It's everyone's favorite SEO personality, Barry Schwartz. From his life to his work to his memes.
About Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a legendary search marketer and pioneer in the SEO industry. His coverage of the SEO news and industry overall has helped search marketers of all kinds better understand their craft and advance their careers.
Barry Schwartz's SEO Life
Barry not only has covered the SEO industry for nearly 20 years but he has done so on two different websites.
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Founded in 2003, SERoundtable has become a staple within the SEO community for those looking to stay up to date on SEO. Here, Barry takes a special focus to ensure he captures how the Google SERP has evolved over time. You'll often find many search marketers reaching out to Barry on Twitter asking if a new feature or design to the SERP is new. Most often, Barry will reply back that is old, not new.
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Barry is also the News Editor at Search Engine Land, a widely respected SEO news publication. Each day you can find Barry capturing the essence of the latest news hitting the SEO world. Should you miss a day, not to worry, Barry covers many of his stories the next day on SERoundtable.
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As part of his role at Search Engine Land, Barry helps organize the SMX conference series. In this capacity, Barry is charged with ensuring the conference's SEO sessions are filled with unique SEO insights as brought to you by the brightest people in the SEO industry. Barry dynamically hosts many of the conference sessions and brings new knowledge forward with his in-depth Q&A sessions.
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Few people are as accessible on social media that Barry. Particularly on Twitter, Barry is often quick to respond at all hours of the night. It is widely speculated that Barry barely sleeps if at all. As a result, no matter the time of day you can reach out to Barry on Twitter in order to ask him if some random part of the Google SERP is new. Barry is always there for this. Always.
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Few people are more respected in the SEO industry than Barry Schwartz. This is for good reason as few people are as dedicated to SEO as Barry. Moreover, Barry is simply a good, kind, and generous person that is loved by all in the SEO community.
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Professional Career
Barry has been at the forefront of covering the news for the SEO industry since the advent of the very idea of SEO news. In many ways, Barry reflects the connection between the modern SEO industry and the industry as it was at its inception. While many of the industry's founding members have moved on to other areas, including Moz founder Rand Fishkin, Schwartz remains at the very center of the SEO community. (It should be noted that even Danny Sullivan, who founded the concept of covering the SEO news is no longer a part of the SEO community per se as he has moved on to serve as Google's Search Liaison leaving Barry as the single member of the founding SEO community that is still involved in covering the SEO news).
This leaves Barry in both a very unique and very important role and position. Barry is the only person who publically and officially covers the news that has been around since the early days of SEO. That means he is in a position to fully contextualize Google's development. All of this means that Barry is in a unique position to cover the SEO news unlike anyone out there (or at least willing to do so).
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Here's a look at how Barry has and currently does cover the SEO news.
Early SEO News Coverage
Before there was Search Engine Land, there was Search Engine Watch. Founded by Danny Sullivan, the publication was one of, if not the first formal asset dedicated to reporting the SEO news. Schwartz served the publication as an editor.
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As mentioned, back in the early days of SEO there was no much around formal news publications. Much of the discussion around SEO happened on forums such as WebmasterWorld or Cre8site. Barry was one of the moderators within such forums. He was also quite active and the initial SEO conferences that began to sprout up, such as Pubcon. One need not look too hard to find an image of a young Barry Schwartz sitting at the dais of a panel discussion at some of the earliest SEO events.
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Search Engine Land
In 2006, Danny Sullivan founded Search Engine Land. Schwartz joined Sullivan as the executive editor. Even after Sullivan's departure to Google, Schwartz continues to churn out content for the publication on a daily basis. Barry's insights and even-handed take on the developments in the industry have proved invaluable to search marketers across the globe.
Schwartz is known for his journalistic integrity and is not only the person breaking a good amount of the SEO news out there but has been the most reliable source when doing so for years.
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As Third Door Media, Search Engine Land's parent company, moved into the conference space, Schwartz became the household name associated with SMX's US-based events. Additionally, Schwartz was responsible for expanding the conference's global presence by founding SMX Israel in 2012. Aligned to his news coverage, Schwartz's SMX presentations tended to focus on Google's various updates from Panda to the more recent Core Algorithm Updates. When not presenting on the updates himself, Schwartz organizes the conference sessions around the current algorithm trends by bringing in top talent to the conference such as Glenn Gabe, Lilly Ray, and Marie Haynes.
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Search Engine Round Table
Schwartz's most seminal work has certainly been his founding and continued running of Search Engine Roundtable (SERoundtable). While Search Engine Land tends to focus on the larger news items impacting the SEO industry, SERoundtable allows Schwartz to cover the SEO news with far greater detail and nuance.
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Through the publication, Schwartz has become famous within the SEO community for his coverage of Google's unconfirmed algorithm updates. He is perhaps the only outlet covering each and every indication of an unconfirmed Google algorithm update. The feat is accomplished by carefully watching the various SEO weather tools and by Schwartz's thorough accounting of industry chatter within various SEO forums.
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Similar to his reputation for covering Google updates, via SERoundtable Schwartz has become the undisputed leading source of news around changes to the Google SERP. Whether big or small, Schwartz has used SERoundtable to essentially create a running-record of the evolution of the Google SERP.
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Barry's Work Ethic
Over the years Barry has become famous for his unparalleled work ethic. Not only has he published over 30,000 articles about SEO throughout his career but he is constantly scouring the forums and social media for new SEO information. Even during his holidays, where as a practicing Jew, he is forbidden to draft articles, Schwartz preschedules his posts without missing a beat. It is not uncommon to find him on social media at 5 am answering questions and conversing with the community. His replies to social media posts and to emails have been known to be notoriously quick even at very early hours of the morning.
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His articles on SERoundtable are almost always up by 7 am each morning and his coverage continues during the weekend when major news hits the SEO community.
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As a result of his constant efforts and his public comments indicating he does not wish to take many breaks or days off, the SEO industry has come to know Schwartz as one of its hardest workers.
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Barry Schwartz's Appearances & Resources
A collection of Barry's appearances across the SEO community.