SEO SAS

In this final episode of the year 2023, discover Areej's wins and setbacks during the past year and celebrate with her the new initiatives. A couple of months away from our 5 year anniversary we already have much to rejoice about. Areej and Isaline share what's next for the podcast in 2024.You can connect with Areej through her LinkedIn and Twitter/X and her Website.You can connect with Isaline through her LinkedIn and Twitter/X and her Website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.

Veruska is a Multilingual SEO & Localization Consultant with 20+ years of experience with brands wanting to enter non-English-speaking markets. With a background in sociology & sociolinguistics, she follows a culturalized approach to SEO and Localization. In this episode, she discusses the benefits and opportunities that emerge from years of experience, while not neglecting to discuss the challenges that such accrued wisdom may entail. There's a necessity to focus on societal stereotypes and false impressions regarding ageing in the workplace. For Veruska, part of our mission should be challenging these preconceived notions and reframing the discourse on ageing. She explains how mentorship and the exchange of knowledge play a role in capitalizing on career longevity. We also find out what inspires Veruska and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Veruska through her LinkedIn and Twitter/X and her Website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

Originally from the US and now living in Germany, Adriana Stein is the CEO and founder of the marketing agency AS Marketing. She leads a team of multi-language marketing experts who develop holistic international marketing strategies for global companies. In this episode, she discusses the personal and professional challenges she has faced as a marketing agency CEO, and how she found ways to overcome them. From her burnout to breakthroughs, she shares the lessons she learned while scaling her agency such as to how to standardise operations (project, client communication and processes) and why she nearly removed herself from daily operations with clients. We also find out what inspires Adriana and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Adriana through her LinkedIn and Twitter/X and her Website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.

Kavi Kardos is an altruistic SEO evangelist with nine years' experience leading organic search strategy for top companies in entertainment, cybersecurity, education, and beyond. A former Mozzer, she is the creator of Moz Academy's Technical SEO Certification and a contributor to Whiteboard Friday and the Professional's Guide to SEO. Kavi is currently Director of SEO at Uproer. When she's not obsessing over spreadsheets, Kavi can be found hosting pub quizzes for Geeks Who Drink or watching baseball with a good drink in hand. In this episode, she discusses how to recognize toxicity in the workplace and know when it's time to leave an SEO job. SEOs often find themselves isolated at work, functioning as a team of one and/or reporting to stakeholders who don't fully understand and support their goals. She shares how she learned to recognize the difference between constructive and non-constructive feedback, how to take accountability for failure while keeping mental health a priority, and the lessons she has taken from her experiences into managing a team herself. She would like her WTS episode to serve as encouragement and empowerment for anyone in a bad environment to advocate for themselves and find the work that brings them fulfilment. We also find out what inspires Kavi and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Kavi through her LinkedIn and Twitter/X.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

Ebere Jonathan is a Medical Technologist who found love in the Digital Marketing space. She got into Tech SEO through Chima Mmeje's FCDC Initiative and worked as a Contract SEO Specialist with The Gray Dot Company. She spends most of her time auditing and analysing websites for opportunities to improve their performance. When she's not working, Ebere spends her time reading or getting updates and making friends on social media.She discusses how to build a connected and inclusive SEO remote workforce. The issue of mental health and inclusiveness in the workplace has gained significant awareness in recent years. However, in today's world of remote working, how can we extend this knowledge to our remote workers from diverse backgrounds? In this episode, Ebere shares her positive and negative experiences working remotely, how companies have made her feel included and how other companies can help make their remote team feel a sense of belonging.We also discover what inspires Ebere and empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Ebere through her LinkedIn and Twitter/X.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

Melissa Popp is the Content Strategy Director at RicketyRoo. She works with clients to create engaging and authoritative content that dominates local search results. In this episode, Melissa shares how she found herself in an unexpected situation when she was laid off from a job she loved due to company-wide downsizing. She wasn't prepared for this sudden change, and the experience left her scrambling for the next opportunity. In her haste and panic, she accepted a job offer that she wasn't entirely sure about. She was thankful for the employment, but as she settled into the role, she realized it wasn't the right fit for her. This experience became a major setback in her career. She discusses how to be prepared for change, how to evaluate the next steps to bounce back aligned with your career goals. We also find out what inspires Melissa and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

Shé Langley is a full-stack digital marketer with over 17 years of experience in helping businesses grow their online presence. Since 2018 Shé has been the caregiver for her mother while raising two children with her husband. Being an SEO professional and entrepreneur (Shé runs her agency Rank Lift) has had its benefits and disadvantages during this period. In this week's episode, Shé shares one of the lessons she has learned: ways to package SEO skills to make them scalable. We also find out what inspires Shé and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Shé through her LinkedIn, and Rank Lift Website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

In this week's episode, Preeti Gupta shares mistakes she made in her messaging, branding, her website, and the blog posts she has written during her first year as a SEO consultant. She is a consultant and founder of Packted. She offers 1:1 SEO coaching, courses, and shares resources to learn SEO. Preeti genuinely discusses how she defined her services, their pricing and how she started targeting her customers. We find out what inspires Preeti and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Preeti through her LinkedIn, X and her Website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

In this week's episode, Esther Akinsola, a content marketer for travel Saas startups and small businesses, shares how she pivoted into an SEO role. It does not look like a one size fits all or a linear process. It is an intentional path involving personal development, research and learning. Esther shares how she finds enthusiasm and curiosity and stays aligned with her vision and her goals. She genuinely discusses how she answered her why and her what and how she just goes out to achieve it. We find out what inspires Esther and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Esther through her LinkedIn, X and her Website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

In this week's episode, Jo Juliana Turnbull (SEOJoBlogs) shares tips for freelancing that no one talks about. Jo finds that many people talk about how they make more working freelance than working at an agency or in house and how much better their life is when going freelance but sometimes we do not always hear the stories on how to get those good clients, to have enough cash in the bank or manage our own time to not feel overwhelmed or burnt out. Jo shares how she manages her workload and 3 tips that helped her avoid burnout over the years. She discusses how to deal with money that flows differently when one is a consultant and reflects on how she found leads as a consultant. We also find out what inspires Jo and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with SEOJoBlogs through her LinkedIn, X and her Website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

In this week's episode, Heba Said shares how she has started her SEO Consultancy after working several years for world famous brands as an in-house SEO. She shares how she leverages her knowledge about multilingual SEO to convert clients, how she adjusts her language and offer during the pitching process to her client's needs and current knowledge of SEO. She also discusses the Arabic-speaking markets and how getting organised has helped her get her SEO consultancy up and running. We find out what inspires Heba and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.

In this week's episode, Sara Greta Koivikko shares what it is like to work with a neurodiversity. She discusses what she means when she says ‘being on the spectrum', her personal tips to manage time and work relations (including adjusting to British politeness) and how she is able to intensely focus on tasks. She also tells how co-workers can be mindful and what she has learned about herself. We find out what inspires Greta and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Greta through her LinkedIn and Twitter.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.How to get involved?We're on a mission to amplify women in the SEO industry. Joining the Women in Tech SEO community is open and free for all women in the SEO industry.Become a part of over 5,000 active members on our Slack group, Facebook group and through our social media channels: join now.

In this week's episode, Sara Moccand-Sayegh shares how she joined a new team when she started as an SEO specialist in an agency. She discusses how often she saw her recommendations implemented during the first year, how she built trust as an SEO and what she learned about herself. We also find out what inspires Sara and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Sara through her LinkedIn and Twitter and her website.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.How to get involved?We're on a mission to amplify women in the SEO industry. Joining the Women in Tech SEO community is open and free for all women in the SEO industry.Become a part of over 5,000 active members on our Slack group, Facebook group and through our social media channels: join now.

In this week's episode, Alice Roussel, Growth Marketing Manager, shares how she quitted manager roles for operational roles and discusses how what can be seen as an unconventional career path brought her. We also find out what inspires Alice and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Alice through her LinkedIn and Twitter and her website MerciLarry.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.How to get involved?We're on a mission to amplify women in the SEO industry. Joining the Women in Tech SEO community is open and free for all women in the SEO industry.Become a part of over 5,000 active members on our Slack group, Facebook group and through our social media channels: join now.

In this week's episode, Katherine Nwanorue shares how she landed her first job as an SEO down to the nitty gritty of ‘job-hunting like a job' and how to prepare and dress for the interview - even as a videoconference. We also find out what inspires Katherine and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Jo through her LinkedIn and Twitter and on her website Tech SEO Journal.You find this episode transcript and all other transcripts on WTS Website.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.How to get involved?We're on a mission to amplify women in the SEO industry. Joining the Women in Tech SEO community is open and free for all women in the SEO industry.Become a part of over 5,000 active members on our Slack group, Facebook group and through our social media channels: join now.

In this week's episode, Jo O'Reilly, Digital PR Manager, shares how she approaches public speaking as a first time speaker down to the nitty-gritty of preparing her pitch as a speaker, dealing with rejection and preparing for the D-day. We also find out what inspires Jo and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.You can connect with Jo through her LinkedIn and Twitter.You find this episode transcript and all other transcript on WTS Website.Resources from the episode:Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver BurkemanIntroducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.How to get involved?We're on a mission to amplify women in the SEO industry. Joining the Women in Tech SEO community is open and free for all women in the SEO industry.Become a part of over 5,000 active members on our Slack group, Facebook group and through our social media channels: join now. 

In this intro episode, Areej and Isaline get together to chat about the upcoming season 4 for WTSPodcast. Discover what's coming up in 2023.Introducing #WTSPodcastThe Women in Tech SEO Podcast is THE podcast starring women in the SEO industry. We're on a mission to amplify all the brilliant women in our industry! Our guests share their story with us and what empowers them. Each episode provides you with tips and resources on how to navigate your career in your own way.Where to find Women in Tech SEO?Twitter: @techseowomen and #WTSPodcast Website: womenintechseo.comAny question about WTSPodcast? Ask our host on Twitter: @isaline_margot or via our Slack.How to get involved?We're on a mission to amplify women in the SEO industry. Joining the Women in Tech SEO community is open and free for all women in the SEO industry.Become a part of over 5,000 active members on our Slack group, Facebook group and through our social media channels: join now. 

In this bonus episode, Areej and Sarah get together to chat about stand-out episodes, what Google did good and bad this year, and predictions for SEO in 2022. Thanks to all of our guest speakers, sponsors, and listeners - we wouldn't have the #WTSPodcast without you. Roll on Season 4 in 2022! Stand out episodes: https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/imposter-syndrome-kristie-plantiga (Kristie Plantinga) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/the-one-where-we-discuss-creating-content-for-both-search-engines-humans-with-abby-reimer (Abby Reimer) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/ethics-disinformation-jamie-indigo (Jamie Indigo) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/forecasting-seo-miracle-inameti-archibong (Miracle Inameti-Archibong) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/xml-sitemaps-michelle-race (Michelle Race) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/large-scale-website-migrations-katherine-ong (Katherine Ong) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/discuss-relevancy-digital-pr-beth-nunington (Beth Nunnington) https://wtspodcast.captivate.fm/episode/the-one-where-we-discuss-ecommerce-seo (Laura Brady) Shoutout to 2021 sponsors: https://www.deepcrawl.com/ (Deepcrawl) https://www.mediasesh.com/ (MediaSesh) https://thisisnovos.com/ (Novos) https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ (Screaming Frog) https://www.wincher.com/ (Wincher) --- Episode transcript Areej: Hey everyone, welcome to today's bonus episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I am super excited to be here, joined by my awesome co-host Sarah.  Hey Sarah! Sarah: Hello, this feels like we've not done this in a long time, isn't it? Areej: I know. I know. I'm really excited. I love that you bought up this idea a few weeks ago, of us doing an end-of-year bonus episode for everyone. Sarah: Yes, I thought it would be a cool idea just to do a bit of a recap and also record a podcast with you because yes, I said, it's just good to spend some time with you on the podcast. Areej: Oh yes, absolutely love that. I can't even believe it's December already, and we launched this podcast in April. I think we started talking about it in January or February, so definitely at the very beginning of the year. Sarah: Yes, definitely and we've done and dusted season three and we're going into season four and I'm just like, how? Where has that time gone? I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed myself because I don't know about you, but every time I get to speak to an amazing individual in the industry and pick their brains, it's awesome, isn't it? Areej: Yes, I completely agree. I can't believe the calibre of guests we've had throughout, we've had so some brilliant women come on board and we've just discussed all topics as well. Sarah: Yes, and I think that's key, isn't it? The number of varied topics that we've covered. I suppose that leads us into my first question, the first topic that I thought we could go into, where we discuss our standout episodes from our last seasons. Now I know this is going to be very hard, and I don't know about you, but I was going through all the episodes and I was, "How do I pick this? I just want to pick them all," but I have managed to whittle down to three. How about you? Areej: Oh yes, I found it impossible. I thought it was so difficult, to be honest. I went through a lot of them and because also, we've been listeners to some and then we've been hosts to others, which I think might make us a little bit biased as well. I'm happy to try my best and give it a go. Maybe you can start with saying one, you've absolutely loved and I can try to follow. Sarah: The first one that I picked out, was Kristie Plantinga who discussed imposter syndrome. Now, the reason why I picked this one out was that this topic was so-- it's such a passion area of mine. I think all of us, or most of us feel imposter syndrome, not just in SEO, but in work in general. It was just such a great episode because we were discussing it all and...

In this week's episode, we chat with Laura Hogan, Owner of Sweet Digital Agency, about running and scaling an agency. Where to find Laura: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauralouseo/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/lauralouise90 (Twitter) https://www.sweetdigital.co.uk/ (Website) Resources from the episode: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ (Search Engine Journal) https://searchengineland.com/ (Search Engine Land) --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They've just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk). Where to find Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ (Website) https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/screamingfrog (Twitter) https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO (YouTube) https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ (Facebook) --- Episode Transcript: Areej AbuAli: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. I'm Areej AbuAli and I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO and I am your host today. Today's episode is all about running and scaling an agency and joining me is the brilliant Laura Hogan, who is the founder of Sweet Digital. Hey Laura? Laura Hogan: Hey, are you all right? Areej: Yes, I'm good. Thanks. How are you? Laura: Good, thank you so much for having me on. Areej: Yes. Thank you so much for joining. I'm really, really excited about today's episode. We've worked together before through Women in Techs SEO initiatives so thank you for jumping on the podcast with us. Laura: Not a problem. Hopefully, I can give some useful information to people. Areej: I'm sure you will. Can you give a little bit of an overview about yourself and what you do and everything we want to know about Sweet Digital? Laura: Yes, so I launched Sweet two, two and a half, three years ago now. It started just me in my kitchen with my dog, and we're just under 10 people today. We've had some really lovely growth over the last couple of years. We're pretty much a full-service digital marketing agency. We have team members in the UK. One of our team members moved to Spain last year and then we've got a team in South Africa as well. Basically, anybody who's really good who wants a role, we don't really care where you live, which is brilliant. Areej: I Love that. Laura: Yes. It's so much fun. Areej: I remember a few-- I think maybe it was right before COVID, you were definitely much smaller then. How was COVID for you with the agency growth and how did that go? Laura: I think like every agency when it first hit and the UK closed down, there were definitely a few days of tears and a lot of panicking initially about what might happen. But you know what, I just put my big girl pants on and we knuckled down. There was only three of us in the company at the time that COVID first hit and we just knuckled down, and really worked on the sales, really worked on the partnerships that we had and really worked on making sure that we retained the client base that we did have. When COVID hit, our biggest clients were in leisure and hospitality and travel, which were probably- Areej: Oh no. Laura: -the hardest hit industries but we just supported our clients. I think that was the key thing. Nobody cancelled a contract with us, which we're so fortunate of. We worked with them to scale down their retainers for a bit, and to be there as that support for them. Obviously, in the meantime, we were working to...

In this week's episode, we chat with Levi Williams-Clucas, SEO Specialist at StrategiQ, about local SEO and the importance of reputation, reviews and trust. Where to find Levi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leviwilliamsclucas/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/Femkepants (Twitter) Resources from the episode: https://academy.brightlocal.com/ (BrightLocal Academy) BrightLocal blog https://strategiq.co/strategiq-hub/learn/ (StrategiQ blog) --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They've just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk). Where to find Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ (Website) https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/screamingfrog (Twitter) https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO (YouTube) https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ (Facebook) --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. I am Sarah McDowell, an SEO content executive, and I will be your host for today. Joining me I have the wonderful Levi Williams-Clucas, who is an SEO specialist at StrategiQ, and they will be talking to us today about Local SEO. Welcome to the show, Levi. Levi: Hello, hello. Thank you for having me. Sarah: Thank you for giving up your time and agreeing to spend Wednesday afternoon with me. Have you had a good day? Levi: I've had a great day. Yes, it's been nice and sunny outside, and I've been able to pet my cats today, so very happy. Sarah: Sounds like a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday. To kick things off, I want to ask you how you got into this wonderful world of SEO, and how you ended up being an SEO specialist at the agency StrategiQ? Levi: I've always been into marketing, and I did my degree in marketing and was ready to go as soon as I came out of uni. It didn't work that way and I ended up having a bunch of random temp jobs, and then got my first proper agency job at StrategiQ as a Digital PR. I decided it wasn't for me and thankfully my manager noticed an interest in me for SEO and suggested it and shout out to Chris Green if anybody knows him. He suggested, "Would you like to move into SEO?" I thought, "Yes, I'm going to give that a crack." I've been happy as a pig in the mud ever since really. It's my calling. Sarah: I love that saying "Happy as a pig in mud," I've not heard that one before. Levi: Oh, that's one of my favorites. Sarah: That's awesome that within your agency, then someone who worked with you was able to identify a whole area that you would be interested in. I think that's really cool. Levi: Yes. Sarah: Cool. What one bit of advice would you give other women starting out in the industry? Levi: I had to go think about this, because there's a lot of things that I think I would like to give as advice to women in the industry, but I think my main one is not to change who you are or what you believe in, to fit into something that other people say you should be or should believe in. How you look, sound, how you identify, really doesn't have any impact on how good you are at your job, and how well you can learn what you need to do to succeed in your role. You should really remind yourself of that when you feel like you've been treated otherwise, and prove those people wrong. I have, I'm here, I'm covered in tattoos and piercings, and I have a very successful career despite being judged on a regular basis about things like that, so...

In this week's episode, we chat with Giovanna Angulo, Associate SEO Director at Mediahub Global, about making technical SEO "make sense". Where to find Giovanna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giovannaangulo/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/giovanessaang/ (Twitter) https://giovannaangulo.com/ (Website) --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They've just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk). Where to find Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ (Website) https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/screamingfrog (Twitter) https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO (YouTube) https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ (Facebook) --- Episode Transcript: Areej AbuAli: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. I'm Areej AbuAli, and I'm the founder of Women In Tech SEO and your host today. Today's episode is all about making technical SEO make sense. Joining me is the brilliant Giovanna Angulo who is the SEO Director at Mediahub Global. Hey, Giovanna. Giovanna Angulo: Hello. How are you? Areej: I'm great. Thanks. It's so good to have you here with us. Giovanna: I'm so excited to have this topic talked about. Areej: I know. I loved how specific your pitch was. I was like, "Oh, my God, we have to have you in. This is amazing." Giovanna: Great. Areej: Do you want to start off by just telling us a little bit about you, and how you got into the world of SEO? Giovanna: My name is Giovanna Angulo. I've been an SEO for about six years now. Shockingly, it's been my only career, so I'm very lucky in that perspective. I think a lot of people fall into SEO later, or they do other digital marketing and then get into it. What's interesting, I'm now the national director out of a New York agency, at Mediahub Global. The way that I got into SEO was very interesting. I graduated with an Ad/PR degree. There was one SEO class at the time because it was still new, and we had to take it. I remember just hating that class. The woman, who taught it all talked about this agency that she had and her clients and thinks how proud she was. I was like, "I don't care about any of this." I said, "I don't know what I'm doing," but it's definitely not that. Then, I got bamboozled by an email talking about outreach and doing all these things. I said, "Oh, I've done that." My college job was as a leasing assistant. That sounds normal. I can build relationships. It turned out to be an entirely link-building-prospecting job. I ended up falling in love, and I understood why she had so much pride in this client work because you get that pride from when you do the SEO behind it. After a while, hindsight was 2020. At the moment, I was not thinking that was going to be my path. Areej: Wow. I've never even heard about an SEO course in university until this day. That's so interesting that you had to study it. Giovanna: It was new and something that I'm really proud that we were in is a very specific program at the University of Central Florida, which I give a lot of credit to. A lot of people don't usually, but I do. Areej: What advice would you give women who are considering just starting their SEO career today? Giovanna: I think the biggest thing, I would say, is to remember that your voice matters. That sounds really simple, but it really is. I think women and women in the tech industry or in the digital marketing industry have a...

In this week's episode, we chat with Sheri Mandour, Freelance Digital Marketing Consultant and Founder of Digital Tulips, about SEO for small businesses with small budgets. Where to find Sheri: https://www.facebook.com/digitaltulips/ (Facebook) https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherihanmandour/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/SheriMandour (Twitter) https://www.instagram.com/digital_tulips/ (Instagram) https://digitaltulips.com/ (Website) Resources from the episode: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/ (QuickBooks) https://www.persado.com/ (Persado) https://monday.com/ (Monday) https://trello.com/ (Trello) https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ (PageSpeed Insights) https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#/ (Google Analytics) https://www.semrush.com/ (Semrush) https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide (Google SEO starter kit) https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo (Moz beginner guide to SEO) https://learningseo.io/ (Learningseo.io) --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They've just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk). Where to find Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ (Website) https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ (LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/screamingfrog (Twitter) https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO (YouTube) https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ (Facebook) --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello, and welcome to the Women In Tech SEO podcast. I am Sarah McDowell, an SEO content executive, and I will be your host for today. Joining me, I have Sheri Mandour who is a freelance digital marketing consultant and Digital Tulips founder, and she will be talking to me today about how to do SEO for small businesses. Welcome to the podcast, Sheri. Sheri: Thank you very much for having me. Sarah: How are we doing today? Sheri: I'm very well, thank you. How are you? Sarah: I'm always in a very good mood when I get to do a podcast, and get to talk to someone. I'm in my very happy place right now. Sheri: I'm glad. Same here actually, I feel very nostalgic speaking and just relaxed. Hopefully, we will have some fun today. Sarah: Can you give our audience a brief overview of how you got into SEO, and end up having your own business in freelancing? Sheri: Well, my story started actually 17 years ago when I got married and moved to the UK with my husband who was finishing off his studies. Although I had my bachelor's degree with honors and accounting and marketing from Cairo university, as well as experiencing work as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers, and also for the United nations. I found it really challenging to find a job that really fit it around my new life and family. Back then I was approached by a friend who was actually an international human rights lawyer, and she was looking for someone to manage her organization's website and social media accounts. I took on that role basically, and started a long journey of self learning in which really I discovered the magic of SEO, and the digital marketing in general. I was really fascinated by the power of digital marketing, and the impact it had on people. Wanting to learn further, I enrolled in evening classes at the university of west minister and I obtained a diploma in digital marketing from the DMI learning really the strategy behind all the digital marketing tools and the platforms really was a game changer for me,...

In this week's episode, we chat with Beth Nunnington, PR Director at Journey Further about the importance of relevancy with digital PR. Where to find Beth: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethenynunnington/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bethnunnington/ Resources from the episode: https://www.ibm.com/demos/live/natural-language-understanding/self-service/hom (Free relevancy tool) https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/07/09/how-247-blinds-used-seo-put-competitors-the-shade (The Drum article) --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They've just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk). Where to find Screaming Frog: Website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/screamingfrog YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ --- Episode Transcript: Areej AbuAli: Hey everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast. My name is Areej AbuAli and I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO and I'm your host in today's episode. Today's episode is all about relevancy in digital marketing and joining me is the brilliant Beth Nunnington who is the PR director at Journey Further. Hey, Beth. Beth Nunnington: Hi, Areej. How are you? Areej: I'm good. How are you? Beth: Yes, I'm good, thank you. I'm very excited to be having this conversation, to be having this chat. Areej: Yes, I'm so excited to have you on board. I love the Journey Further team. I'm part of the book club and I'm a huge fan of everything that you do. I recently joined your conference as well. I think it was a week ago? Beth: Yes, I saw you were there actually. Areej: Yes, I have so much stuff for everything you and the team produced. I'm excited to have you here with us. Beth: Thank you, that's fantastic. I'll have to let the marketing team know because they did put a lot of effort into that event. I'm glad you enjoyed it, I thought it was great as well. Areej: Yes, awesome. Well, can you let everyone know a little bit about yourself and how you got into the world of SEO? Beth: Yes, of course. I'm Beth, as she said, I'm the PR director here at a performance marketing agency, Journey Further. I was the first person into the PR team three years ago now, and now we're about to hit 25 people, which is fantastic. I'm very much in charge of the growth of the team, overseeing the running of everything that we're doing here and showing that we're delivering fantastic results for our clients. I my career in SEO over 10 years ago, now which does make me feel a bit old if I'm honest. I started as a new media exec for solicitors in Liverpool, so it's in-house. I was part of an internal marketing team that helped manage their external SEO agency. I wrote on-site content, I filmed a lot of video content as well and I manage their social media channels as well as dabbling in digital PR at times. That's when I realized I wanted to specialize in it, so I applied for a role at Epiphany, which at the time was one of the biggest search marketing agencies, which are based in Leeds. I got a job in the PR team there and there I worked my way up and I specialized in digital PR and learned a lot about SEO and link building. Then basically I moved to another agency then in Leeds and then I got offered the opportunity by Robin Skidmore who's our CEO at Journey Further to

In this week's episode, we chat with Kristie Plantinga, Founder of TherapieSEO about how to manage feelings of imposter syndrome. Where to find Kristie: Website: https://www.therapieseo.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristie_plant Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therapieseo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therapieseo/ --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They have recently added automated crawl overview reports for Data Studio in version 16 of their SEO Spider software. You can use their Data Studio dashboard, but if you have created your own Data Studio dashboard for their crawl reports that you'd like to share with the community, then get in touch with them via support@screamingfrog.co.uk or @screamingfrog on Twitter to be featured. Where to find Screaming Frog: Website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/screamingfrog YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ --- Episode Transcript: Sarah McDowell: Hello, and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. I am Sarah McDowell, an SEO content executive and I will be your host for today. Joining me I have Kristie Plantinga, founder of therapy, SEO and we have them talking about imposter syndrome. Hello, Kristie. Kristie Plantinga: Hi, thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting. Sarah: Thank you so much for agreeing to come on and spending your Monday morning for you, isn't it? Kristie: Yes. Sarah: Monday morning with me. Let's dive straight in and my first question to you, Kristie is, can you tell us how you got into SEO in this world? Then how because, obviously, you're the founder of therapy, SEO, congratulations. Kristie: Thank you. Sarah: How did you end up having your own business? Kristie: Yes. I think everyone in SEO, got started in their unique way. I started more from a writing background, I was pursuing a master's in written communication, which was largely a technical SEO writing Pro-- or sorry, Technical Writing Program and that wasn't for me, I just have more of a creative side. I knew that wasn't going to be a good fit for me. I started learning more about user experience and marketing and I was looking at the job market with a communications degree, which could be tougher to find an entry into the job market but I stumbled upon SEO. I started teaching myself a lot of things as I think many of us do. I always thought it would be so cool if I could work in this but my only qualification is this. I knew how to build websites, and I had this degree. I was lucky enough to get hired by an SEO agency, they took a chance on me, and I've just been in SEO ever since and with my own business. I always wanted to have my own thing. I loved the idea of building a brand and working for myself and having this flexibility and control over my path. I started my own SEO business. I went full-time about a year ago and I started working on everything about a year and a half, almost two years ago. It's like a simple journey but I do think I started earlier with my own business than probably most other consultants do. I'm sure we'll be talking about that more today. Sarah: So when you put forward yourself to come on the podcast, you said about how your business is a niche, isn't it? How did that come about and what do you offer as a niche business? Kristie: Definitely. I work in a niche industry before or a niche agency before. I enjoyed niching because first of all, I'm a pretty practical person, I knew that it would be easier to start a business with a niche. I find that connections and speaking opportunities, and networking, all that stuff comes easier when you're situated in more of a niche...

In this week's episode, we chat with Billie Hyde, SEO Training Lead at The SEO Works about setting client expectations. Where to find Billie: Website: https://billiegeena.co.uk/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/billiegeena LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billie-hyde-a0396919a/ --- Episode Sponsor: This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They are keen to support and promote technical SEO women in the industry, and would like to use this sponsor slot to offer an open invitation for contributors in the WTS community to write for the Screaming Frog blog. If you're keen on being heard by a large technical SEO audience, then do drop them an email with a pitch via support@screamingfrog.co.uk. Where to find Screaming Frog: Website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/screamingfrog YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ --- Episode Transcript: Areej: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I am Areej AbuAli, and I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. Today's episode is all about setting client expectations. Joining me today is the brilliant Billie Hyde, who is SEO Training Lead at The SEO Works. Hey, Billie. Billie: Hi. How are you doing? Areej: I'm good. How are you? Billie: Brilliant, thank you. Areej: It's so great to have you with us. You're super, super active in the industry, you're so active in the community. I'm really, really happy that we get to talk together today on the WTSPodcast. Billie: Me too. I'm just fangirling over here. Areej: Well, can you tell everyone a little bit about you, and what you do, how you got into the world of SEO? Billie: Absolutely, yes. I'm Billie Hyde, or if you follow me anywhere online, it's Billie Geena. I can't use my real name because of SEO. There's a slightly more famous musician kind of guy with the same name, I'm the Training Lead at the SEO Works. My job is to basically find ways for us to do SEO more efficiently, teach their student department, as well as training people that are new to the industry, and getting them their start here a well. I have a split role, so I am also a senior account manager as well. I look after a handful of clients and have the usual stress that every agency SEO has basically as well. Areej: I can imagine. Have you always been agency side? Billie: No. I did use to work in-house. I did that for about a year. I'd worked on the training side there, after working as a content SEO for a while. In-house, at certain places, there's just very little growth, and you're stuck in a rut, so I tried agency. I don't think I'm ever going to go back, I don't know. Areej: Wow. I love it. I know it's very, very different for different people. Some people are more team in-house, and others are more team agency. I can imagine especially with your role being very training-driven, it completely makes sense to be on the agency side. I love that your company has a training lead role. That's really exciting. Billie: It's really fun. Like most places, SEO just took off for our agency over the pandemic, and because of the skills shortage, it just makes sense of having me do this to get people who aren't currently in the SEO world into it. It's been working really well for us. Areej: That makes a lot of sense because I know how difficult it is as well right now, recruitment, and hiring, and bringing on new people. The fact that you have dedicated time and resources to training people who might be new to SEO. That's such a critical role to have. Billie: Absolutely. It just makes sense. I just can't believe we didn't think of it before. Areej: What advice would you give for women who are starting in the

We are back for Season 3 and this week we have Abby Reimer on the podcast to talk about the importance of creating content that both search engines (eg Google) and humans love. Resources from the episode: Hemingway App - https://hemingwayapp.com/ (https://hemingwayapp.com/) Thruuu - https://app.samuelschmitt.com/ (https://app.samuelschmitt.com/) Article - https://searchengineland.com/creative-ways-to-source-content-ideas-from-ugc-for-seo-350277 Where to find Abby: Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbyreimermpls LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abby-reimer/ --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They've just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk). Where to find Screaming Frog: Website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/screamingfrog YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/ --- Episode Transcript Sarah McDowell: Hello, and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I am very excited that we are back for season three. I am Sarah McDowell, an SEO content executive and your host for today. Joining me, I have Abby Reimer, SEO manager at Uproer, to talk about creating content that humans and search engines love. Hello, Abby. Abby Reimer: Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Sarah: Thank you very much for joining. How are you doing? Abby: I'm fabulous. I'm ready for fall, crazy enough. I have my fall candles and a sweater on. I'm ready to go. Sarah: Ready for the autumnal? Is that the word? Is that the right word? Abby: Yes. I am very ready especially being from the Midwest. That's wild. Usually, summers are too short. No one wants them to end. This year, I'm ready for the smell of fall, ready for the seasons to switch. Sarah: To kick things off, I think a good place to start is if you can give our audience a brief overview of yourself and how you got into this wonderful world of SEO. Abby: Yes, absolutely. I am an SEO manager at Uproer, which is a search marketing agency in Minneapolis. We focus on e-commerce and tech companies. How I got here is a little interesting. As you probably know, if you're in SEO, it's something you stumble into. There's no degree for it. It's just interesting how many different paths there are. I graduated with a PR and writing degree and got a general marketing role. It was through that that I was working a lot on a blog. I'd worked a lot with email and social and promoting it on different channels. I noticed one week that one of our blogs was doing really r traffic. I was like, "I didn't promote this. What is happening here?" I was so confused. I looked at analytics. I saw that Google organic was the top channel that week. That question that I typed into Google, it's very meta, but I googled, "How do you show up in Google? How do you get traffic?" I was so fascinated with what I found. I had no idea that it was how you structure web pages and the actual queries that you target. That's how people get found among many other reasons. I went down that rabbit hole. I started following Moz and Brian Dean's Backlinko, followed a lot of those types of sites. I fell in love with it. Six months into my role or eight months or whatever it was, I was like, "I want to work on SEO and content full time." I ended up going to a content marketing...

*** Second Season Break *** We are taking a short break after finishing Season 2 of the WTSPodcast and will be back with Season 3 at the beginning of October. Thanks to everyone who supports the podcast including guest speakers, sponsors, and of course our wonderful listeners. We will catch you all in our next season. We have an amazing speaker lineup waiting for you.

In this week's episode, we chat with Michelle Race, Senior Technical SEO at DeepCrawl about all things XML sitemaps. Where to find Michelle: Twitter: https://twitter.com/shellyweb --- Episode Sponsor This season has been sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides tech eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. The great news is that you can join them! They're hiring senior digital PR and SEO strategists. Visit http://thisisnovos.com/ (thisisnovos.com) or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Areej: Hey everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I'm Areej AbuAli. I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. So, today's episode is one that I'm excited about. It's all about XML Sitemaps. And joining me today is the brilliant Michelle Race. She's a Senior Technical SEO at DeepCrawl.  Hey, Michelle! Michelle: Hello. How are you? Areej: I'm good. How are you doing? Michelle: I'm good, thank you. Areej: I was so excited when I saw that pitch come through because as geeky as it sounds, I love XML site maps. I love everything about them. So, I love the fact that you pitched that across. Thank you for that. Michelle: No worries, I feel like they are often a bit forgotten about. So, I wanted to try and change that. Areej: Yeah. So, can we get started by knowing a little bit more about you, how you got into the world of SEO? Michelle: Yeah, sure. So, after uni I worked at a few agencies as a front-end web developer, just building website templates. My last agency then decided to stop building websites and my boss at the time said "Oh, why don't you look into technical SEO?" as they didn't currently have an expert. It was a bit daunting at first, but knowing things that HTML helped a lot with understanding the basic tags. And then over the years, I taught myself with lots of help from Google Help forums and documentation, and I was Head of technical SEO there for quite a long time. But then in November last year, I joined DeepCrawl as a Senior Technical SEO and I work in a team of amazing technical SEOs and it's so fun. I love it. Areej: Yeah, you work with such awesome people, like some of the best women I know in tech SEO work there so I can imagine how amazing it is to be working alongside them. Michelle: Yeah, I feel very lucky. Areej: How did you find the whole, like, agency versus not agency life? Michelle: Yeah, it was a big change and at DeepCrawl I get to work with large enterprise clients and there's a lot of differences. So, it's really good. Areej: Yeah, I love that. I used to be agency side for a little bit over five years before I moved in-house, and I prefer in-house, and I can imagine how exciting it is in DeepCrawl getting to work with all kinds of clients as well. Michelle: Yes, definitely Areej: Awesome. And then like for women who are just starting in the industry, because with our audience base, we have women from all walks of life. Any advice you would give them? Michelle: So, I found it a lot easier to understand technical SEO knowing things like HTML and how a page should be structured. So, I'd recommend trying to learn the basics of things like HTML and also set up a website, if you can, because it's really good for testing and then obviously join communities like Women in Tech SEO. And also, Twitter is a great resource to follow experts and ask

This week we chat with Diana Richardson, Social Media & Community Manager for the SEO division of Semrush, all about SERP features. Where to find Diana: Twitter: https://twitter.com/DianaRich013 (https://twitter.com/DianaRich013) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8D%B7-diana-richardson-8965a317/ --- Resources: https://www.semrush.com/blog/ --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for its eCommerce SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running working with brands like Bloom & Wild and Not On The High Street. They are running an exclusive Shopify SEO roundtable for eCommerce leaders on September 23rd with limited spaces available. If you're interested, reach out to them via thisisnovos.com or message their co-founder Antonio Wedral on LinkedIn. Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I am Sarah McDowell, SEO Content Executive at Holland and Barrett, and I am your host for today. We have Diana Richardson joining us today, who is social media and community manager for the SEO unit at SEMRush. Hello, Diana. Diana: Sarah. Oh, my gosh. I could just listen to you all day. I love your voice. Sarah: Thank you. Maybe I need to think of ways to make money out of my voice. Maybe that's what I need to do? Diana: Yeah, you definitely should. Sarah:  I feel like we've already cleared something up. So, it is SEMRush rather than S-E-M-rush? Diana: Yes, and we have a lot of fun with how you pronounce our name. But in December of 2020, we went through a rebrand and we revisited our logo, and you'll notice our name is not capitalised as much as it used to be. So, we definitively made it Semrush in December of 2020. But in my career of all these years, I've always called it SEM Rush. So, it was a big change for me too. I've just now kind of get it down. Sarah: There you go. You've heard it here official. Well, let's start by getting to know you, Diana, so please would you be so kind and give us a brief overview of yourself? So, what you do and how you got into this wonderful world of SEO. Diana: My SEO journey started in 2006 when I answered an ad in the paper. Yes, we did not have things like indeed at that time and neither was SEO as a career choice. So, the ad was actually for a marketing specialist. And so, I sat down for the interview and the woman who would become my manager described SEO and PPC to me, and it was with a company that was transitioning from print to digital. So, I learned this from the ground up, brand spanking new, no training in college, with my clients, hands-on for 15 years. It's the best way to learn. I was with them for quite a long time, but then I wanted to branch out beyond SEO. And so, I found a job as a digital marketing director where I got to learn social media, email, branding, storytelling, all of those beautiful elements, and then actually networked my way to the job here at Semrush, which combines both of my loves, which is talking to people and SEO. So, it worked out great. Sarah: Are you ready for me to do a quick-fire round of questions? Diana: Yes. [Quick Fire Questions] Sarah: There are loads of ways that you can be creative. You don't have to draw. What empowers you to be the brilliant woman that you are today? Diana: Besides my genes? I love this question because I think it has been a 38-year journey, right? We learn things every step of the way. And what has empowered me to be how I am, where I am, is finding that it was OK to be me. Many, many more doors have opened for me just being myself, including my job with Semrush and being part of the Women in Tech SEO

In this week's episode, we chat with Beth Barnham, Technical SEO Specialist at Liberty Marketing about all things schema. Where to find Beth: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bethbarnham --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for its eCommerce SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running working with brands like Bloom & Wild and Not On The High Street. They are running an exclusive Shopify SEO roundtable for eCommerce leaders on September 23rd with limited spaces available. If you're interested, reach out to them via thisisnovos.com or message their co-founder Antonio Wedral on LinkedIn. Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Areej: Hey, everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I'm Areej AbuAli and I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. Today's episode is all about schema. And joining me today is the brilliant Beth Barnham, who is the Technical SEO Specialist at Liberty Marketing. Hey, Beth! Beth: Hey, Areej. Thanks for having me. Areej: I'm so excited that we had a pitch come through about schema. So, thank you for pitching yourself forward. Beth: No, that's cool. It's really exciting and it's one of my favourite topics. So, anybody who knows me will know that I talk about it a lot because it's just really fun. And I like to just have a lot of fun with everything. That's all there is to say. Areej: So, can you tell us a little bit more about you and how you got into the world of SEO? Beth: Yeah, sure. So, I'm a Technical SEO Specialist at Liberty Marketing based in Cardiff at the moment, but I've got an agency background. So, when I finished uni, I knew that I wanted to work in digital marketing but wasn't really sure where. So, I kind of you know, digital marketing is kind of a massive sphere, isn't it? So, I went to an agency that as a graduate style scheme, and I worked through PPC, content, social media and SEO. And originally, I thought that social media was going to be what I wanted to do and ironically, I hate it now. So, I found SEO was something that I. I liked understanding how people got to where they did online without having to kind of pay for it. So, I knew I didn't focus on that element of it when I was in that agency. It paved the way, as a lot of SEOs say, and you just kind of find your way. Then I worked at another couple of agencies before I ended up at Liberty. And Liberty is kind of carved out my technical side, which is something that I love. And I just want to get as much exposure and understanding of tech as I can. So that's why the Women in Tech SEO is brilliant, because it gives you that exposure to other women in the industry. But also, there's a lot of chat with the tech side of things as well. So, it's perfect. Areej: Yeah. And how do you find working agency side? Beth: Well, I can't compare it with anything because I've only really worked agency-side apart from other non-digital jobs. So, I love it. I love the variety and my mind is really busy. So, I like to I can work in one industry in the morning and another in the afternoon and I get that exposure to all different industries, and I learn loads of different things that I wouldn't do before. So, I like that. And I like the difference and speaking with clients and just having like-minded people around. Sometimes you don't get in the house if it's a smaller team. So that's kind of my reason for an agency. But yeah, it's quite biased because I've only ever really been an agency. Areej: I did agency for five years before moving in-house. And there's so much that you learn when your agency side. With SEOs who are starting, for example, I always advise them to start with the...

On this week's episode we chat to Dhriti Shashikanth, Account Executive at Mindshare London, about starting out in the SEO industry after graduating from university. Where to find Dhriti: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhriti-s-451969166/ --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I am Sarah McDowell, SEO Content Executive at Holland and Barrett, and I am your host for today. Joining me on today's show, I have Dhriti Shashikanth, Account Executive at Mindshare London, who is going to be talking to us about starting in SEO as a beginner and graduate from university. So welcome to the show. Dhriti: Hi! Thanks for inviting me. Sarah: Thank you for joining us. How are you doing? I mean, it's Thursday evening, Friday tomorrow. Have you got the Friday vibes going on? Dhriti: 100%. It's been such a long and busy month so far and it's only the 8th. It's been a long, busy one but looking forward to the weekend. Sarah: Well, it sounds like you pretty much deserve this weekend that's coming up then. To kick things off and to start this podcast, can you give our wonderful listeners a brief overview of yourself, what you do tell us a bit about you. Dhriti: Sure. My name is Dhriti and I'm an account executive at Mindshare UK. So, I've been at my current agency for a little bit over four months, just past my probation, which is great and currently living in London. And I'm quite excited that COVID has finished or like sort of finished, but it's lovely to go out and meet people as well. So, I'm enjoying that side of things. Would you like to know anything more? Sarah: I do have some quickfire questions.  [Quick Fire Questions] Sarah: Well, I mean, I'm going to be Googling that after the show. I'm imagining our listeners will be as well. What would you say empowers you to be the brilliant woman that you are today? Dhriti: I think it has to always be my role models. Definitely. I've been around so many strong women in my life. And I would probably say my mother and my grandmother are probably at the highest on that list. And I think my mum is just so hardworking and she's such a strong woman herself that I think it's inspired me to sort of getting to where I am in my career and work as hard as I've been working, so I would say, yes, it's my mother and other inspiring women in my field as well. My previous boss, Becky Simms, and of course, the Directors that I'm working with now in Mindshare as well, 100 per cent. Sarah: What one bit of advice would you give women starting in the industry? Dhriti: From my experience anyway, there seems to be a lot of women working in SEO. And I think it's just reaching out and speaking to people and joining the community and not being afraid to voice their opinions and challenge. I think that's the best way you can learn. So, I would say, yeah, not to be afraid of doing those things. Sarah: It's time to get into the meaty topic of this episode. And at the beginning, I said that we'd be discussing starting in SEO as a beginner and you'll be sort of like sharing your...

This week we speak to Katherine Ong, Owner of WO Strategies, about large scale website migrations. Where to find Katherine: Twitter: https://twitter.com/kwatier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinewatier/ --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Areej: Welcome to a new episode of The Women in Tech SEO podcast, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Areej AbuAli and I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. Today's episode is all about helping large websites with their SEO website migration's. And I am joined by the brilliant Katherine Watier Ong, who is the owner of WO Strategies. Hey, Katherine. Katherine: Hi, how are you? Areej: Yeah, I'm great, thanks. It's so good to have you here. Katherine: Yeah, thanks for having me on. Areej: I think you host a podcast of your own, don't you? Katherine: I do, yeah. I have 2, I decided to be an overachiever. I have one that's an Alexa flash briefing. It's a daily SEO tip though, although over the summer it's been very not daily. And then I have another podcast called Digital Marketing Victories where we talk about the soft skills you need to be successful as a digital marketer. Areej: Oh, I love that. I know that you shared a few of those episodes and yeah, I love them. And how does it feel to be on the other side? Katherine: Oh, I mean, it's great. I help clients with podcasts and so it kind of made sense to do a podcast myself. And then I used to do a lot of speaking at the Voice Summit. So again, it sort of made sense to have an Alexa Flash Briefing. So, I know the ins and outs of how to do that work, too. Areej: Yeah, awesome. Well, I'm happy to have you here with us. You are a super, super active member of the Women in Tech SEO community. And I would love everyone to know a little bit more about you and how you got into the world of SEO. Katherine: Sure. Yeah. So, I've been doing SEO for 17 years, though I've been marketing forever. I planned my first conference, and I was 13 and launched a non-profit when I was 16 and got press coverage and did events and, you know, eventually a newsletter anyway. And for the last five years, I've been running a solo organic traffic consultancy. So, I focus on anything with a search function in it and help clients be found organically. So that's Google, YouTube, Bing, Facebook, that kind of thing, but those are the three big ones, Google, YouTube, and Bing. Yeah, so that's me I love SEO, before I started my consultancy, I ran the online marketing and analytics team at Ketchum, the big PR firm, servicing their clients globally. So, my first year there, it was just me. They'd never have anybody that did SEO or analytics. So, they thought one was enough for all their clients globally. They have like 12 offices in China. So, I had sixty-five clients my first year and they weren't small, Gazprom and ConAgra, you know, this large. Anyway, eventually, we had a team of nine. Areej: Wow. How did it feel moving from such a big type of company and just starting your own thing? Katherine: You know, I mean, I love the experience at Ketchum for sure, but also agency work can just burn you...

This week we speak to Aiala Icaza Gonzalez, SEO Director at Reflect Digital, about having a more human approach to site structure. Where to find Aiala: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aialaicaza/ --- Resources https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/empathic-search-results-how-neuroscience-impacts-seo-mikolajczyk/ (Empathic search results – how neuroscience impacts content SEO?) (LinkedIn Post) https://stratabeat.com/neuroscience-of-seo/ (The Neuroscience of SEO) (Blog Post) --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I am Sarah McDowell, SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett and I am your host today. We have Aiala Icaza Gonzalez joining us on this episode, who is the SEO Director at Reflect Digital, who will be talking to us today about how we can take a more human approach to our site structure and why that is important. So, hello and a warm welcome, Aiala. Aiala: Hi. Sarah: How are we doing? Aiala: I'm good. I'm good. How are you? Sarah: I'm not bad at all. Not bad at all. Aiala: I'm glad to hear that. Sarah:  Have you had a good week so far? Aiala: I mean, it's over now, so I'm happy about it. Sarah: It's Friday tomorrow. So, the weekend is on the cards, isn't it? It's there.  Aiala: A 4-day week here so yay. Sarah: I am not jealous at all. Let's kick things off by you giving me and our listeners a brief overview of yourself, sort of the things that you do and how you got into this wonderful world of SEO. Aiala: Sure. So, let's start with how did I get here. I started around nine years ago in Germany. A friend told me; I know someone that knows someone that knows someone. So, I applied. They asked me what SEO was, I had no clue what it was, but I still got the job and that's how it started. I'm a director at Reflect Digital in the UK, although I work from Spain and pretty much, I handle the team, I handle clients, communications and I do talks from time to time whenever I have the time. And yeah, that's the summary. Sarah: I guess it must be quite interesting managing a team remotely. Aiala: Yeah. I mean, I was doing it already through the pandemic, so I found that it wasn't that complicated. Like they still get that human connection through the camera. So yeah. I mean I'm just, I just kept doing it. Sarah: And I'm jealous that you live and get to work in Spain. I mean, I want Holland and Barrett to send me to Spain. Sarah: Well, it's funny, you wouldn't be that jealous. Trust me, not here. Sarah: I've got some quickfire questions.  [Quick Fire Questions] Sarah: I mean. Wow, wow. You survived my quickfire round of questions. So now we know you more personally as well as you as an SEO person. Now this is The Women in Tech SEO podcast, so I am going to ask you a couple of questions around this topic, starting with, what would you say empowers you to be the brilliant woman you are today? Aiala: Well, I mean, I'm going to make it short because I could talk for hours here, obviously, starting from my mother and my auntie that has always pushed me to be at my best and

This week we speak to Barb Davids, owner and SEO consultant at Compass Digital Strategies, about transparency and communication in client reporting. Where to find Barb: Website: https://compassdigitalstrategies.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BarbDavids LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbdavids/ --- Episode Sponsor This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Areej AbuAli: Hey, everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I'm Areej AbuAli and I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. Today's episode is all about transparency and communication in client reporting. Joining me today is the brilliant Barb Davids, who is the owner and SEO consultant at Compass Digital Strategies. Hey Barb! Barb Davids: Hey Areej, how are you? Areej AbuAli: I'm good. How are you? Barb Davids: Doing good. It's midweek. It's good. Areej AbuAli: I'm super excited to have you. You were just with us in WTS Workshop recently, so it's great to have you on the podcast as well. Barb Davids: Yeah, this is fun. Areej AbuAli: Can you tell everyone a little bit about you and what you do, how you got into the world of SEO? Barb Davids: Sure, I'd love to. So I started my business full time in November of 2019 and like a lot of people it was because I got fired. And very interestingly a lot of the people were just stunned that it even happened. And I just decided, OK, universe, I understand what is happening. Fine, I'll go out on my own because the reason that I was fired was for something that wasn't even my responsibility. So it was a little like weird and I didn't quite know how to handle it. And then I just chalked it up to being a universal thing like, hey, I got it, OK, I'm going out on my own. And then before that, for probably a good year, solid year, I had more clarity in what I wanted to do. And the idea was to work any time, anywhere. I wanted to just not sit behind a desk anymore. And when I started the concept of Compass Digital Strategies, although it didn't start out that way in terms of the name and what it did, but I started working towards that and specifically with photographers because I was a fitness photographer at the time. I've since closed the business, but I started working with other photographers and learning about SEO and trying to figure out specifically for this industry, what do I need to know to do? And then I found that other people were having the same problem. And I'm like, OK, well, if it's even difficult for me and I've been in the actual the digital marketing industry for well over twenty years, how hard is it for people who don't have any of that background? So it started that way and I started helping some people and things kind of grew. And then Compass Digital Strategies kind of evolved. And now I do different businesses do some client work. Some of them I do it for them. And then sometimes I have consulting so people will do their own SEO, but with my guidance and sometimes I'll get in and do the things for them just to help them out. But basically they're learning it as they go and they do the SEO tasks. It's helpful because a lot of people don't know...

This week we speak to Himani Kankaria, Digital Branding & Marketing Consultant, about the importance of planning content and preparing content calendars. Where to find Himani: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/himanikankaria/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/himani_kankaria Website: https://www.himanikankaria.com/ Content calendar template: https://t.co/KMXceRf1ej?amp=1 (https://bit.ly/3sBzTkj) --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to NOVOS for sponsoring the full second season of WTSPodcast. NOVOS, the eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides tech eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. The great news is that you can join them! They're hiring senior digital PR and SEO strategists. Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript Sarah: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I am Sarah McDowell, SEO Content Executive at Holland and Barrett. And I am your host today. It is not just me. On my own. No, I have the wonderful Himani Kankaria joining us today to talk about planning content and preparing content calendars. Himani is an independent digital marketing and branding consultant e-commerce content consultant and content specialist. Welcome to the show, Himani! Himani: Hey Sarah, thank you so much for having me on the WTSPodcast. I am super honoured to be here. Sarah: It's an absolute honour for you to spend your valuable time with us today. So let's kick things off and get to know you Hamani. So can you give us a brief overview of yourself, what you do and how you got into this wonderful world of SEO?  Himani: So I've been in this digital marketing industry for more than 11 years now. When I started with SEO back in 2010 and like about, I worked in house for around six years, and then I became a consultant working independently with the B2B companies, including the SAS company. So, you know, I like focusing on helping business owners to understand their business goals and help them align with the marketing goals. So based on that, I am, you know, also preparing the roadmap. And helping them help the team to work on their roadmaps. So, you know all of those 11 years of my journey, I have learned SEO, I have learned creating content. I have also tried mastering the skills to create the content that, you know, ranks on page one of Google and also on Google features. And you know, I would love to add that, you know, for three and a half years, I've been trying my hands and working with a couple of e-commerce businesses through e-comm cheetah. I am associated with e-comm Quito as an e-commerce consent content consultant. I had them. To the content of in commerce campaigns. So it was like, you know, back in 2010, I had an option to either go into the development side or I would go into SEO. So I don't know what clicked in my mind. And I immediately picked up SEO and it's like, you know, I am. Learning every day, something new and growing with all the new things that are coming up in our industry. Sarah: Sounds like you're very passionate about this industry. It's lovely to hear that. How are you feeling if I move this on and do some quick-fire questions? [Quick Fire Questions] Sarah: Okay. So this is the Women in Tech SEO podcast. So let me ask you some questions about this. What would you say empowers you to be the brilliant woman that you are today? Himani: I would say I have got three pillars for this. One

This week we speak to Laura Brady, SEO Manager at NOVOS, about all things e-commerce SEO. Where to find Laura: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-b-578299129/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lauraabrady8 --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to NOVOS for sponsoring the full second season of WTSPodcast. NOVOS, the eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides tech eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. The great news is that you can join them! They're hiring senior digital PR and SEO strategists. Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript: Areej: Hey everyone! Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO episode. I'm Areej and I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO.  Today's episode is all about e-commerce SEO strategy and joining me is the brilliant Laura Brady, SEO Manager at NOVOS. Hey, Laura! Laura: Hi. How are you? Areej: Yeah, I'm good. Thanks. We were just saying that I'm really excited about this episode because I've recently started an in-house ecommerce role. So I think I'm going to learn tons from it.  Laura: Yeah, no, it's really good to talk about it. I previously didn't work in e-commerce either, so they need to have a really just certain last year and a half doing it. So I know how you're feeling. Areej: Awesome. Well, can you tell everyone a little bit about you and how you got started in the world of SEO? Laura: Yeah. Sure. So I'm Laura, I work for NOVOS as an SEO manager focusing on e-commerce strategy. I've been at NOVOS since I joined mid pandemic. So when it just kicked off, so in April 2020, and before that, I worked at Screaming Frog for just under three years. And that was where I kicked off my SEO career. Quite lucky to start there. Areej: Does NOVOS mainly focus on, is it all e-commerce clients that they work with? Laura: I'd say like 98% of replies that e-commerce might have the odd one that, that isn't specifically e-commerce but like, yeah, I would say the vast majority is e-commerce. Areej: I think it's really nice to be able to specialize and have a niche. When I was on the agency side, we kind of worked across so many different things and I can imagine there's definitely a lot of benefits that comes from focusing on that one industry. Laura: Definitely it's very fast-paced as well. So you kind of have to hit the ground running as well. Areej: Awesome. Well, you know, we're part of women in tech SEO and something that I always love to ask all women who, whether they come on the podcast or have one of our workshops or interviews, is just get a bit of an understanding about, you know, what, what empowers you and what keeps you motivated and inspired within the industry? Laura: I think it's just that there are so many different things. I can't really give you one, one example, but I think I've been really lucky to work in two really good workplaces. I've learnt so much from everyone, we get to work with so many different team members. We're not really siloed into one team or anything. So that's been awesome. And like, obviously Screaming Frog was cool too, but like, I guess it was just like, just picking up on everyone else's kind of advice and just, I'm not really afraid to go and ask questions to other people and that kind of throws me into things. So it's more just kind of. Just not saying no to things and just like that, taking the opportunities and projects and I've picked stuff up along...

This week we speak to Gisele Navarro, CEO at Content Marketing Agency NeoMam, about working remotely and managing remote teams. Where to find Gisele: Website: https://neomam.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giselenavarro/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to NOVOS for sponsoring the full second season of WTSPodcast. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I'm Sarah McDowell, SEO Content Executive at Holland and Barrett., content executive at Holland and Barrett and I will be your host for today. We have Gisele Navarro joining us today to talk about remote work in a subject that I think we can all relate to right now. Gisele is the CEO of NeoMam, a creative studio on a mission to produce content that people want to share with a background in link building and leading a fully remote and multi-cultural team of specialists from her home in Derbyshire. Gisele, a very warm welcome to the show. Gisele: Thank you for having me, Sarah. I'm happy to be here. --- This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos --- Sarah: Thank you very much for agreeing to spend your afternoon with me. How are we doing? How's your Wednesday been? Gisele: I mean, it's almost coming to an end now. So the future looks bright. It's been good. I've been quite busy this week, so I'm a bit more tired than you should. But I hope I can tell you where I go on the podcast. And yeah, it's been, it's been good. How was your Wednesday? Sarah: I mean, I've no meaning to brag, but I have had today off. So I'm feeling quite Zen. Like I fell asleep earlier, listening to a podcast in the sunshine. So that's the kind of day that I've had. Sarah: Can you give our wonderful listeners a brief overview of yourself, what you do and how you got into this world of SEO? Gisele: Yes. So I lead the team at NeoMam. So basically my day today, it's just working with everybody who helped us in the creation and the promotion of the content that we make for our clients. And so my background is in link-building. So I started in SEO back in 2009. And I think by 2000, and by the end of 2010, it was quite clear to me that link-building was my thing, and I really liked it. So I ended up being a CEO because I used to work in sales and I was actually quite depressed and I felt that I needed to change something. I was too young to feel the way I was feeling. I felt at the time. So I just quit my job and went online to see what I could do from home. And I've, I've always had a blog since I was a kid, so I kind of knew things or the CEO. So I did put myself...

This week we speak to Karen Julia, Wedding Photographer & SEO Consultant, about all things image optimisation. Featured Resource: https://photoseolab.com/image-seo/ Where to find Karen: Website: https://photoseolab.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-julia/ --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to NOVOS for sponsoring the full second season of WTSPodcast. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript: Areej: Hey everyone! Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO episode. I'm Areej and I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO.  And today joining me is the brilliant Karen Julia, wedding photographer and SEO consultant. Hey Karen! Karen: It's great to be here. --- This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos --- Areej: I'm so excited to have you on board. And I love that. I think from the very first time we ever spoke, I remember you telling me all about how you're a wedding photographer. Introduce yourself to everyone and let us know what you do in your world. Karen: Awesome. Well, I'm a wedding photographer, as you've mentioned, and I'm also an SEO consultant as well. The approach I have with SEO is to really kind of coach and empower and educate clients. So it's a little bit of a kind of random way that I got into this. I didn't really set out. Intending to do SEO, but I phoned from my own business. I wanted to be phoned more by the right client and Google, as we know, as a fantastic matchmaker. So I started learning SEO back in 2007 and got my website ranking really well, and then went through all the trials and tribulations like Panda and penguin and Got banned from Google at one point. And it was purely accidental. It was not intended to be not. But I realized then that you can't really do SEO kind of half-heartedly, you know, it's kind of all or nothing because there's so many kinds of updates and changes and it's a constantly evolving kind of space really. So I realized that I needed to improve my lack of resources as well in terms of where I was getting trusted information from. And that's when I started helping people in the community, the photography community that I'm in. Areej: Do you help other wedding photographers optimize their websites? Karen: I do. I have a client base of photographers around the world from the U S I've worked with clients and New Zealand, Australia, kind of, I'm thinking there's a couple of different African countries as well. Europe. So I have an international client base and really the niche that I specialize in is wedding photography specifically. Yep. Areej: And how do you currently split your time between the SEO consultancy and the wedding...

This week we speak to Lidia Infante, Senior International Strategist at Rise At Seven, about how to succeed when working in SEO markets where you don't speak the language. Where to find Lidia: Twitter: https://twitter.com/LidiaInfanteM LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lidiainfante/ --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to NOVOS for sponsoring the full second season of WTSPodcast. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread, NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Where to find Novos: Website - https://thisisnovos.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/ --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello, and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, and the wonderful Areej AbuAli. Today, we have a wonderful guest lined up for you. And that is Lidia Infante who has been in SEO for seven years working in-house for media outlets, B2B and e-commerce sites. She moved from Barcelona to Sheffield to join the agency world at Rise at Seven. This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for their SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running. Trusted by over 150 global eCommerce brands including the likes of Bloom & Wild, Patch and Thread,  NOVOS provides technical eCommerce SEO expertise with a creative edge by specialising across platforms like Shopify & Magento. They have been named as one of 2021's best workplaces in the UK and with a diverse, gender-balanced team are a culture-first agency. Check them out on thisisnovos.com or follow on Linkedin @thisisnovos Sarah: Now I imagine that Sheffield is very different to Barcelona. Lidia: It's very, very different. It's not as rainy as I was expecting to be fair, but it's still not warm and sunny. Sarah: Ah, so you were, you warned about the British UK weather before moving over? Lidia: I was told it was going to be miserable. We kind of just feel like Brits enjoy complaining about the weather rather than the weather being awful. Sarah: Would you be able to give our listeners a brief overview of yourself and what you do and sort of like how you got into this world of SEO? Lidia: So I work as senior international strategies that writes a seven, which means that I work with a digital strategy for global brands and I'm also running our European expansion, which means that I'm sort of managing the Germans strategies, the strategies we're currently hiring for Spanish strategies as well. And this involves a lot of analyzing the claim performance reporting, communicating, checking that everything's on track. And then we're actually impacting the business bottom line, not just like. Building links for the sake of building links or building content for the sake of building content. And I came into SEO in a bit of a weird, funny way. I was working in PPC as many of us do, but we never really talked about it. I was working in PPC for an international e-commerce site, where, when I decided to found my own women's rights magazine, I wanted to do something really light, really funny that wasn't very brainy and difficult. Just something that was really approachable like, Everybody to get what women's rights are about and what feminism is about. And that was at the time where Facebook was sending traffic cutting traffic to publishers. So I realized that SEO was, it had a lot of...

*** First Season Break *** We are taking a short break after finishing season one of the WTSPodcast and will be back with season 2 in a couple of week's time. Take a listen to find out how you can still get your fix of the podcast or the Women In Tech SEO community. Thanks to everyone who has supported the podcast so far; speakers, sponsors, and of course you, our listeners. We'll catch you all in our next season! We have a corker of a speaker lineup waiting for you.

This week we speak to Rejoice Ojiaku, SEO Manager & Co-Founder of B-DigitalUK, all about what keyword mapping is and why it is important. We also test her on her Disney knowledge (there is a tenuous link) and what inspires/empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today. Where to find Natalie: Twitter: https://twitter.com/RejiYates LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rejiaku/ --- About B-DigitalUK A social platform created for Black people to highlight and display specialist roles within marketing & advertising. Where to find B-DigitalUK: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/b_digitaluk/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BDigitallUK Twitter: https://twitter.com/bdigital_uk LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/b-digitaluk/ --- Episode Transcript: This transcript is generated using an automated third party tool so will not be 100% accurate. Sarah: Hello, and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett, and the wonderful Areej AbuAli, who is an SEO Consultant and the founder of the glorious Women in Tech SEO community. This week, we have Rejoice Ojiaku, who is an SEO Manager experienced in technical and content SEO. And she's also the co-founder of B-Digital UK, which is a marketing and advertising platform catered to the black demographic to inspire and educate. Good morning to the both of you. Areej: Good morning. I'm so excited to be here and I'm so happy that rejoice is joining us today. Rejoice: I'm very excited to be here. This is very, very exciting. Thank you for having me. Areej: We love having you here and Rejoice, you know, that we absolutely love involving you in as many projects and initiatives and events that we have to get started. I think it would be great for our audience to learn more about you and what got you into SEO in the first place. Rejoice: Yeah. So I got into SEO after my marketing masters, and it was meant to be a graduate rotational program, but they sort of left me in SEO for six months, which was meant to be three. So by the six months I sort of fell in love with SEO. It was ideally where I wanted to sit because. I find that SEO is a good mix of it. And marketing and this sort of does give me all that, you know, analytical skills and I get to sort of play around with websites. I get to sort of look at coding things that I was interested in. And from there I sort of continued to stick with SEO. There's so much to learn and I guess, because it's ever changing so many things coming in, going out I do kind of like that fast pace thinking about SEO. So there's so many layers to it, which I really like to explore. So that's where I found my SEO love, I guess. Areej: Yeah, I love that. And I love everything that you do with B-Digital UK. So if you can tell our audience more about what it is and what inspired you to start this in the first place. Rejoice: So B-Digital UK was sort of started when I, myself and my friend Wilhemina went to the Women in Tech SEO conference.  And I absolutely love the idea of an initiative that was catered to women, but in all things, I guess myself and Wilhelmina, we always look out for how many black people are present in SEO. And we saw that there weren't a lot of black women and women in attendance. And then we were sort of asking questions. Like, do we actually know any black person in digital marketing, just in general. And we didn't, and we couldn't actually say who we knew that was involved in digital marketing or someone that was up there. We already knew about the other counterparts, all the white people who are. So prominent within the space. So that's when we decided we should create a platform that educates and inspires digital marketers who are already in the industry and people who are coming into the industry. So we wanted to show students. That marketing and advertising is a viable career. And you can take all those...

In this week's episode, Sarah and Areej chat to Natalie Mott, freelance SEO consultant, about all things core web vitals. We also find out what inspires Natalie and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today. Where to find Natalie: Twitter: https://twitter.com/njmott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-mott/ Core Web Vitals Resources: https://web.dev/ (https://web.dev/) - All Google's guidance on Core Web Vitals https://web.dev/chrome-ux-report-data-studio-dashboard/ (https://web.dev/chrome-ux-report-data-studio-dashboard/) - Google's own Data Studio dashboard for tracking stats from the CrUX report https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/get-started (https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/get-started) - Link PageSpeed Insights with ScreamingFrog to pull CrUX data for every page on your site as you crawl https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/ (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/) - use Chrome DevTools to drill down and work out which parts of your page are affecting your CWV scores. In particular, if you are looking to see what part of the page has the LCP, or when a Layout Shift is occurring, you can use Performance > Show Web Vitals to pinpoint where this is happening https://corewebvitals.iprospect.com/ (https://corewebvitals.iprospect.com/) - a good summary of the state of play in every industry from iProspect https://reddico.co.uk/tools/serp-speed/ (https://reddico.co.uk/tools/serp-speed/) - check how you and competitors are performing for Core Web Vitals on a keyword level --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to DeepCrawl for supporting the WTSPodcast and sponsoring this episode. DeepCrawl offers the complete end-to-end technical SEO platform with the tools and integrations you need to grow — detecting technical improvements that will help you drive growth, and protecting your website from harmful code through SEO testing automation. Where to find DeepCrawl: Website - https://www.deepcrawl.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/deepcrawl Twitter - https://twitter.com/DeepCrawl Facebook - https://facebook.com/deepcrawlHD --- Episode Transcript Sarah: Hello and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, SEO Content Executive at Holland and Barrett, and the delightful Areej AbuAli, who is a SEO Consultant and the Founder of the epic Women in Tech SEO community. This week, we have the wonderful Natalie Mott joining us, who is an SEO all-rounder with core interests in technical SEO, content strategy, project management and outreach. She has had senior SEO positions at several digital agencies and is thoroughly enjoying spending time in the world of freelance consultant. A very warm welcome and hello to the both of you. This episode is sponsored by DeepCrawl. DeepCrawl offers the complete end-to-end technical SEO platform with the tools and integrations you need to grow. Detecting technical improvements that will help you drive growth and protecting your website from harmful code through SEO testing automation. Discover just how deep pools technical SEO platform can help you increase your search performance and revenue by visiting their website: deepcrawl.com. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Sarah: Thank you so much for spending your Saturday morning with me and Areej. Very, very appreciative. How are we doing? How's  your morning been? Natalie: Quite productive, actually quite got up early. Had a good, good breakfast. That's a bit unusual for Saturday to be honest, but yeah, it was going very well. How about yourself? Areej: Yeah, all good. All good over here. I'm just really, really excited to have you here with us. We've met several times, since the very start of the Women in Tech SEO community. But I'd love you to tell the community, a bit more about you. So how

In this week's episode, Miracle Inameti-Archibong, Head of SEO at Erudite Agency, discusses forecasting SEO & showing ROI. We also find out what inspires Miracle and what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today. Where to find Miracle: Website: https://miracleinametiarchibong.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mira_inam LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miracle-inameti-archibong-39168713/ --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to Wincher for supporting the WTSPodcast and sponsoring this episode. Wincher is an extremely powerful and flexible rank tracker that helps you to follow your progress and SEO efforts. Whether you work in an agency or provide solo SEO services, SERP tracking is essential to measure results. The uniqueness of Wincher is in the most accurate data - they update positions every 24 hours and you can update the data manually as well. Wincher offers 14 days of a free trial and an exclusive €30 off for our community. Use the voucher WTS21 to grab the deal. Where to find Wincher: Website - https://www.wincher.com/ (https://www.wincher.com/) LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/wincher/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/wincher/) Twitter - https://twitter.com/WincherSEO (https://twitter.com/WincherSEO) Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wincher.rank.tracker (https://www.facebook.com/wincher.rank.tracker) --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell,  SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett, and the absolutely wonderful Areej AbuAli, who is the Founder of Women in Tech SEO and SEO consultant. We have a wonderful guest joining us today, and that is Miracle Inameti-Archibong, who is Head of SEO at Erudite Agency. This episode is sponsored by Wincher. Wincher is an extremely powerful and flexible rank tracker that helps you to follow your progress and SEO efforts. Whether you work in an agency or provide solo SEO services, SERP tracking is essential to measure the results. The uniqueness of Wincher  is in the most accurate data. They update positions every 24 hours and you can update the data manually as well. And today they released a totally new product that will be a competitor to the most famous brands. Check it out. Wincher offers 14 days of  free trial and an exclusive 30 EUR off for our community. Head on over to their website, wincher.com and use the voucher code WTS21 to grab the deal. You can also connect with them on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook by searching for Wincher. Areej: How's everything going? How are you doing Sarah today? Sarah: Oh, I'm buzzing. I don't know if you could tell by how I'm speaking, but I'm really enjoying my morning. It's a whole morning of podcasts recordings, so I'm very much having a wonderful time. How about you? Areej: Super excited as well. I mean, any chance for me to get to hang out with both you and Miracle is awesome. That sounds like a great Saturday morning, considering that we were not really doing much anymore with lockdown and stuff. Sarah: Oh gosh, I feel like there should be a rule that COVID isn't mentioned because yeah, I don't know, but hopefully by we're coming to an end, I don't know. I don't know what to say on the matter. Miracle: Yeah. It's really annoying that just when you're allowed to meet these people in the park, the weather changes drastically. We had snow  and before that it was sunny. Areej: Miracle. How are things going? We know so much about you because you're such a valuable member of our community and I've met you over two years ago now. But just tell our audience everything there is to know about you and what you do and how you got into SEO. Miracle: I think I got into SEO. Like most people will. Yeah, just purely by accident. I didn't know what SEO was. I was doing a master's degree in digital media and I did a course in advertising. And then when I finished

In this week's episode, Aleyda Solis, international SEO consultant, speaker and author, discusses all things learning SEO. We also find out what inspires Aleyda and what empowers her to be the brilliant women she is today. Where to find Aleyda Website: https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/aleyda LearningSEO: https://learningseo.io/ --- Episode Transcript: Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the women in tech SEO podcast, where your hosts myself, Sarah McDowell podcaster and SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett and the absolutely wonderful SEO consultant and founder of Women in Tech SEO, Areej AbuAli. This week, we have an awesome speaker lined up and that is Aleyda Solis, who is an international SEO consultant, speaker and author. So it's a good afternoon for the both of you. How are we doing? Areej: Yeah, good thanks! Great to be here with both you Sarah and Aleyda Aleyda: Hello. Hello. So nice to be able to be with you today, too. Areej: Aleyda, we are so excited to have you. I think you get invited to every single Women in Tech SEO project and initiative.  Aleyda: No, thank you for having me as well. I'm more than happy. I'm so excited that you have started the podcast. And I think it will be refreshing and necessary also to follow up and see  how many women are today in the industry. How many of all of us are contributing in different ways. And I think it should be refreshing because still today I see from time to time those questions over Twitter: “Oh, who are the women to follow?” So it will be so much easier to just point out to the group that since it is closed, sometimes it's a little bit harder. But with the podcast, like, yeah, take a look at all of the conversations. So many different women, so yes, so, so exciting.  Areej: A hundred percent completely agree. And yeah, can't wait to have a lot of awesome guests with us every week. So Aleyda,  I'm pretty sure, most of the industry knows you and knows how awesome you are, but I'd love to share your story a little bit about how you got into SEO. Aleyda: Yes. So I got into SEO in 2007 after I was given the chance to start working at an aligned marketing agency that was already doing SEO among yeah. PPC, social media, et cetera. And I was lucky that I didn't know about SEO at that point, but I started little by little by, by handling. Our website, like I was pretty much managing the websites of, of the agency monetizing and doing affiliates. Do you want a little bit of content marketing, social media, SEO. And, and then I focus. After a while, more and more and more into SEO, only up to a point that when the SEO specialist of the company left, they offered me the opportunity to focus completely on SEO. So that is why, how pretty much it was like, very like serendipity, like, right. And I'm, I'm still, I'm still very, very thankful for that opportunity, because I, I think that that has been like my best decision. Ever to to, to focus on becoming an SEO. Right. So, yes, it was like, it was a very very good, good luck from, from my side too. And, and I really enjoy SEO because it allowed me to do, let's say, like to blend the activities that I was doing, I, before becoming an SEI was What designer slash front, front end web developer. So I continue going through the HTML of the websites, how to, well, well structure make websites, crawlable, good navigation, et cetera. Right. And then although they had it allow me to also do this extra of, of a little bit of more marketing side of, of activities, right? Like, yeah. The optimization. Of the content to connect with the audience search behavior, how to improve conversion. So I, I think it was the blend that really, really attracted me to SEO and well, I've never looked back realistically. I love it. Wonderful. Sarah: I love hearing everyone's story about how they got into SEO because yeah, it's never really a plan and it's just wonderful hearing....

In this week's episode, Isaline, content strategist and self-confessed SEO nerd, discusses all things multilingual SEO. We also find out what inspires Isaline and what empowers her to be the brilliant women she is today. Where to find Isaline Twitter: https://twitter.com/isaline_margot LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaline-muelhauser/ --- Episode Sponsor Massive shout out to MediaSesh for supporting the WTSPodcast and sponsoring this episode. MediaSesh is an SEO consulting and training firm located in Denver, Colorado. They help businesses to be found by their customers on search engines. Their newest initiative is to help bridge the gaps between SEO and accessibility.  Where to find MediaSesh: Website: https://www.mediasesh.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mediasesh Christina Brodzky (Founder) Twitter: https://twitter.com/cbrodzky --- Episode Transcript: Episode 2 - Isaline M Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett and the wonderful Areej AbuAli, SEO consultant and founder of the Women in Tech SEO community.  This week, we are joined by the wonderfully amazing Isaline Muelhauser who is a SEO nerd and content strategist, and also host of community SEO Nerd Switzerland and Content Strategy Lausanne. And she's a lover of cats and the outdoors. Hello! Isaline: Hello. Hello Sarah. Hello Areej. Sarah: This episode is sponsored by MediaSesh. Medaisesh is an SEO consulting and training firm located in Denver, Colorado. They help businesses to be found by their customers on search engines. Their newest initiative is to help bridge the gaps between SEO and accessibility. Their founder most recently conducted a webinar where she spoke with three brilliant women in the accessibility space to discuss how there's a discrepancy between how SEO is optimize images using the alt text field and how they should. You can learn more about that on their Twitter handle, which is @mediasesh or their website mediasesh.com. You can also follow their founder, Christina Brodsky on Twitter @cbrodzky How are we both doing? Areej: Really good over here. Super excited to have Isaline on with us. She is one of my favorite people in the community. And I know, I probably say that about a lot of people, but I mean it. Sarah: You can have multiple favourites, that's okay. Areej: Tell us more about you Isaline. I'm so excited that we've got you here and you do so much with  your meetups. You have a lot of different things that you host locally as well. So we'd love to learn a little bit more about you. Isaline: Yes, thank you for welcoming me today I'm really happy to nearly meet you in person, at least get to talk to you instead of writing. And so usually on Saturday mornings, I would be at my rowing training on the Lake. So I'm not unhappy to be here inside because the weather is not that good. So. It was a beautiful excuse not to go and sleep a little longer. So, so I'm really happy to join you this morning. And yes, I, I co-host two communities, one of them with my, one of my best friends, it's SEO, nerd Switzerlands and we just felt that it was really important to bring some knowledge about SEO to the Swiss people and also crate the contents that we find interesting. And the articles that we find worth reading and good sources. Because very often when people look for information and internet, it can be overwhelming with all of the articles. And when one is the beginner, it's difficult to know. What article is a good article and can be trusted. And what is a good source? Yup. Areej: Yup. I love your meetup and I love that you continued doing it during the lockdown world we're in right now, which meant that you managed to get a lot of awesome people that you normally wouldn't have managed to get to if you were based locally. I know that you recently had one with Ruth on accessibility,...

Jamie is a technical SEO best known for taming JavaScript frameworks like Angular and React, helping websites share information with humans by improving how search engines crawl, render, and index. In this week's episode, Jamie discusses ethics and disinformation surrounding not just SEO but the internet as a whole, covering topics such as who's responsible, why it's an issue, ways to tackle these challenges and much more. We also find out what inspires Jamie, challenges she has faced as a women in the industry and what empowers her to be the brilliant women she is today. Where to find Jamie Twitter: https://twitter.com/jammer_volts LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-indigo/ Website: https://not-a-robot.com/ --- Transcript Sarah: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, podcaster, and SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett. And they absolutely wonderful, Areej AbuAli, who is an SEO Consultant and founder of Women in Tech SEO. WTSPodcast is your weekly podcast for all things SEO related guest, starring brilliant women in the industry.  Hello! How are we doing? Areej: Yeah. Good. Thanks. Super excited to be here today. Sarah: Yes. It's the first one. How are you feeling about it? Areej: Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm really excited. I'm in great company. I've got you. I've got Jamie. So looking forward to it. Sarah: Ah, there you go. You've done like a subtle little hint there about introducing our first guest on the show. So yes, we have with this for our very first Women in Tech SEO podcast, Jamie Indigo, who is a technical SEO best known for teaming unruly JavaScript frameworks like angular and react. She helps websites share information with humans by improving how search engines crawl, render and index. A very warm welcome to the show Jamie! Jamie: Thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure to be here with two of my favorite humans, part of my favorite community. Areej: It's so good to have you, Jamie. I'm sure that a lot of people who are listening already know a lot about you and about how awesome you are, but we would love to hear a little bit about you from you. Jamie: Oh, me for me. Well, that's exciting. Well, I'm not a robot, but I speak bots and that's pretty important. Because my focus is as an SEO so niche that I don't understand how rankings work and I'm too afraid to ask, but really it's focusing on the rendering process. Everything from how Googlebot fetches content to, you know, response codes, we're giving a look at the log files and see where those resource requests are going. And when it goes into the web rendering engine, how is that executed? Where the contents available at two, we have a whole sneaky set of your eyes that no one expected to exist. The cannibalize, our world. You'd be surprised a lot of cannibals heading out there. Sarah: Wonderful, wonderful. Something we used to do with SEO SAS was with each of our guests. We do like a quick fire round of silly questions. How are you feeling about that?  Jamie: I love silly questions. Yay.  Sarah: Okay. So there's six in total and I literally just want you to like clear your mind and just answer the first answer that comes to your head.  All right, let's do this question. Number one. Can you share food? Jamie: Yes. Sarah: Something that spiky Jamie: Porcupine. Sarah: They are very spiky. Are you a tidy person?  Jamie: Absolutely not.  Sarah: Ah, they say the best creative people are untidy. I swear. I've read that somewhere. When coming in, do you stay within the lines? Jamie: Hm, no. I'm a big fan of coloring books, and that inherently involves some new lines. Sarah: And final question if it's a hot day, what drink are you craving?  Jamie: Oh, water. Sarah: Just water?  Jamie: Yeah, I want to stay hydrated. Sarah: You don't want anything in your water? Like a bit of lime or sparkling...

We are very excited to welcome you to the launch episode of the Women In Tech SEO Podcast! During this WTS Podcast episode, your hosts, Areej AbuAli (founder of Women In Tech SEO & SEO Consultant) & Sarah McDowell (podcaster and SEO content executive at Holland & Barrett) discuss why they are launching the podcast and the rebrand of SEO SAS, what they are hoping to achieve and the importance of not reinventing the wheel. We also get to know the hosts with a quickfire round of questions and a feature, explain how you can get involved with the podcast and the importance of learning. Hope you enjoy! Where to find WTS Podcast: Twitter: @techseowomenpod Website: https://www.womenintechseo.com/podcast/ --- Transcript Sarah: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast and very excitedly, this is our very first launch episode. So welcome along! Your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, podcaster, self-confessed SEO geek, who works at Holland and Barrett as a SEO content executive. Areej: And I'm here as well. I'm Areej AbuAli, I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO, which is a support network and community for women in the tech SEO field and I'm an SEO consultant. Excited to be kicking this off with you, Sarah! Sarah: Do you want to know a little secret? Areej: Yeah, go for it. Sarah: I was like a little kid yesterday and I couldn't sleep because of today. Areej: Honestly. I'm so excited to be doing this. I knew this has been on my to do list for like over a year, so I cannot believe we're finally recording the launch episode. Sarah: I know it's crazy. It's crazy. And I think you have seamlessly led us in to sort of talking about why we're launching this podcast. Areej: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think from my end, like this is, it feels like the podcast for all things, SEO, guest starring women in our industry. Every week, we will invite brilliant women to come on board. We're going to delve into specific topics and learn from their stories, knowledge, and experience. But you know, with all awesome things from your end SEO SAS, I think it would be amazing for everyone to hear more about the story of why we're doing this together from you. Sarah: Yes, right. Well, should I get my best storytelling, voice? Yes, so some people might recognise my voice or my name because I previously hosted the SEO SAS Podcast. Basically that podcast was going on for two years, so quite a long time and my cohost Hannah stepped down. She had too much on her plate. And when she stepped down, it got me thinking because SEO SAS was always like a me and Hannah thing. And I had to do some thinking about "What's my next step?" And it just so happened that during this thinking time you reached out to me and the rest is sort of history, wasn't it? Because like you said, you've always wanted to do a podcast. And I think you saw the message about Hannah stepping down, sort of prompted you to ask me and reach out because obviously you were on a previous SEO SAS podcast episode and that's how we first met. And yeah, I had a massive smile on my face and it was quite funny actually, because being really honest, you were a bit nervous weren't you like asking, but it's crazy, isn't it? Because as soon as you asked me, I was like straight to my sister. I was like, Oh my God, this has happened! So, yes, I think this is it explained or do I need to go into more detail there? Areej: No, I was a guest on SEO SAS, and it was one of my very first podcasts to be on. And you and Hannah were just awesome. It was really, really, really fun to be on it. And so for me, when I thought about "Okay, I'd love to do a WTSPodcast", I always thought about you and Hannah, and the way you hosted your podcast and how inclusive it was and how accessible it was for everyone and how you made everyone feel really, really welcome. So when I saw the message that you were thinking about what you want to do next, if you are potentially thinking about...

This week Sarah invites the wonderful Laura Hampton on the show. Laura is the Head of Digital PR at Impression Digital Marketing Agency.  Laura is all about celebrating creative campaigns, impactful strategies and bloody great work (her words). Oh, and in her spare time she enjoys jumping out of planes. This week’s topic is all about tying digital PR more closely with SEO. We cover everything from what is digital PR, why digital PR & SEO are treated as separate methods of marketing and why it's important to bring them together. We also chat about what obstacles get in the way and Laura shares examples of successful campaigns she’s worked on, and much more. The episode starts with Sarah getting to know Laura personally and as a digital marketer - we also find out why giraffes are tall. The episode ends with a feature and there is a tenuous link this week! We know you love them. Enjoy! Where to find Laura: Website: https://www.impression.co.uk/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauralhampton/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lauralhampton Resources: https://www.cuckooland.com/kids-bedrooms/kids-beds/anti-nightmare-mist https://www.harveywatersofteners.co.uk/water-quality-test/

Sarah invites Emily Brady to join her on this week’s show. Emily is the Senior Manager of Local SEO Solutions at Milestone Inc, a Marketing and Advertising Agency and Software Provider based in Santa Clara. The episode starts with the important questions such as does Emily prefer mash or roast potatoes, what grosses her out the most and whether or not ice cream is acceptable all year round - controversial right? We then chat about her career, how she got into digital marketing and SEO, and how she ended up being a senior local SEO manager for a marketing agency. This week’s topic is local SEO and whilst managing your business profile(s) on online directories is important (otherwise known as list management), this episode focuses on other important areas that aren’t often thought about eg contact and location pages, schema, core web vitals, the future of local SEO, and more. Of course, an SEO SAS podcast episode isn’t complete without a feature, and this week Sarah and Emily go head to head. Who do you think will win? Listen to find out! Where to find Emily: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-brady-6b5683a9/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-brady-6b5683a9/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/Plotboilers (https://twitter.com/Plotboilers)

This week Sarah has the absolute pleasure of chatting with SEO Jo Blogs (Jo Juliana Turnbull) about the importance of soft skills in SEO. Jo is a Growth Marketer at Authoritas, Organiser of two SEO events (Search London & Turn Digi,) and Founder and Online Consultant at SEO Jo Blogs. The episode begins with a quickfire round of questions, followed by Jo giving a brief overview of herself and how she got into the wonderful digital marketing and SEO world. This week the topic is about the importance of soft skills in SEO, we cover everything from what we mean by soft skills to why they are often overlooked in SEO, plus Jo gives practical tips on how to identify and improve the soft skills you have. We also discuss how to accept things that you can't change about yourself and how important confidence is, which also leads us into discussing the difference between confidence and self-esteem. Of course, there is a feature, this is an SEO SAS podcast episode after all! Sarah quizzes Jo on her general knowledge. Reckon you can beat her score? Only one way to find out... Resources: https://www.womenintechseo.com/ (Women In Tech SEO) https://www.seojoblogs.com/turn-digi-april-30th/ (Turn Digi Event) https://www.careeraddict.com/personality-tests (Personality Tests) https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2012/11/09/10-steps-to-effective-listening/?sh=2533426e3891 (Effective Listening) https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do (What Great Listeners Do) Where to find Jo: Website: https://www.seojoblogs.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SEOJoBlogs LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-turnbull/

This week Sarah has the absolute pleasure of chatting to Gemma Fontané about international SEO and keyword research for different languages. Gemma is an SEO freelance consultant & SEO specialist at On Off Marketing, a digital marketing agency. She’s also a Digital Marketing Professor at Cidet Manresa in Barcelona. The episode begins with the usual quickfire round of questions where we learn everything from what Gemma’s preferred superpower would be to her most used app on her phone. Sarah also finds out about her career and how she ended up in digital marketing and SEO. Then it's time to discuss international SEO and doing keyword research in different languages. We cover everything including why it's important, how to do keyword research in another language, what to do when a country has more than one language and how to handle different browsers e.g. Yandex, Bing etc. We also talk about web architecture, general do’s and don’ts when it comes to international SEO and finally, Gemma shares her own and other business's success stories.  There is a tenuous link for this week’s feature and Gemma gets quizzed on her worldly knowledge. Reckon you can do better than her? Only one way to find out… Where to find Gemma: Website: https://www.gemmafontane.com/en/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemmafontane/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gemmafontane