Founded in 2026 to fix the two things practitioners have complained about for a decade: paying to compete, and being judged on essay-writing instead of rankings.
The Charles Floate Annual SEO Awards recognize outstanding achievement, innovation and measurable results in search engine optimization. The program is free to enter, digital-first (winners are announced online each July — no gala tables to sell), and data-verified: every shortlisted entry is checked against live ranking, organic traffic and link data before the panel votes.
The awards were founded by Charles Floate, a British SEO consultant and entrepreneur with 17+ years in search — founder of the “God of SEO” blog, co-owner of PressWhizz, and trainer of thousands of practitioners through Charles Floate Training. Awards operations are run by Awards Director Yudhish Puran; the judging panel of working practitioners is documented on the judges page.
Most SEO awards are operated by events businesses whose revenue is entry fees and ceremony tables — £220–£595 per entry, with bundle pricing to encourage volume. That model creates a structural incentive to multiply categories and shortlists. It also filters winners by marketing budget rather than merit: the best SEO in the world who won’t pay £365 per category simply doesn’t exist to those programs.
We removed the fee, which removed the incentive, which removed the filter. The result is a smaller, sharper program: twelve categories, one winner each, chosen from the full field — not the paying field.
The awards are independently funded by the founder. No entry fees, no sponsors, no gala tables — nothing on this site is for sale, and no commercial partner has votes, shortlist input or eligibility advantages. If that ever changes, this page will say so before anything else does.
General: awards@seoawards.org · Entries: enter@seoawards.org · Judging applications: judges@seoawards.org · Press: press@seoawards.org