The Industry Mourns The Loss Of Bill Slawski: The SEO Mentor To The Community

May 19, 2022 - 4:10 pm 8 by
Filed Under Search News

Bill Slawski

It pains me to write this - Bill Slawski, a man who has literally helped transform the SEO industry into what it is today, has passed away on Tuesday, May 17th. I've personally known Bill for two decades, starting when I first got into SEO and learning from Bill in the old Cre8asite Forums.

Bill Slawski is someone I would coin the mentor to the SEO community. He knew SEO better than most, he understood how search engines work inside and out and he understood how to build sites that work for users and search engines. But no, he didn't keep that knowledge to himself and look to cash in through easy money. Instead, he mentored me, he mentored you - the search community. From his writing on patents and SEO on SEO By The Sea to speaking at countless events, to hosting webinars and helping people on social. He was never shy when it came to correcting SEO myths and theories or to correct subtle inaccuracies on social. Heck, I referenced Bill's work on this site countless times. He was literally the man you could go to in order to validate anything on search and SEO.

That man, our SEO mentor, our educator, our instructor, our Bill is no longer with us. It is hard to think of an SEO industry without Bill Slawski. But he has left us with a huge amount of published knowledge on the internet, on social and on video. He has taught us all to be better SEOs, to dig deeper into the truth, to truly understand how search operates and to do it for the betterment of our colleagues and the search industry.

Bill was one of the few people to have two nominations for the say something nice about an SEO campaign I ran years ago, you can read that entry here. As you may remember, in December 2020, Bill had a stroke and he was recovering, he was super active during his recovery in the industry and continued to help the industry throughout. That lead to an outpouring of stories people shared online of how Bill has helped them over the years - take a moment to read some of those stories.

Bill - you have no idea how much you've impacted this industry. You will be deeply missed not just by those you've directly helped, but all the SEOs you helped indirectly through your knowledge.

We will miss you - may you rest in peace.

Here is some, not all, but some of the industry reaction to Bill's passing:

There is just so much more on social about how much this man meant to us all.

We will miss you Bill!

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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