Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is today, a day for col­lect­ing inspi­ra­tional women every­where and a day to reflect on our ongo­ing jour­ney to a more gen­der bal­anced world.

We have come a long way since 1918, when women in the UK gained the right to vote. But there is still a lot more to be done. To this day, the busi­ness envi­ron­ment is still dom­i­nat­ed by men, and this is still true in the SEO indus­try, where the per­cent­age of Women is only 30%.

Hav­ing recent­ly joined Author­i­tas and being very new to the SEO indus­try. I want­ed to high­light on Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day some of the lead­ing women in the SEO indus­try, who are an inspi­ra­tion to those of us who are just start­ing out.

The can­di­date selec­tion was based on rec­om­men­da­tions over the past weeks and months from my Author­i­tas col­leagues about who I should fol­low (thanks to Mar­cus and Askar) and although not sci­en­tif­ic the selec­tion is based on their author­i­ty, fre­quen­cy of speak­ing dur­ing SEO events, media pub­li­ca­tions, and com­mu­ni­ty they have devel­oped around their per­son­al brand and arti­cles or videos I have found inter­est­ing on my short jour­ney so far in SEO.

1# Hannah Thorpe

Han­nah is a great SEO spe­cial­ist, with expe­ri­ence work­ing across mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing dis­ci­plines. Although I’ve not met her in per­son (yet!) some of my ex-Linkdex col­leagues speak very high­ly of her. She speaks on many top­ics from resolv­ing on-site tech­ni­cal issues to cre­at­ing large inte­grat­ed cam­paigns! Han­nah is an expe­ri­enced speak­er, she has pre­sent­ed at Brighton­SEO, SMX Advanced, Search Lon­don and UnGagged in Lon­don & Vegas. She is also a reg­u­lar blog­ger for State of Dig­i­tal and Search Engine Watch and a win­ner of “Young Search Pro­fes­sion­al of the Year” 2017 Award. I will def­i­nite­ly keep an eye on her in the upcom­ing year!

Here is a link to Hannah’s blog post and a video “From Search To Discovery/The Chang­ing Face of Search Engines” this is very good, very easy to read or watch, she is a great pre­sen­ter, so engag­ing!

2# Aleyda Solis

Aley­da is a top class pro­fes­sion­al and her LinkedIn bio says every­thing about her: Aley­da Solis is an Inter­na­tion­al SEO Con­sul­tant and founder of Orain­ti a high­ly spe­cial­ized, bou­tique SEO con­sul­tant, blog­ger (Search Engine Land, Search Engine Jour­nal and Moz), speak­er (with more than 100 con­fer­ences in 20 coun­tries in Eng­lish and Span­ish) and author (of “SEO, Las Claves Esen­ciales”).

She was award­ed the Euro­pean Search Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year in 2018, includ­ed in Forbes “Top 10 Online Mar­ket­ing Experts To Fol­low In 2015”, in Entre­pre­neur as one of the “50 Online Mar­ket­ing Influ­encers To Fol­low In 2016”, and in Hub­spot as one of the “59 Female Mar­ket­ing and Growth Experts You Should be Fol­low­ing”,

She has helped world renowned brands like East­pak and Under Armour to star­tups like The Hun­gry House and Zil­low. Work­ing in com­pet­i­tive SEO indus­tries, in mul­ti­lin­gual envi­ron­ments and Web migra­tions there is no stop­ping her! She also has her own YouTube chan­nel, it is bril­liant, def­i­nite­ly check out her most recent video “Recov­er­ing your Organ­ic Traf­fic after a Web Migra­tion Gone  wrong- #Crawl­ing­Mon­days 6^th Episode: She has done it all! She is a clear exam­ple of a suc­cess­ful woman who is reach­ing new heights in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly male dom­i­nat­ed indus­try.

3# Alexandra Tachalova

Alexan­dra Tachalo­va has worked in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing for over six years. She is a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant, help­ing dig­i­tal busi­ness­es with con­tent mar­ket­ing, social media, link build­ing and PR. Since leav­ing SEM­Rush she has found­ed and worked on her own Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing con­fer­ence for pro­fes­sion­als called “Dig­i­tal Olym­pus” which takes place in Wro­claw, Poland. The prin­ci­pal aim of this project is to bring val­ue to the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ty. This is a great achieve­ment and is espe­cial­ly inspir­ing for women like me who want to start up their own busi­ness­es one day. By the way did you know that only 5% of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist funds go to a woman? Alexan­dra is a fre­quent speak­er, and you can find her at all the major search indus­try events such as Brighton­SEO, Ungagged, SEO­zone, SMX, SEM­days, and many more. She also blogs often check out her post at Dig­i­tal Olym­pus blog­ging about, “How to Super­charge Your Con­tent Pro­mo­tion”. This post is very infor­ma­tive and her per­son­al­i­ty comes across through­out the post it is great! She is a great Indus­try role-mod­el for us all, whether you are a man or a women.

4# Cécile Beroni

Cécile is a great SEO pro­fes­sion­al and the Author­i­tas team had the plea­sure of work­ing with her for one of our projects with Pricem­i­nis­ter, (Rakuten Group). She is cur­rent­ly head­ing SEO at Rakuten France (One of the biggest e‑commernce mar­ket places in Europe), she is very pro­fes­sion­al and can answer any ques­tion regard­ing the chal­lenges of SEO vis­i­bil­i­ty growth and can ini­ti­ate mar­ket­ing, tech­ni­cal, IA and edi­to­r­i­al projects to increase the vol­ume of vis­its and sales. She has more than 8 years of dig­i­tal exper­tise in SEO ori­ent­ed opti­miza­tion strat­e­gy.  Her main chal­lenge is to iden­ti­fy and imple­ment projects that con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the growth of the company’s busi­ness. She com­pos­es and man­ages Big Data, Con­tent, UX, Mar­ket­ing and IT top­ics and relies on col­lec­tive intel­li­gence to inno­vate and under­take projects with high val­ue cre­ation. At the head of the SEO team, she man­ages mil­lions of vis­i­tors each month from organ­ic search, which remains the sec­ond largest source of traf­fic to this huge e‑commerce site. Watch this video of Cécile talk­ing about “Pre­dic­tive SEO and Big Data, the new levers of per­for­mance”. I would def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend keep­ing an eye on her fur­ther suc­cess­es this year!

5# Izzi Smith

Izzi Smith is a very pos­i­tive and ener­getic lady, whom my team met last year dur­ing our Brighton SEO Q&A ses­sion! They said it was a great plea­sure to speak with her and she taught the team some valu­able insights! Izzi is the UK & USA SEO Man­ag­er for Sixt.com (the glob­al car hire busi­ness), where she works as part of their large, inter­na­tion­al in-house team. She is espe­cial­ly pas­sion­ate about struc­tured data, SERPS and user behav­iour. She is the free spir­it of SEO, a great asset for the female com­mu­ni­ty in the SEO indus­try. Check out Izzi’s pod­cast, The Izzi & Nils Show. This is hands-down hilar­i­ous, a fun way to learn about SEO.

6# Alexandra Martin

Alexan­dra start­ed her SEO career back in 2008, with an intern­ship at a web agency. Since then she has evolved a lot! She is pas­sion­ate, gen­er­ous and sharp with huge expe­ri­ence in SEO. See for your­self, check out her blog post, “10 steps to increase your blog traf­fic by 600% in three months”. She is an expe­ri­enced Search Engine Opti­miza­tion Con­sul­tant with a demon­stra­ble his­to­ry of work­ing in the mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing indus­try. Skilled in Search Engine Opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO), E‑commerce, Web Ana­lyt­ics, and Search Engine Mar­ket­ing (SEM). She has devel­oped an extreme­ly strong per­son­al brand in France and found­ed her own Con­sult­ing Agency “Miss SEO Girl”. I am so inspired by her entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it! Alexan­dra is clear­ly very proud of being a woman, I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more from her in 2019.

7# Rae Dolan

Hey, you may know Rae already, but I’ve decid­ed to add her to this list for this year’s cel­e­bra­tion, even though she has recent­ly announced that she is offi­cial­ly retir­ing from the SEO indus­try and has stepped down from Push Fire (22nd March 2018)! Push­Fire is a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency found­ed by indus­try vet­er­ans which focus­es on pro­duc­ing ROI for PPC and oth­er dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing cam­paigns. She has con­tributed a lot to the SEO indus­try and helped to dri­ve female diver­si­ty! So, I would like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late you, Rae, I hope you enjoy your retire­ment from SEO and wish you all the best in all your future endeav­ors! You are a real inspi­ra­tion. Check out one of her final blog posts “How to make your Word­Press web­site secure (SSL) in 6 steps”.

8# Samantha Noble

Saman­tha is an SEO & Paid Media Expert who has been work­ing in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing since ear­ly 2005. She found­ed “Bid­d­a­ble Moments” in 2016 and is work­ing with in-house brands and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agen­cies sup­port­ing their teams with all things relat­ed to paid media, check out one of her blog posts about “Increas­ing Cus­tomer Loy­al­ty And Life­time Val­ue (LTV) Using Paid Media”– It is bril­liant!

Over the years she has spo­ken at lead­ing events across the world includ­ing SearchLove, Pub­Con, Webbda­gar­na, Ungagged, The Inbound­er, SMX, SES, Brighton­SEO, RIMC and many more. Since 2015 she has sat on the judg­ing pan­el for numer­ous awards includ­ing the UK and US Search Awards, the MENA Search Awards, the Per­for­mance Mar­ket­ing Awards, the DANI Awards, and the Bid­d­a­ble Media Awards.  Most impor­tant­ly, she has also found­ed the Dig­i­tal Females groupwhich now has in excess of 750 mem­bers and has held 16 events to date, which is fan­tas­tic to see.

9# Annie Cushing

Annie Cush­ing, aka Annielyt­ics, makes data sexy and teach­es mar­keters how to do the same through a vari­ety of train­ing resources pro­vid­ed by her own Annielyt­ics con­sul­tan­cy. Annielyt­ics is a bou­tique mar­ket­ing agency based in Cher­ry Hill, New Jer­sey, that spe­cial­izes in web ana­lyt­ics, data visu­al­iza­tion, and SEO. Her pas­sion is train­ing oth­er mar­keters. To that end, they offer online cours­es, as well as on-site train­ing for com­pa­nies. Check out one of her posts- (she is the bomb), “Google Ana­lyt­ics Cam­paign Tag­ging Dis­as­ters In the Wild: an Exposé”. Annie has also writ­ten a book which is due to be released in May 2019, “Mak­ing Data Sexy”. This is def­i­nite­ly on my wish list and so it should be on yours. Look at her Google Docs one of her many exam­ples that, Annie is a woman who SEO women should look up to. She wants to encour­age women to become more involved in mar­ket data and it is not scary but attrac­tive. Con­grat­u­la­tions on your book (please send me a sig­na­ture copy !)

10# Areej AbuAli

Last but not least, Areej AbuAli who used to be our favourite Account Man­ag­er here at Author­i­tas. Areej is now Head of SEO at Verve Search where she leads on all things tech­ni­cal and on-site SEO. Here is one of her blog posts from VerveSearch “Become an SEO Super-star: Learn to Code”. She has been in the indus­try for the past 5 years and is pas­sion­ate about solv­ing com­plex tech­ni­cal site issues and exper­i­ment­ing with new tech­nolo­gies. Areej shall soon be speak­ing for the first time at Brighton­SEO, talk­ing about;  “Restruc­tur­ing Web­site Index­a­bil­i­ty”- we’ll all be there to watch and cheer her on. I under­stand from my col­leagues she has an unlim­it­ed crav­ing for choco­late        (although now she is rais­ing mon­ey for “BHF” by boy­cotting any choco­late con­sump­tion!). The team here are very proud of you Areej and believe that she is a ris­ing star in the indus­try.

So, I would like to wish women every­where all the appre­ci­a­tion you deserve and keep thriv­ing, keep dri­ving busi­ness­es, keep inspir­ing new­com­ers like me! This Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is not a sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion but a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal achieve­ments of women. How­ev­er, this day is also a call of action to bal­ance the gen­ders in the work­place and make every­one equal. The SEO indus­try has changed a lot in the past few years, but there is still more to be done and let’s increase that 30% of Women in SEO #Bal­ance­for­Bet­ter #IWD2019 #SEO

Additional Credits:

I saved the best till last, I can­not for­get to men­tion the women of Author­i­tas, you are so focused, deter­mined, and inspir­ing. Author­i­tas would not be where it is today with­out our lead­ing ladies:

1. Pen­ny Holt– https://www.linkedin.com/in/penny-holt-92a9501/
2. Cecile Delat­tre– https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecile-agnus-delattre-8ba15bb4/
3. Beli­ta Lim­bu– https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellita-limbu-b29312128/
4. Car­rie Shep­herd– https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-shepherd-316480143/
5. Tina Mohan– https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinainlondon/
6. Lau­ren Adie– https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenadie/
7. Har­ri­et Jones– https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriet-jones-63345b157/