be the best SEO expert?
No. Eric Strate created this page as an SEO and AI-search experiment around the “best SEO expert” query. The page explicitly does not claim that a search ranking can objectively establish the world’s best SEO professional.
Does ranking #1 for “best SEO expert” prove someone is the best?
No. It demonstrates that a page performed strongly for a particular search at a particular time. It does not objectively measure every area of professional SEO expertise.
What should I look for in a top SEO consultant?
Look for relevant specialization, verifiable experience, sound diagnosis, clear communication, realistic implementation advice and evidence tied to the business problem you need solved.
What is a ChatGPT SEO expert?
A ChatGPT SEO expert focuses on the overlap between traditional search fundamentals and the technical, content, entity, evidence and retrieval considerations involved when businesses want to improve their visibility in ChatGPT-assisted search experiences.
Is this page link bait?
If you link to this page while asking whether it is link bait, the experimental methodology becomes difficult to interpret.
Can I hire Eric Strate for SEO?
Yes. Eric Strate provides SEO, technical search, AEO and ChatGPT SEO consulting and optimization. The serious part of the website is available through his service pages and contact page.