The Charles Floate Annual SEO Awards are judged by a panel of working search practitioners — agency founders, affiliate operators, technical specialists and AI-search pioneers — chaired by founder and Head Judge Charles Floate. Every judge on this panel ranks websites for a living.
British SEO consultant and entrepreneur with 17+ years in search. Founder of the “God of SEO” blog, co-owner of link building marketplace PressWhizz, and trainer of thousands of SEOs through Charles Floate Training. Founded the awards in 2026 to build the first free-to-enter, data-verified honors in search engine optimization.
Glasgow-based SEO educator and entrepreneur with 20+ years in the industry. Runs one of the most-watched SEO YouTube channels and speaks at conferences worldwide on affiliate SEO, digital PR and building profitable sites.
Founder of Diggity Marketing, The Search Initiative and the Chiang Mai SEO Conference — the largest gathering of performance SEOs in the world. Known for test-driven, results-first SEO across affiliate and client portfolios.
Founder of Indexsy and an operator across a portfolio of ranking businesses — from local lead generation to enterprise affiliate plays. One of the most vocal practitioners on what actually works in modern SERPs.
UK-based SEO consultant and entrepreneur specialising in technical SEO, site recovery and scaling organic revenue for brands and affiliates.
Founder of Goldie Agency and one of the most-followed voices in AI-assisted SEO and link building, documenting large-scale AI content and automation experiments.
SEO consultant and auditor, founder of SEOSLY and host of the SEOSLY podcast. Specialises in deep technical audits and has published hundreds of hands-on SEO guides and tool reviews.
Founder of Holistic SEO & Digital and the leading voice on topical authority, semantic SEO and entity-based search. His frameworks are used by SEOs in every major market.
CEO of Charles Floate Training and Head of Design at PressWhizz. Runs awards operations — nominations, verification logistics and the winners program. Does not score or vote on entries.
The awards use a three-step judging process. Step one: independent pre-scoring. Each judge scores entries in their assigned categories independently, without seeing other judges’ scores, to establish the shortlist. Step two: data verification. Every shortlisted entry is verified against live ranking, organic traffic and link data using independent tooling (Ahrefs), plus Google Search Console access where entrants share it — the step no other major SEO awards program performs. Step three: panel decision. The full panel discusses verified shortlists and votes; the Head Judge holds a casting vote in the event of a tie and abstains otherwise.
We add a small number of guest judges each cycle. Practitioners with verifiable ranking work can apply by emailing judges@seoawards.org with links to what you’ve ranked — the same standard we hold entrants to.