International Women’s Day is today, a day for collecting inspirational women everywhere and a day to reflect on our ongoing journey to a more gender balanced world.
We have come a long way since 1918, when women in the UK gained the right to vote. But there is still a lot more to be done. To this day, the business environment is still dominated by men, and this is still true in the SEO industry, where the percentage of Women is only 30%.
Having recently joined Authoritas and being very new to the SEO industry. I wanted to highlight on International Women’s Day some of the leading women in the SEO industry, who are an inspiration to those of us who are just starting out.
The candidate selection was based on recommendations over the past weeks and months from my Authoritas colleagues about who I should follow (thanks to Marcus and Askar) and although not scientific the selection is based on their authority, frequency of speaking during SEO events, media publications, and community they have developed around their personal brand and articles or videos I have found interesting on my short journey so far in SEO.
1# Hannah Thorpe
Hannah is a great SEO specialist, with experience working across multiple digital marketing disciplines. Although I’ve not met her in person (yet!) some of my ex-Linkdex colleagues speak very highly of her. She speaks on many topics from resolving on-site technical issues to creating large integrated campaigns! Hannah is an experienced speaker, she has presented at BrightonSEO, SMX Advanced, Search London and UnGagged in London & Vegas. She is also a regular blogger for State of Digital and Search Engine Watch and a winner of “Young Search Professional of the Year” 2017 Award. I will definitely keep an eye on her in the upcoming year!
Here is a link to Hannah’s blog post and a video “From Search To Discovery/The Changing Face of Search Engines” this is very good, very easy to read or watch, she is a great presenter, so engaging!
2# Aleyda Solis
Aleyda is a top class professional and her LinkedIn bio says everything about her: Aleyda Solis is an International SEO Consultant and founder of Orainti a highly specialized, boutique SEO consultant, blogger (Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Moz), speaker (with more than 100 conferences in 20 countries in English and Spanish) and author (of “SEO, Las Claves Esenciales”).
She was awarded the European Search Personality of the Year in 2018, included in Forbes “Top 10 Online Marketing Experts To Follow In 2015”, in Entrepreneur as one of the “50 Online Marketing Influencers To Follow In 2016”, and in Hubspot as one of the “59 Female Marketing and Growth Experts You Should be Following”,
She has helped world renowned brands like Eastpak and Under Armour to startups like The Hungry House and Zillow. Working in competitive SEO industries, in multilingual environments and Web migrations there is no stopping her! She also has her own YouTube channel, it is brilliant, definitely check out her most recent video “Recovering your Organic Traffic after a Web Migration Gone wrong- #CrawlingMondays 6th Episode: She has done it all! She is a clear example of a successful woman who is reaching new heights in a predominantly male dominated industry.
3# Alexandra Tachalova
Alexandra Tachalova has worked in digital marketing for over six years. She is a digital marketing consultant, helping digital businesses with content marketing, social media, link building and PR. Since leaving SEMRush she has founded and worked on her own Digital Marketing conference for professionals called “Digital Olympus” which takes place in Wroclaw, Poland. The principal aim of this project is to bring value to the digital marketing community. This is a great achievement and is especially inspiring for women like me who want to start up their own businesses one day. By the way did you know that only 5% of venture capitalist funds go to a woman? Alexandra is a frequent speaker, and you can find her at all the major search industry events such as BrightonSEO, Ungagged, SEOzone, SMX, SEMdays, and many more. She also blogs often check out her post at Digital Olympus blogging about, “How to Supercharge Your Content Promotion”. This post is very informative and her personality comes across throughout the post it is great! She is a great Industry role-model for us all, whether you are a man or a women.
4# Cécile Beroni
Cécile is a great SEO professional and the Authoritas team had the pleasure of working with her for one of our projects with Priceminister, (Rakuten Group). She is currently heading SEO at Rakuten France (One of the biggest e‑commernce market places in Europe), she is very professional and can answer any question regarding the challenges of SEO visibility growth and can initiate marketing, technical, IA and editorial projects to increase the volume of visits and sales. She has more than 8 years of digital expertise in SEO oriented optimization strategy. Her main challenge is to identify and implement projects that contribute significantly to the growth of the company’s business. She composes and manages Big Data, Content, UX, Marketing and IT topics and relies on collective intelligence to innovate and undertake projects with high value creation. At the head of the SEO team, she manages millions of visitors each month from organic search, which remains the second largest source of traffic to this huge e‑commerce site. Watch this video of Cécile talking about “Predictive SEO and Big Data, the new levers of performance”. I would definitely recommend keeping an eye on her further successes this year!
5# Izzi Smith
Izzi Smith is a very positive and energetic lady, whom my team met last year during our Brighton SEO Q&A session! They said it was a great pleasure to speak with her and she taught the team some valuable insights! Izzi is the UK & USA SEO Manager for Sixt.com (the global car hire business), where she works as part of their large, international in-house team. She is especially passionate about structured data, SERPS and user behaviour. She is the free spirit of SEO, a great asset for the female community in the SEO industry. Check out Izzi’s podcast, The Izzi & Nils Show. This is hands-down hilarious, a fun way to learn about SEO.
6# Alexandra Martin
Alexandra started her SEO career back in 2008, with an internship at a web agency. Since then she has evolved a lot! She is passionate, generous and sharp with huge experience in SEO. See for yourself, check out her blog post, “10 steps to increase your blog traffic by 600% in three months”. She is an experienced Search Engine Optimization Consultant with a demonstrable history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), E‑commerce, Web Analytics, and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). She has developed an extremely strong personal brand in France and founded her own Consulting Agency “Miss SEO Girl”. I am so inspired by her entrepreneurial spirit! Alexandra is clearly very proud of being a woman, I’m looking forward to hearing more from her in 2019.
7# Rae Dolan
Hey, you may know Rae already, but I’ve decided to add her to this list for this year’s celebration, even though she has recently announced that she is officially retiring from the SEO industry and has stepped down from Push Fire (22nd March 2018)! PushFire is a digital marketing agency founded by industry veterans which focuses on producing ROI for PPC and other digital advertising campaigns. She has contributed a lot to the SEO industry and helped to drive female diversity! So, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you, Rae, I hope you enjoy your retirement from SEO and wish you all the best in all your future endeavors! You are a real inspiration. Check out one of her final blog posts “How to make your WordPress website secure (SSL) in 6 steps”.
8# Samantha Noble
Samantha is an SEO & Paid Media Expert who has been working in digital marketing since early 2005. She founded “Biddable Moments” in 2016 and is working with in-house brands and digital marketing agencies supporting their teams with all things related to paid media, check out one of her blog posts about “Increasing Customer Loyalty And Lifetime Value (LTV) Using Paid Media”– It is brilliant!
Over the years she has spoken at leading events across the world including SearchLove, PubCon, Webbdagarna, Ungagged, The Inbounder, SMX, SES, BrightonSEO, RIMC and many more. Since 2015 she has sat on the judging panel for numerous awards including the UK and US Search Awards, the MENA Search Awards, the Performance Marketing Awards, the DANI Awards, and the Biddable Media Awards. Most importantly, she has also founded the Digital Females groupwhich now has in excess of 750 members and has held 16 events to date, which is fantastic to see.
9# Annie Cushing
Annie Cushing, aka Annielytics, makes data sexy and teaches marketers how to do the same through a variety of training resources provided by her own Annielytics consultancy. Annielytics is a boutique marketing agency based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, that specializes in web analytics, data visualization, and SEO. Her passion is training other marketers. To that end, they offer online courses, as well as on-site training for companies. Check out one of her posts- (she is the bomb), “Google Analytics Campaign Tagging Disasters In the Wild: an Exposé”. Annie has also written a book which is due to be released in May 2019, “Making Data Sexy”. This is definitely on my wish list and so it should be on yours. Look at her Google Docs one of her many examples that, Annie is a woman who SEO women should look up to. She wants to encourage women to become more involved in market data and it is not scary but attractive. Congratulations on your book (please send me a signature copy !)
10# Areej AbuAli
Last but not least, Areej AbuAli who used to be our favourite Account Manager here at Authoritas. Areej is now Head of SEO at Verve Search where she leads on all things technical and on-site SEO. Here is one of her blog posts from VerveSearch “Become an SEO Super-star: Learn to Code”. She has been in the industry for the past 5 years and is passionate about solving complex technical site issues and experimenting with new technologies. Areej shall soon be speaking for the first time at BrightonSEO, talking about; “Restructuring Website Indexability”- we’ll all be there to watch and cheer her on. I understand from my colleagues she has an unlimited craving for chocolate (although now she is raising money for “BHF” by boycotting any chocolate consumption!). The team here are very proud of you Areej and believe that she is a rising star in the industry.
So, I would like to wish women everywhere all the appreciation you deserve and keep thriving, keep driving businesses, keep inspiring newcomers like me! This International Women’s Day is not a simple celebration but a true representation of the cultural and political achievements of women. However, this day is also a call of action to balance the genders in the workplace and make everyone equal. The SEO industry has changed a lot in the past few years, but there is still more to be done and let’s increase that 30% of Women in SEO #BalanceforBetter #IWD2019 #SEO
Additional Credits:
I saved the best till last, I cannot forget to mention the women of Authoritas, you are so focused, determined, and inspiring. Authoritas would not be where it is today without our leading ladies:
- Penny Holt– https://www.linkedin.com/in/penny-holt-92a9501/
- Cecile Delattre– https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecile-agnus-delattre-8ba15bb4/
- Belita Limbu– https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellita-limbu-b29312128/
- Carrie Shepherd– https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-shepherd-316480143/
- Tina Mohan– https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinainlondon/
- Lauren Adie– https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenadie/
- Harriet Jones– https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriet-jones-63345b157/