This is part of the say something nice about an SEO/SEM series - feel free to nominate someone over here.
Joost de Valk, 35 years old, he lives with his wife Marieke and their four kids live in Wijchen, the Netherlands. There are very few people in the SEO industry who don't know the name Yoast, the company he founded in 2010 to help those on WordPress manage their SEO. Not only are most of those who use WordPress and do SEO using his software on a daily basis, he and his company share boat loads of educational content around SEO on a daily basis.
He speaks around the world, writes articles extremely often, shares knowledge on social media very frequently and runs a large company that has fundamentally improved the day-to-day lives of many SEOs.
And he is only 35 years old and has a pretty large family - it is amazing how much he has done in such a short time.
Joost received two nominations:
Bart Hoogervorst wrote:
I think Joost should be honoured not only because of his plugins, which makes the life of many SEO's much easier (and not only those working on Wordpress sites). But also what he knows and shares about (technical) SEO and how to best optimize your site for the crawlers to index your the pages you want to rank for. I also love the 'ask Yoast' section, which is relatively new.
Barry Adams wrote:
Joost has been such an important figure in the world of SEO for so long, it's hard to imagine this industry without him. His WordPress plugin has made basic on-site SEO accessible and achievable for millions of websites, and his constant advocacy and contribution to the industry has helped make us all better SEOs.
Joost de Valk Bio: Joost is a 35 year old web developer, SEO and digital marketer. In the early days of his career he worked in several IT companies, ranging from enterprise hosting to online marketing agencies. This allowed him to work with several large brands around the world. He consulted with eBay, the Guardian, Facebook and many others.
In 2010 he founded Yoast, which has as its mission to allow as many people as possible to build a findable website. It empowers people through software (most notably its Yoast SEO plugin) and training . Team Yoast currently consists of around 75 people. Yoast SEO is currently available for four open source platforms and active on almost 8 million websites.
Joost, his wife Marieke and their four kids live in Wijchen, the Netherlands, where Yoast also has its main offices.
Favorite thing about the SEO community? When we're not busy kvetching, we're usually pretty good at actually helping each other.
One piece of advice to the SEOs out there? Find a purpose in what you do beyond making money.
What you want to be known for in the SEO space? Our SEO plugin, because many, many people in our space use it on a daily basis. Our courses are a source of pride, I hope we'll be able to show the SEO community how awesome they are over the coming year.
You can learn more about Joost at his company site, follow him on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.
This is part of the say something nice about an SEO/SEM series - feel free to nominate someone over here.
