About Will Critchlow
Will Critchlow is a SEO legend and founder of SearchPilot, an SEO testing and experimentation platform that helps enterprise websites prove the value of their SEO activity. SearchPilot was spun out of Distilled, the SEO agency Will co-founded in 2005 which was later acquired by Brainlabs. Will has been at the forefront of SEO innovation for many years, particularly in testing and measuring SEO.
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Who is Will Critchlow?
Born in the UK, Will grew up in Yorkshire which he describes as a surprising hotbed of SEO talent. The region produced several well known SEO folk including his brother Tom Critchlow and other big names in the industry like Dave Naylor and Patrick Altoft.
Early Years and Education
Will’s entrepreneurial journey started early, his dad ran his own business and Will had a front row seat to the operational side of running a company from a young age. He watched his dad balance the books and handle direct mail marketing campaigns. This early exposure to business operations would later serve him well in his own entrepreneurial ventures.
As a kid Will wanted to be an inventor and would spend hours drawing designs for things like electric skateboards on large drafting paper. These inventions never came to fruition but the creative thinking and problem solving skills would later serve him well in the tech industry.
The Entrepreneurial Journey
Will’s journey into business started in his teenage years when he and his future co-founder, Duncan Morris, whom he met at 11, started running small businesses. They ran cricket coaching camps and built websites in the early days of the internet when they were young enough to have no disadvantage in understanding new web technologies.
After university Will worked in the corporate world for about 2.5 years including a stint in strategy consulting. The lightbulb moment came during a late night session at a client’s office when he realized if he was going to work this hard he wanted to do it for himself. This led to the founding of Distilled with Duncan Morris.
Current Projects that Will is Excited About
Will is currently focused on SearchPilot where he’s working on changing how large organisations approach and validate their SEO activity. The company is going through many changes across multiple fronts:
- Product Development
- How they develop their product
- Customer centric features
- Market needs
- Go-to-Market Strategy
- Rebuilding their sales process
- Positioning in the market
- Enterprise Integration
- Getting out of the “SEO bubble” within the organisation
- Engaging with product teams and leadership
- Making SEO accountable and measurable like paid channels
The main challenge Will is tackling is helping organisations understand and value their organic search channel. As he says “Organic search is probably their biggest channel. It’s a bigger channel than the things they’re spending millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions on and simultaneously it’s the one they understand least well.”
Tactical and Strategic SEO Advice from Will
Common SEO Myths Debunked
- Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
- While important for user experience, they’re not direct ranking factors
- At best, they serve as tiebreakers in search rankings
- More important for conversion rates and crawl performance
- Domain Authority
- Moz’s Domain Authority metric is not used by Google
- Google likely has its own domain authority concept
- Higher domain strength is beneficial but doesn’t guarantee rankings
- Meta Keywords
- No evidence they affect Google rankings
- Only useful for internal search functionality
- Meta descriptions, however, can significantly impact click-through rates
- Social Media Signals
- Most social signals are not directly visible to Google
- May have indirect effects through user behavior and secondary links
- Should be pursued for their own value, not for direct SEO benefit
SEO Best Practices and Insights
- Content Length
- Longer content doesn’t automatically improve rankings
- Content should match user intent and search purpose
- Quality and relevance matter more than length
- Link Building
- Both quantity and quality matter
- Links are crucial for getting content indexed
- Quality becomes more important as sites mature
- Website Redesigns
- Can impact SEO positively or negatively
- Most impacts come from re-engineering rather than visual changes
- Careful testing and iteration are necessary
- Internal Linking
- Generally beneficial for SEO
- Helps with crawl budget allocation
- Can be overdone if focused too much on exact match anchor text
Testing and Verification
Will emphasizes the importance of testing and verification in SEO. Through SearchPilot, he’s observed that many commonly held SEO beliefs don’t hold up under scientific testing. He advocates for:
- Running controlled experiments
- Measuring actual impact rather than relying on assumptions
- Using data to drive decision-making
- Testing new templates and changes before full deployment
Where Does Will See the Future of SEO Going?
Will envisions several key trends shaping the future of SEO:
- Data-Driven Approach
- More scientific testing and experimentation
- Increased focus on measurable results
- Greater emphasis on proving ROI
- User-Centric Evolution
- Growing importance of user experience signals
- More alignment between user satisfaction and rankings
- Integration of user behavior metrics
- Business Integration
- Better recognition of SEO’s value at the executive level
- More respect in P&L channel meetings
- Integration with broader business strategies
- AI and Search Evolution
- AI will be a sustaining innovation for Google
- Search will continue to grow alongside AI
- New competition will drive innovation in search
How to Get in Contact with Will
While specific contact information wasn’t provided in the transcript, Will Critchlow can be found through:
Conclusion
Will Critchlow brings a unique perspective to SEO, combining deep technical knowledge with business acumen and a scientific approach to testing and verification. His message to the SEO community emphasizes the importance of continuous learning, staying curious, and avoiding gatekeeping. As he notes, “Nobody’s born knowing this stuff,” and the industry benefits from being both rigorous in its standards while remaining welcoming to newcomers.
His work with SearchPilot continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in SEO testing and measurement, helping to transform how large organizations approach and value their organic search channels. As the industry evolves, Will’s emphasis on data-driven decision-making and scientific testing provides a valuable framework for SEO professionals at all levels.
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