Search SEOul Review (2026): Recap of Korea’s Top SEO Conference

The following is my recap of Search SEOul in 2026, Korea’s top SEO conference for international marketers.

About Search SEOul 2026

• Event: Search SEOul 2026
• Dates: September 1-4, 2026 (city tour 1 September, pre-networking party 2 September, conference days 3 to 4 September)
• Venue: Naru Seoul MGallery Ambassador Hotel, Seoul, South Korea
• Hosts listed by the organizer: Michaela Park (founder and co-host, also SEO content specialist at Holafly), Yongjoon Yang, Raquel González
• Sponsors: Ascent AI (ListeningMind), a Cairrot Garden partner, and Artience were the headline sponsors. Ahrefs, DemandSphere, Advanced Web Ranking, and ChainShift.ai also sponsored. 

The website still reports 220+ attendees and 21+ countries for the 2026 event. But I believe the max capacity was 300 and they did end up selling out the venue just before conference week. Beyond just Korea, the speakers and audience members were made up of a great mix of in-house marketers and business owners operating in Japan, Taiwan, and China. Europe had a strong presence in the speaker lineup, as it usually enjoys at international SEO conferences.

What are the “Big 3 Big Big 3?

The “Big 3 Big 3” refers to the top 3 international SEO conferences representing the 3 highest-dollar regions of east Asia, with one event representing the top annual conference for China, Japan, and Korea. 

The best conference for you to attend should obviously depend on which market you are most interested in expanding in. You will get some Japanese and Chinese industry opportunity here, but not nearly as much as if you go to FOUND Conference in Tokyo or Shenzhen SEO in China. 

But if you are unsure about whether you want to focus on China, Japan, or Korea, Search SEOul may be one of the better options, as it includes a nice mix of all three. Plus Korean markets are an easier transition for Westerners compared to Japan or China, in my experience. 

Why I went to Search SEOul

My top three business objectives in Seoul were: 

1. Learn from the best SEO leaders in east Asia. As we continue building out new features in Cairrot to serve our users focused on AI visibility in Japan, we find the fastest way to learn and serve is by placing ourselves on the ground. 
2. Collaborate with our partner in Korea, Ascent AI, one of Search SEOul’s two headline sponsors and official “Champion of AEO”. Ascent AI’s CEO and Cofounder, Seyong Park (Danny), is one of the more inspiring and respectable business leaders I have ever worked with and I’m so glad we happened to meet at another SEO event earlier in the year.
3. Find trustworthy, S-tier referral partners in Korea who we can recommend as we grow. Cairrot already serves brands in America expanding into Japan or Korea and vice-versa, but when serving the latter, sometimes a trusted implementation partner based near your clients is the best option.  

Those three goals were met and exceeded. Several other personal goals and sidequests are also achieved. Let me tell you about it. 

My Search SEOul experience in a nutshell 

Here is why I had a particularly great experience at Search SEOul 2026: 

1. All the goals listed above were achieved. Some things, like our presentation of the AEO championship belts for Ascent AI and Search SEOul’s teams, went much better than expected. 
2. Networking with “international” SEO people is my favorite. Everyone is interesting or working with interesting people, and everyone traveled far to use this time productively, so I find people are pretty dialed in while still being able to enjoy Seoul. 
3. I got to squeeze in family time this trip. My sweet cousin Beth from Thailand popped over to see me while I was on her side of the planet and I was able to enjoy some much-appreciated time with my family. 
4. I love Seoul even more the second time. As a conference city, Seoul is maybe my favorite city to be stuck in. Food is as good as San Diego, the people are as relaxed and shy-but-friendly as a European event, and the city is almost-totally-convenient like Boston. 

Why was the networking so great? 

Because of how they set up the conference schedule plus the quality of the speaker lineup. 

VIP ticket holders and speakers basically had two days of networking opportunities before the conference. So with a super high quality speaker lineup and some S-tier marketing leaders in attendance, the quality of conversations was so high and productive early on. Then by the time the main conference ran on Thursday and Friday, the speakers were already relaxed and comfortable, meaning they were more able to focus on the attendees that had traveled in. 

Search SEOul 2026 speakers highlight

These are the speakers from Search SEOul that made the strongest impact on me. There were several top-tier speakers at this conference that I did not get a chance to watch or meet with outside of the event, so they are not included in this first highlight, but are listed at the end of this article for reference. 

Most impactful from Korea

Seyong Park (Danny Park)

CEO of Ascent AI / ListeningMind, one of the most respected names in enterprise SEO in both South Korea and Japan.

Seyong’s session was titled “From Prompt to Purchase: A GEO Strategy for D2C Brands in the Age of Agentic Commerce” and it was a perfect presentation to kick off the conference. 

Seyong Park was a bit of a spectacle at this conference. As CEO of Ascent AI, he has been one of Korea’s most influential SEO leaders for many years already. And clearly he is doing something right, as so many people at this conference once worked for him and seem to revere him as much as I do… which is a lot!

Cairrot was proud to recognize our partners and friends at Ascent AI as our first “Champion of AEO.” 

Seyong and I are so like-minded about “high-intent search” and performance marketing that I love to see how he incorporates that into Ascent’s keyword analysis and DaaS tool, ListeningMind, which is my favorite keyword analysis tool when doing analysis for brands operating in any combination of Japan, Korea, and the US. 

Ascent AI is a trusted Cairrot Garden Partner, meaning enterprise brands that are looking for reputable SEO/GEO consultancies out of Korea can feel confident working with Seyong’s team at Ascent. It was a pleasure to work with them in person in their homebase of Seoul and see the quality of their consultation team in-person. 

I wrote extensively about my personal experience with Ascent AI, Seyong Park, and Nam Hyun Choi on LinkedIn, shown below.  

In case the embed is not working, you can read the original post here ->

Learn more about Ascent AI and their DaaS platform ListeningMind -> 

Moojin Kang and Yunhee Choi (Artience)

Moojin is founder and CEO while Yunhee Choi is Cofounder and SEO/GEO Director of Artience, an SEO and GEO agency based in Seoul..

Things I like about Artience’s leadership include: 

• I love their branding. SEO has always been a mixture of science and art. I say it often but have never seen somebody try a merger like “Art-ience” and it actually works. 
• High competence. Both leaders showed me that they “get it” when it comes to running AEO campaigns that actually work. They represented themselves professionally while still showing that they have personality.
• Willing to travel abroad. I always respect when foreign founders and business leaders are willing to make the trip to the States. I know Yunhee plans to attend Tech SEO Connect in North Carolina in November, quite a far trip from Seoul.

Choi’s session was “Stop Writing for AI. Start Structuring Knowledge: Ontology for the Next Era of GEO.” 

I didn’t get a chance to speak with him directly, but Kang’s presentation was very helpful to me. His session was titled The 3-Layer Architecture of GEO: From SEO Foundations to LLM-Specific Optimization” which I am sure I will reference in future articles about Korean AEO.  

Yunhee’s presentation was titled “Stop Writing for AI. Start Structuring Knowledge: Ontology for the Next Era of GEO.” Yunhee did a fantastic job in her presentation. The way her presentation translates, “Oncology of SEO,” is fun to say and a very effective way to think about AEO/GEO for most people. 

I believe I will see Yunhee again at Tech SEO Connect 2026. I hope to see both again at Search SEOul in 2027. 

The Search SEOul speaker materials describe Choi as having 18 years of HQ-level SEO strategy work for multinational brands.

Artience’s is a Seoul agency specializing in SEO, GEO, and digital marketing for enterprise clients including Samsung, LG, and Hyundai-Kia.

Cristina Song and Jiyoung Lee (Xpandir)

Cristina Song is the SEO Lead and co-founder while Jiyoung Lee is the Digital Growth Strategist and co-founder of Xpandir, a Korean-based digital marketing firm focused on multinational brands expanding in Korea and Japan.

Why I like Cristina Song and Jiyoung Lee: 

• Focused and intelligent. Both women know their craft well. I especially enjoyed discussing SEO with Cristina and digital ads with Jiyoung. 
• High-charisma and flexible. Cristina was asked to step in as the MC on day 2 because she’s so charismatic (and speaks perfect English + Korean). Jiyoung rolled with punches on her international panel and made sure to provide value while also making other speakers look good. 
• They lift heavy objects. If you can’t tell by the biceps, Cristina and Jiyoung are both in the club 💪. If your SEO can’t expand their back, can you trust them to expand your brand?

More on Christina, Jiyoung, and Xpandir in future articles. 

Hyowon Brian Yang

Hyowon Brian Yang is SEO specialist at Hyundai Motor Company, one of South Korea’s most recognizable brands.

Yang’s session was “Rethinking GEO: An In-House Perspective on Search Everywhere Optimization.” As a Korean enterprise SEO operator, he stood out from many of the agency and consultancy rows.

Hyundai is an in-house setting. The talk title is the relevant public record: GEO from inside a global manufacturer, not from an agency advising one.

More on Hyowon Yang and his presentation is planned in our guide to Korean SEO, coming this month.

Long-time favorites (The most famous international SEO speakers everyone already knows)

Aleyda Solís

Founder of Orainti (based in Madrid) and easily the most famous speaker in the lineup, Aleyda Solís is an international SEO legend that I’ve followed for years. Why I like Aleyda: 

• Competent and pragmatic. I appreciate how little fluff is in her presentations, especially for someone who speaks so often. This is my 4th time seeing her live and I always end up taking new notes or photos of slides. 
• Prolific. She’s so well established, I doubt she has to work as hard as she does… and yet she does. I don’t know how she produces so much content while also being so attentive and dialed-in at these events. 
• High-charisma and attentive. Aleyda will draw eyeballs to your conference, and her presentation will always be great. But she goes the extra mile and makes the conference experience fun for everyone else too. She’s very attentive to guests and rising influencers. 

I don’t know where her energy comes from. Silva Martin never gets tired but she’s calm (Aleyda and Silvia are friends). Aleyda is not calm but also never gets tired. Her energy is contagious, which is another reason she’s a great choice for conference keynotes. 

Aleyda’s presentation was titled “Redefining Metrics for the AI Search Era: A 3 Layer Framework to Measure AI Presence, Readiness and Business Impact.” 

Aleyda did the team at Cairrot a huge favor by featuring me on her LinkedIn… thanks Aleyda!

For more from Aleyda, check out: 

• SEOFOMO (newsletter) 
• LearningSEO.io 
• Crawling Mondays (weekly podcast)

Jori Ford

Jori telling me that she was speaking here is the final straw that got me to buy my Search SEOul ticket. Her presentation did not disappoint! 

I was blessed with the chance to hang out with Jori’s family who came with her to Seoul… Her kids are so charming and total brainiacs (no surprise). I’m grateful for the time with her lovely family. 

I wrote extensively about Jori Ford in my 2026 SEO Week recap, see that to know some of the reasons I speak so highly of here. But some of the reasons include:

1. Presentations designed for leaders. Every time I see her speak I feel like she heard about a problem I’m having and she’s telling me how to handle it. If you know you’re competent but your messaging never gets across to leadership, Jori’s presentations are perfect for you.
2. Giving and gracious. Jori does not notice what you may be able to do for her. In fact it seems like she prefers to find attendees that are not getting attention and engage them. She highlighted me long before she knew what I was building or could offer.
3. Straight-shooter. If you go to her for advice, know that she is very good at being honest and concise while meeting people where they are at.

I also wrote buying a Search SEOul ticket because of her a few months ago:

Jori’s session was titled “SEO Needs Quality Gates, Not Audits: Engineering SEO Into the Dev Pipeline.” 

Ray Grieselhuber

Ray Grieselhuber is basically my favorite guy of 2026. Like, I get giddy when I know I’m going to hang out with Ray. 

Besides being ridiculously cool and charming, the fact that I always speak highly of Ray and DemandSphere (a competitor to Cairrot) should tell you how badass and dialed-in I think they are. 

Founder and CEO of DemandSphere, based in Columbus, Ohio. DemandSphere was founded in Tokyo in 2009 to 2010 and still has a strong presence in Japan.

Grieselhuber’s session was “Lessons from the Trenches of Enterprise AI Search.” 

Ray is actually a “Champion of AEO” recognized by Cairrot, but he receive his belt two weeks following Search SEOul when we both attended brightonSEO in San Diego. 

I’ll include a longer message about Ray and why I think he’s one of the best in the business in my brightonSEO 2026 recap next week. For now, check out his LinkedIn post about the custom AEO Championship Belt we gave him in San Diego.

Shout out to Takeru Muroya and Aaron Denny on the DemandSphere team. Takeru is the main man behind Japanese operations (like FOUND) and Aaron seems like Ray’s main man behind the sales org (he’s at literally every event with Ray). 

More about Ray and his team in my brightonSEO 2026 recap coming soon. 

Si Quan Ong (SQ) 

Si Quan Ong (SQ) is an SEO and marketing educator at Ahrefs, based in Singapore. 

When I saw him, I double-taked. He doesn’t do video content yet, but he’s been in my “S-tier” of SEO writers for years. His articles on Ahrefs are quite useful and digestible, and you can learn a lot about SEO tactics just by emulating how they are structured. 

Anyway, I think of SQ as a celebrity in our niche, and I was pretty delighted to find out he’s also a totally cool guy and every bit as intelligent as he seems in his writing. He speaks the Queen’s English and according to my friend Leon, he spoke multiple local Chinese dialects perfectly. I also noticed him speaking Korean with many locals (he says learning Korean is just a hobby). 

Oh and like a few others on this list, I couldn’t help but noticed how jacked SQ actually is. The man clearly lifts heavy objects, respect 💪.

My “new” favorite international SEO leaders to follow after Search SEOul

I put quotes on “new” just because many of these thought leaders, like Andre Alpar, Stephen Burns, and Silvia Martin, are already super famous and respected. I was just due for an update to my personal list of international SEO leaders to follow. 

Andre Alpar

Andre gave one of the top 3 presentations of the conference and is one of the new SEO leaders I am most interested in after this conference. 

Reasons I like Andre so much include: 

• Ridiculously smart and experienced. It’s very obvious when you’re speaking with him, but then you look up his resume and go “oh.” 
• Pragmatic. Like many smart people, it would be easy for Andre to let his message get lost in fluffy language or abstract details. But his points are very digestible and easy to visualize, which tells me he has been educating others for a long time. 
• Brotherly. Andre watches out for those around him. He saved me from a few clumsy mistakes in Korea which I will always appreciate. 

Alpar Ventures, based in Berlin.

Andre’s session was “#1 on Google, Invisible in ChatGPT? GEO Field-Tested Playbook to Make AI Systems Recommend Your Brand.” 

Learn more about Andre Alpar here ->

Natalia Witczyk

Natalia Witcyz is founder of Mosquita Digital, an international SEO firm for Google and non-Google engines, including Baidu and Naver. 

Some things that stood out about Natalia include:

• High charisma. Super magnetic, very fun and approachable. Peoples’ energy goes up when she is there.
• Legitimately loves SEO and other cultures. Perfect for what she’s doing, educating on international SEO around Europe and Asia. 
• Able to go in the weeds on multilingual SEO. We spoke a bit about English and Spanish SEO, I wish I had Polish clients so I could pick her brain on that. 

Natalia also has big biceps, as demonstrated in the championship photo above, which gets you bonus points on my list. She was a wonderful addition to the international SEO panel. I would like to see her present solo sometime. 

Raquel González and Isaac Díaz (Holafly) sat on the international SEO panel with her.

More on Natalia in our upcoming “International SEO influencers to watch” article. 

Stephen Burns

Stephen Burns from Common Crawl gave one of my top 3 sessions of the conference. It was titled “Training Data Is the New Ranking Factor.” It included a nugget about international AEO that I have repeated so many times since then (I won’t write it because it is too good to give away for free yet). 

Stephen is the Web Intelligence Lead at the Common Crawl Foundation, based in Redwood City, California. Burns’s session was “Training Data Is the New Ranking Factor.” 

Reasons I now follow Stephen:

• One of the most helpful presentations of the conference. I have already used several tactics I learned from his talk and am updating my workflows accordingly. 
• Interesting and well connected. Besides his work, which I find fascinating, Stephen is an engaging conversation and knows a lot about the leaders in our industry. 
• Super fun and easy to hang with. Despite the first two points, Stephen is actually interested in others and knows how to spotlight everyone and make them feel good. You definitely won’t be mad you invited Stephen to speak at your conference. 

Common Crawl publishes an open web crawl used as training and research data. I highly recommend checking out their free resources.

Jonathan Moore

Jonathan Moore is the founder of Jonathan Moore Consultancy, based in Cheltenham, England.

Jonathan’s session was titled “Seoul Searching: Debugging JavaScript for LLMs.” He gives an excellent breakdown of AEO complications caused by Javascript, which is a niche-but-very-important topic because many major brands have large websites built with javascript and don’t understand why they are getting ignored by LLMs. 

Editor’s note: The day before publishing, I spoke to an enterprise lead that came to us for a massive project related to issues with Javascript pages being read by LLMs. The timing is incredible, I’m glad I had Jonathan’s content from the conference to refer to.

Jonathan is a great hang, go-with-the-flow type of guy… No surprise, my time living in London taught me that the Brits just know how to hang like that. 

Silvia Martin

Silvia Martin Palacio is the founder of Trebole, an SEO consultancy based in London, specializing and technical SEO and strategy for multinational brands. She is as competent as they come in any language, the fact that she works with so many makes her truly unique.

There should be some sort of award for speakers who “feel” like a large presence without having to say much. Silvia Martin would win that award for this conference, in my opinion.

• Attentive to others. Most of the time I saw Silvia, she was investing time into others (speakers and attendees alike).
• High-energy yet relaxed. I spoke about it in Aleyda’s section. She just cruised through multiple 12 hour days most of the trip and it didn’t seem to affect her like it did me (and most regular people).
• High-culture. She’s lived in 5ish countries on 3 continents, works with brands in I-don’t-know-how-many languages, and is the first person to hype up Africa SEO to me. If you’re interested in multilingual SEO, you won’t run out of things to learn from her.

Silvia’s session was “Scaling Visibility Worldwide: SEO and Brand Growth in the Search-Everywhere Era.” I also like the “Search Everywhere” play on SEO, it’s the easiest way for most people to grasp the transition of SEO roles into the larger AEO or GEO set of responsibilities.

She has worked and or resided in several countries, including Spain, Canada, France, China, and the UK.

More on Silvia Martin in our upcoming article highlighting the most helpful SEO speakers around the world.

Anikó Hoang

Anikó Hoang has a great mind for digital PR and earned media. She is ridiculously charismatic and energetic. Anikó does a great job putting energy into attendees. Considering how prolific she already is at a young age, I could see her influence continuing to grow for a long time.

• High energy, high-charisma. 
• High competence in digital PR. 
• I like her views on earned media. 

Anikó Hoang is the Global Marketing Lead at Digital Web Solutions, based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Her session was “Break the News (and Rankings) with Digital PR.” Anikó is also attached to The Aspiring CMO interviews and to B2B creative work at DWS.

Best presentations specific to AEO in China, Japan, and Korea

These next three people are also on my “favorite new leaders” list. I just want to shout them out here because they each gave me something I was looking for in two slides or less: snapshots of which domains impact which ecosystems the most for AI search in China, Japan, and Korea specifically. 

Marcus Pentzek

Partner and Director of SEO at Jademond Digital, based in Guangzhou.

Marcus Pentzek gave one of my top 3 favorite presentation, titled “Beyond Baidu: Navigating China’s Fragmented Search and GEO Ecosystem.” He also sat on the Asia SEO panel. 

Things I liked about Marcus: 

• His presentation was fantastic. Like top 3 most useful slide decks for me. 
• His yellow shoes. They popped without being tacky. 
• Go with the flow kind of guy. He went straight from speaking to hanging out with me and Jori’s family to drinking in a Korean bar with us for most of the night. 
• Brilliant search marketer, expert in China SEO. I enjoyed hearing more of his thoughts about Chinese AEO after his presentation. In a nutshell, I am not surprised that Marcus is as well respected as he is after speaking with him for a few hours.

A Chinese firm has built part of their brand around Marcus, an import from Germany. Do you know how good you have to be for that to happen? 

Jademond Digital site is Guangzhou firm focused on Baidu SEO, Chinese social and ecommerce platforms, and Chinese AI search. Pentzek is co-author of SEO for China and the man behind Jademond’s Baidu ranking-factor studies (one of my new favorite references). 

More on Marcus Pentzek and his work in future articles!

Kenichi Suzuki

Search Advocate and executive officer at Faber Company, based in Tokyo.

Kenichi-san’s session was “SEO in Japan Today: How Search, Content, and Users Are Really Changing.” He also sat on the Asia SEO panel. 

He was easily the best source of information for Japanese SEO at the conference. His slide deck was very well laid out for learning, I find myself returning to the images I took often. He gave a useful “visibility ecosystem” chart for Japan as Marcus did for China.

Kenichi Suzuki’s content is actually ideal for westerners like me who need some “Japanese 101” + “Japanese SEO 101” at the same time. You can tell he’s been teaching others fora long time, he knows how to explain himself in a way that is easy to digest and cuts out fluff. Kenichi publishes 海外SEO情報ブログ (running since 2007) and writes the long-running “海外&国内SEO情報ウォッチ” column for Web担当者Forum.

More on Kenichi-san in future articles. Explore his content: 

• 海外SEO情報ブログ
• Faber Company

Sungwon Hwang

CEO of Blogtalk, based in South Korea.

Hwang’s session was “How Naver Blog SEO Works: Understanding Korea’s Unique Search Ecosystem.” 

I wanted to break into Naver rankings so badly when I was doing SEO in-house for an international UCaaS company. I tried hard to crack both Naver and Baidu back in 2018-2019, but realized the juice would not be worth the squeeze for me back then… at least not in a timeframe I could justify to leadership. But 2026 is such a different environment, and how great to able to return to this topic as AI makes multilingual SEO more accessible. 

Sungwon has a decade of hands-on Naver Blog SEO and names Blogtalk Planner as his analysis and planning tool. Blogtalk is a great resource for SEO and AI search trends in Korea -> 

Would I recommend going to Search SEOul 2027?

I’m going back in 2027, which is a strong endorsement, but it depends on what you are looking for and where you are as a business or professional.

Yes if you:

• Work on brands that need search visibility in Korea, Japan, China, or across East Asia
• Need market-specific tactics and ecosystem context, not only a global Google recap
• Want a smaller English-language room where speakers and operators from those markets are actually present
• Are looking for local implementation partners in Korea

Maybe if you can only choose one of the Big 3:

• Choose Shenzhen SEO Conference if the priority is China and the larger East-meets-West room. But it would be silly to attend Shenzhen in 2027 and not attend Search SEOul the week before.
• Choose FOUND Conference Tokyo if the priority is Japanese brands and partnerships. The next international edition is February 18-19, 2027.
• Choose Search SEOul if the priority is Korea, Naver-to-AI context, and the Ascent AI / Artience / Xpandir operator set. The next edition is currently listed as 28 September to 1 October 2027.

Search SEOul vs Shenzhen SEO Conference vs FOUND Conference

Shenzhen SEO Conference was probably the most impactful of 2026 as far as social media is concerned (Search SEOul is right behind it for online impact). I had the chance to hang out with Shenzhen SEO Conference founder, JP, and was so impressed. Seeing all the social media impact from it will have me extra sad that I missed it until I attend it next year (same cycle I’ve gone through with the FOUND Conference in Tokyo).

I’ve regretted missing FOUND for over a year now. I will be there in addition to Search SEOul and Shenzhen SEO next year, so clearly I endorse that one too. 

Conference photos and networking experiences

More photos will be available in the near future. Please contact me on LinkedIn to request photos from the event.

There are too many highlights from this trip to include in a blog, but here are a few: