Rögnvaldur “Reggie” Gudmundsson

“Reggie” (Rögnvaldur Gudmundsson) is the SEO Manager of Aftonbladet, the biggest newspaper in Sweden and the biggest domestic website.  In his two years with the paper, there has been a deep cultural shift: SEO has gone from something we are “too big to care about” to be an integral part of the company’s strategy and a normal part of the daily editorial workflow.

The website’s search engine traffic has predictably skyrocketed as well – by about 230% – due to both editorial and technical improvements.

There has been an enormous knowledge transfer and a huge transformation in the tools and processes at the journalists’ disposal, but perhaps the greatest accomplishment is convincing ca. 150 journalists to care about SEO – without having any formal authority over them at all.

Reggie has a background in management and leadership and learned SEO in the highly competitive travel industry of Iceland – his home country. He’s married to an American costume designer named Kalere and they have a young daughter named Valkyrja.