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Speakers
Officer, Rise at Seven
Officer, Growth Plays LLC
Panelists
SEO’s evolving — and we have the answers
Meet the People Behind the Profiles
Connect with the smart minds you follow online, and meet a few more: marketers, SEOs, founders, creators…even a few quiet legends.
Real Takeaways, No-Fluff Learning
Talks built for the current landscape, not just pretty slides: search, AI, content, analytics. You’ll leave with strategies you can implement Monday morning.
Sharpen Your Edge in 48 Hours
Stuck in execution mode? Burnt out by rapid-fire updates?
Evolve gives you space and injects some freshness so you can zoom out, refocus, and shift from sprinting to steering.
Agenda
Everything you need to dive into Evolve:
- All keynotes, panels & breakout sessions
- Catered networking lunch every day (yes, it’s good)
- Explore the exhibition hall
- Entry to the official afterparty
The best conversations, views, and connections at Evolve. Includes everything in Standard, plus:
- Sunset yacht mixer with the Ahrefs team & speakers
- Front-row seats + express concierge check-in
- Access to the speaker lounge + guaranteed Ahrefs’ swag
- Exclusive 90-day access to talk recordings — rewatch and share with your team
Hotel
all at InterContinental.
What happens at Evolve... doesn’t stay at Evolve
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Mark W. Schaefer is a globally-recognized author, keynote speaker, futurist, and business consultant who blogs at {grow} — one of the top five marketing blogs of the world. He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University and has written 10 best-selling books. Mark’s new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World describes an essential framework for businesses to stand out and be seen in a noisy world.
Cyrus runs Zyppy SEO, an online marketing consultancy based near the forests of the Oregon coast. He writes about Google’s algorithm and frequently publishes new studies and experiments. Previously, Cyrus worked as an official Google Quality Rater and helped lead SEO and content at Moz.
Tim Soulo is the Chief Marketing Officer and Product advisor at Ahrefs – an industry leading SEO tool, powered by big data. His data research studies in the field of SEO were cited by thousands of online publications including Inc, Techcrunch and Venturebeat and he has spoken at some of the largest industry conferences around the globe, such as PubCon (Las Vegas, US), BrightonSEO (Brighton, UK) and Digital Marketers Australia Conference (Melbourne, AU).
Sam Oh is VP of Marketing and Head of Video at Ahrefs. He has grown Ahrefs’ YouTube channel to become one of the largest B2B channels globally, amassing over 25 million views and over 2.3M hours in watch time (260+ years). His video content has been the primary driver in attracting hundreds of thousands of new users via. YouTube. Prior to joining Ahrefs, Sam co-founded a successful digital marketing agency and had three businesses acquired in various verticals. Sam has spoken at conferences worldwide and is a frequent guest on marketing podcasts.
Emily Kramer is a leading voice in B2B Startup Marketing. She’s known for her pragmatic, yet opinionated approach & clear frameworks. Emily previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly and has been the first-ish marketer 4 times, leading teams through hypergrowth and at scale. Since starting the MKT1 newsletter, Emily’s created content with millions of views across LinkedIn & Substack, taught 1000s of marketers in courses, and advised & invested in over 100 companies.
Peep is a 3x founder (Wynter, CXL, Speero). Originally focused on general marketing consulting (SEO, PPC, CRO, content marketing), Peep later specialized in conversion optimization and was recognized as the most influential name in the business back in 2016. Today, he’s a recognized expert in strategy, messaging, and market research.
Patrick Stox is a Product Advisor, Technical SEO, & Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs. He was one of the authors of the Ahrefs SEO Book For Beginners, and the Technical Review Editor for The Art of SEO 4th Edition. He was the lead author for the SEO chapter of the 2021 Web Almanac and a reviewer for the 2022 SEO chapter.
Patrick’s an organizer for several groups including the Raleigh SEO Meetup (the most successful SEO Meetup in the US), the Beer and SEO Meetup, the Raleigh SEO Conference, runs a Technical SEO Slack group, and is a moderator for /r/TechSEO on Reddit.
Ryan Law is the Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs, with 14 years of experience as a writer, content strategist, team lead, marketing director, VP, CMO, and agency co-founder. He has helped dozens of companies improve their content marketing and SEO, including Google, Zapier, GoDaddy, Clearbit, and Algolia. He has also spoken at events hosted by Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, Clearscope, Wynter, and brightonSEO.
Kevin is an advisor to some of the world’s fastest-growing startups and has defined Organic Growth strategies for companies like Ramp, Reddit, Bounce, Dropbox, Hims, Nextdoor and Snapchat. He led SEO and Growth at the world’s leading e-commerce platform Shopify, the #1 marketplace for software G2 and the #1 developer company Atlassian. Once a week, Kevin sends The Growth Memo to +20,000 subscribers and regularly speaks at conferences around the world.
Madhav Bhandari is CMO at Storylane, an AI-native platform for creating interactive demos in minutes, giving buyers a hands-on way to test-drive products. While others play it safe, he’s built a decade-long track record of scaling startups from $2M to $20M+ ARR using bold campaigns and “pattern interrupt” experiments that make prospects stop scrolling and start buying. On LinkedIn, he pulls back the curtain on these high-stakes marketing moves – the wins, the bombs, and the million-dollar lessons in between.
Officer
Carrie Rose is the Founder and CEO of Rise at Seven – one of the fastest-growing agencies in the UK and US, now operating across Europe and North America. What started as a bold idea to collide brand advertising with SEO has evolved into a search-first content marketing agency creating category leaders across every searchable platform – from Google and YouTube to TikTok, Reddit, ChatGPT and Amazon.
Today, Carrie leads a global team of organic media planners who don’t just respond to search demand – they create it. Her focus is on engineering semantic brand and category signals across every searchable touchpoint – building relevance, discoverability, and authority in the places that matter most.
A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and regular voice at industry events, Carrie is known for telling it like it is – challenging traditional SEO, calling out outdated tactics, and championing a multi-channel, search-first approach built for how people discover today.
Chris Cunningham is the Head of Social Marketing at ClickUp and one of its four who started the company. He built ClickUp’s content into the best in B2B SaaS, surpassing 1 billion impressions in 2024. During his time at the company, ClickUp has grown to over 1,400 employees, raised $535 million at a $4 billion valuation, and run major campaigns including a Super Bowl commercial.
Bryan leads IBM’s Inbound marketing programs which includes a team of journalists, technical creators, a/v production and channel strategists across areas including search, newsletters & podcasting. His team is responsible for driving IBM’s organic visibility and growth globally. In previous roles he has led teams across demand generation, analytics, product marketing and social media.
Eric Siu is a prominent investor, entrepreneur, and media personality best known as the chairman of the digital marketing agency Single Grain and for hosting the popular podcasts Marketing School with Neil Patel and Level Up. He has advised major companies like Amazon, Airbnb, and Salesforce, and authored the book Leveling Up: How to Master the Game of Life, which focuses on business and personal growth.
Sophie Brannon is the Co-Founder & Director of StudioHawk US, based in Atlanta. With over a decade of SEO experience spanning agency, in-house, and consultancy roles, she has worked across a wide range of industries including eCommerce, finance, gaming, health, and SaaS. Sophie brings a strategic, data-driven approach to organic growth, helping brands scale sustainably through technical SEO, user experience testing, content and digital PR. She’s passionate about making SEO accessible and mentoring the next generation of search marketers.
James Norquay is an SEO with 20 years of experience. He started in SEO by running a Myspace Layouts site in 2005, growing it to over 20 million+ visitors from SEO. James founded Prosperity Media in 2012, which is Sydney’s largest SEO, content, & digital PR agency, and has worked with clients in the most competitive SEO markets, such as cryptocurrency, finance, FMCG, health, and news. The team also manages a portfolio of 30+ affiliate assets in competitive verticals in both the Australian & US markets. Prosperity also runs Australia’s largest dedicated SEO conference, the Sydney SEO Conference. You can expect an actionable talk from James with plenty of takeaways for SEO professionals, both new and old.
Heather Physioc leads the global Discoverability offering at VML. The Discoverability group serves more than 70 enterprise brands across verticals and around the globe. The award-winning discoverability group has been recognized as the Best Large Integrated Search Agency, Integrated Search Agency of the Year and International Search Team of the Year.
Based in Kansas City, Heather is a graduate of the University of Missouri in Columbia, with a bachelor’s degree in strategic communication (advertising), and holds an Executive Masters of Business Administration (EMBA) from Rockhurst University. She is an adjunct professor of digital marketing at the Masters level at the University of Kansas.
Brandon is the founder of Hendricks.AI, an intelligence firm specializing in AI-powered search intelligence and optimization systems. Previously, he was the Global Lead of Total Search at SolarWinds, where he built predictive intent systems that drove growth across 100+ markets worldwide. He has led and consulted on strategy for iconic brands including Foursquare, Workday, Evernote, and Warby Parker. Formerly the Global Director of Search at Merkle and Dentsu, Brandon pioneered unified paid and organic search strategies that would later become industry best practices. He is also a certified Google Machine Learning Engineer.