Ask a News SEO: Areej AbuAli
Ask a News SEO: Areej AbuAli
We discuss how Areej built Women in Tech SEO and what matters when having support in SEO
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Hello, and welcome back. Shelby and Jessie here, back from the final September weekend. Shelby hung out with her extended family drinking whisky (whiskey for some of our friends) and watching the Baltimore Ravens demolish the Buffalo Bills. Meanwhile, Jessie celebrated her Oma’s 89(!!)th birthday. We now have goals to live long, fruitful lives.
This week: Ask a News SEO with Areej AbuAli, the founder of Women in Tech SEO! We discussed her experience in tech SEO and how it led to her building the community and what matters when having support in SEO.
THANK YOU to the almost 500 humans that attended our Google Discover panel, together with Marfeel! We had such a great time and the insights were incredible. The full video can be found here.
THE INTERVIEW
WTF is SEO?: Tell us how you ended up in SEO and about your experience internationally.
Areej AbuAli: I moved to the UK a little over a decade ago to do a master's degree in business. I come from a computer engineering background, which is what I studied. Then during my Master's Degree, I just stumbled upon the term digital marketing and SEO. I did a few different internships here and there, and my first job out of that was with a small agency, who were looking for an Arabic speaker because they had a brand new client in the MENA region. Arabic is my primary language. I joined them, and within the first month, that client was no longer a client — not because I worked on it, just because it didn't work out — and they decided to switch me over to the technical SEO side, which I felt a lot more comfortable being part of.
WTF is SEO?: Starting on tech SEO is not often common! What was it like using your engineering background and going into tech SEO?
Areej AbuAli: It felt a lot more natural. I found it a lot more interesting, the analytical and the logical side behind it. It was fairly easy for me to grasp and understand the different fundamentals and foundations. And it was just a lot of fun. I remember my very first boss in technical SEO saying something along the lines of, “the most important thing you need is your curiosity.” You’re working, being a detective, and trying to understand what's happening under the hood. It was something that I really enjoyed and clicked with me right away.
WTF is SEO?: You’ve really been able to build a community around it, too. Tell us more about building Women in Tech SEO, and the community that you've been able to build over the last couple years.
Areej AbuAli: I worked on the agency side for over four years. But whenever I went to conferences, I always struggled to network outside of my workplace. I remember always attending the technical SEO track; it completely lacked any form of representation. I never felt like I could have the courage to go on stage myself because I never looked like anyone or saw anyone who looked like me.
There were different communities and groups, but there was a lot of exclusivity around them. You needed to be a public speaker or an agency founder to be part of this. I couldn't find somewhere that I could belong.
I initially started it as a Facebook group, where I just said, “Women in Tech SEO rejoice! We have a space now that can connect us with one another.” I was so surprised by how many other people felt very similar to me. Initially, I thought that it was going to be fairly local. I was based in London so that we might do some meetups here, but we just started having people join from everywhere.
We are a really large community—over 10,000 members in total. We hold lots of large-scale conferences in different parts of the world and have all these different initiatives and partnerships. But what I found most interesting was how many niche communities started forming around it.
We now have communities like Latinas in SEO, Women in Marketing Bulgaria, and B Digital UK. These were all community members who wanted to have that same trickle-down effect on their own group and local community. For me, it shows how important the sense of community is within our industry. It’s been really inspiring.
WTF is SEO?: How important is community in our industry, especially when there’s not a lot of representation?
Areej AbuAli: It’s important because we are very helpful to one another. I do find it amazing how we managed to find each other and connect in ways. There are different forms of conferences and things that happen, but ours tend to be very special. You find a lot of people and they become true actual friends. I just find that beautiful — how these friendships managed to form through these different professional communities and industries.
I think people in general have a lot of good intentions and they do want to be helpful with one another. There's also a very strong sense of mentorship I'd say in our industry as a whole where people are more than happy to support one another without really needing something back. And just be helpful and to give back to the community. I think there's a lack of that generally in our industry.
WTF is SEO?: What makes a successful community and how do you use feedback to make it better?
Areej AbuAli: The first thing is quality over quantity. There shouldn't even be a worry or a prioritization of, “We need to get to that number.” I've seen some very, very successful niche communities that are thriving off the back of 50-100 people. That's perfectly fine. They’re happy to stay at that number. The quality of the conversations and how to keep community members engaged should always be front of mind.
What has helped us is making sure that we have all these different initiatives running. For example, our mentorship program is a really strong one. We have our weekly newsletter and we had a podcast for some time. We always host different types of workshops on different topics and themes. We also prioritize the needs of our actual community members, so we get tons of feedback all the time. What's working? What's not working? Is this something you find helpful?
We have them dictate to us what topics they want us to cover and what type of initiatives they would find helpful as opposed to us just making those decisions and then seeing whether it works.
Finally, a really, really strong code of conduct. Something that makes people feel that they can definitely trust that this will be a safe community for them, where they can absolutely be whatever version of themselves that they want to be, but they will be protected and can trust the other folks will be as well.
WTF is SEO?: What is something that you wish you knew when you first started an SEO?
Areej AbuAli: I wish I knew how much it was going to keep changing. There's something about (SEO) that makes it so different. A lot of other industries evolve and change, but not to this extent. What I was doing when I started a little over a decade ago is completely different from what I'm doing now. If I approached it with that mindset I would have been a lot more open-minded about how I approached my learning.
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RECOMMENDED READING
Google news and updates
🤖 Roger Montt for Google Search Q&A: Google explains how to use alt text for SEO in a post on Reddit.
🤖 Rick Viscomi and Addy Osmani: The Web Vitals extension, now in DevTools
🤖 Google Search Central: Google Trends for SEO
Even more recommended reading
📹 Crawling Mondays: The state and future of search Q&A with Danny Sullivan, Google Search Liaison.
🔧 Barry Adams: Best practices for structured data for news publishers.
⚧️ Roger Montti: Google updates their spam policy documentation.
↘️ Barry Schwartz: Google search ranking increases during core update wiped out post-update.
⁉️ Ricky Sutton: Is it time to exit Google's toxic swamp now that we know the truth?
📈 The Rebooting: A surprising amount of optimism mixed with the reality of a more-with less era.
🏆 Ahrefs: Advanced SEO: My top 8 tactics shared by 107 SEOs.
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Have something you’d like us to discuss? Send us a note on Twitter (Jessie or Shelby) or to our email: seoforjournalism@gmail.com.
Written by Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackley