Speakers

Are you curious who will be speaking at this awesome SEO conference? We’re thrilled to announce the first five speakers for YoastCon 2019. Check them out below.

We will present our complete speaker line-up soon!

Els Aerts

Els has been creating better online experiences based on user research since 2001. She’s the co-founder of AGConsult, a Belgium-based usability and conversion optimization company. Els is a big fan of old school in person user testing and has moderated nearly a thousand user tests. She loves helping companies to understand their customers better. Because knowing what makes your customers tick, drives growth.

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin is the founder of SparkToro and was cofounder of Moz and Inbound.org. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through the Whiteboard Friday video series, his blog, and his book, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. When Rand’s not working, he’s most likely to be in the company of his partner in marriage and (mostly petty) crime, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you feed him great pasta or great whisky, he’ll give you the cheat code to rank #1 on Google.

Purna Virji

Named by PPC Hero in 2016 as the #1 most influential PPC Expert in the world, Purna specializes in digital marketing, AI, and the future of search. With over fifteen years in the business, she is a regular keynote speaker at conferences across the globe such as AdWeek, The Next Web Conference, and INBOUND. Purna is also a columnist for Search Engine Land and Moz.

An award-winning former journalist, Purna was the CEO of Purview Marketing prior to joining the Bing Ads team. In her spare time, she’s an avid traveler, aspiring top chef, and amateur knitter. Say hello @purnavirji

Geraldine DeRuiter

Geraldine DeRuiter is the voice behind the award-winning Everywhereist blog and author of the memoir All Over The Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft. While ostensibly a travel writer, Geraldine also writes about dessert, feminism, and Jeff Goldblum’s entire filmography. TIME Magazine described her blog as “consistently clever” and The New York Times said her writing was “dark and hilarious”. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Marie Claire, Refinery 29, and The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts. When not on the road with her long-suffering and infinitely patient husband, Rand, Geraldine can be found in Seattle, usually fighting with people on the internet.

Jono Alderson

Jono is a digital strategist, marketing technologist and full-stack developer with over a decade of experience in SEO, analytics, brand and campaign strategy, lead gen and eCRM, CRO and more. He’s worked with startups, agencies and international brands to fix websites, implement growth strategies, and win markets.

Jono recently joined Yoast after working as principal consultant at Distilled. Previously, he was global head of digital and head of insight at SEO platform Linkdex, and head of SEO at award-winning agency twentysix.

Want to know more about YoastCon 2019? Read more here!