Long-Time SEO & Industry Speaker Aaron Shear Passes Away

Aaron Shear, a real gem in the SEM industry, passed away Tuesday, November 3.

Aaron Shear was a well-respected industry personality in the SEM community, speaking at search conferences around the world, including PubCon and the old SES event. He also was involved in various SEO communities, including Moz, Search Engine Watch and many others.

His LinkedIn profile shares some of his outstanding experience, which includes:

Offering specialized SEO consulting for a broad vertical of companies. Greatest experience and wins with the e-commerce, real estate and automobile space. Past and present clients include, eBay, Shopping.com, Zappos.com, Zillow.com, BlueFly.com to name a few.

Arona Cirt Ackermann, a friend of Aaron Shear, posted on Facebook the following message:

With great sorrow we want to announce to Aaron’s friends, that he passed away last Tuesday, November 3. We have brought him home and as is customary in Jewish tradition, we are not delaying the funeral. He will be interned tomorrow, Friday, November 6 at 11:00 at Greenwood Memorial in San Diego. We hope that you will find comfort in your memories of Aaron and support each other in this difficult time. It is a great loss for us, his parents, and we will miss him very much. Please feel free to post any special memories you have of our son on this page. Judy and Brian Shear.

Brett Tabke of PubCon shared some more insight on Aaron’s legacy:

Saddened to hear of Aaron’s passing. He was a dear friend of the community and a brilliant mind. He was the ultimate “low key – no fuss guy”

He introduced me to so many great people like Tony Hsieh, Gray Garry Grant, and the entire eBay marketing team. He would annually bring 15–20 people from eBay: (“oh ya, they are a client”) he’d say in passing. One year he showed up and said, “Hey meet SEO.inc — they need like 10 passes and a 10×20 booth, thanks.”

We will miss him. Rest in peace Aaron.

Joseph Morin, another old timer in the industry remembers Aaron saying:

Aaron and I were business partners. I founded Boost Search Marketing in 2001. When the SEO market became crazy and overwhelming I sought out Aaron to come aboard as an equal partner. When I retired from SEO in 2007, Aaron continued to run it and eventually took it over, brilliant guy.

Incredibly saddened by the news today, the news literally came in within the exact same timeframe as a big client win so it was extremely hard to process both emotions in the same space. I chose to remain happy with the thought that he wasn’t fighting illness anymore since he has been degenerating so much recently and probably wasn’t enjoying life anymore. RIP Buddy, you will be missed.

(Photo of Aaron Shear by TopRank Online Marketing and used via Creative Commons license.)