Welcome to a new
Introducing
We asked her everything from how she first got into SEO to what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is 💪🏽
How did you get into SEO?
I started building websites when I was at university, as agencies in Argentina didn't pay well for extremely long hours, so I thought I would make more money being a freelance web designer. But once the websites were finished, my clients wanted that website to attract customers and be first on Google. That’s how I got interested in online marketing and then eventually in SEO.
What is your favourite SEO task?
I enjoy training SEO teams a lot! Also building GDS dashboards to automate reporting. My favourite report is the Quarterly Overview, as it’s a good timeframe to start seeing SEO implementations crystallise and getting results.
What is your go-to tool or resource that you can't live without?
The SEMrush SEO writing assistant plugin for Google Docs. It’s nice to be told exactly what you need to do while writing for SEO. My team loves it, and it makes the content briefing and content creation process so much easier.
And the WTS slack channel, what a great community of helpful professionals and problem solvers you are!
What is something you learned in SEO that made you have an 'AHA' moment?
If you write industry-specific stats-based articles, the backlinks will follow you. Add internal links from the articles into your money pages, and a half-decent onsite optimisation, and 90% of the job is done. Also, SERP features are everything. Working on them got us to double organic traffic for one client in just a quarter.
What is your proudest industry achievement?
Sharing the stage with Aleyda Solis during the Searchmetrics Summit. I had been reading Aleyda’s blog for more than 10 years when that happened. Becoming one of the hosts of SEMrush webinars was important for me too, and I was told that they liked my profile because I’m also a comedian. It’s the first time that I get booked as SEO speaker for being a comedian!
What advice would you give women who are starting out in SEO?
The SEO courses on LinkedIn Learning are great to start with. You’ll learn the most when you build your own website, whatever tech you use. Personally, I started with WordPress and it helped me a lot in understanding everything that goes on behind a website: scripts, tracking, page speed, etc.
Sometimes it’s overwhelming trying to keep up to date with so much going on.
The only industry newsletters that I consider “mandatory” are Aleyda’s SEOFOMO and the WTSNewsletter.
Give a shout out to a woman in the industry who inspires you and tell us why
Areej AbuAli, for her work with the community of Women in Technical SEO, empowering individuals, leading by example, and being a force of nature. Aleyda Solis, for being a strong Latina boss and my first role model in SEO. Also, for writing the best SEO newsletter out there. Izzi Smith and Lily Ray, for their incredible presentations and always being ahead of the game.
Finally, what empowers you to be the brilliant woman you are?
As an immigrant with no family support in the UK, the only option I have is to do well.
I can’t depend on family to help me with a deposit to buy a house or anything like that. So I rely on my capacity to get the things I want, what I really really really want (yes, this is a Spice Girls reference). Also, becoming a standup comedian has made me not only more confident about myself and how to deal with stressful situations, but also a better (or at least funnier) SEO speaker.
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Thanks Victoria for a truly insightful interview, you can check out Victoria's website and connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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