4 Things I Learnt at the Women in Tech SEO Festival

The conference was held in the Barbican Centre, with the breaks being held in the pretty garden room/conservatory, and the talks being held in the cinema on the bottom floor. Was there the option of taking the lift up the 5 floors between the two rooms? Yes. Did we decide to use the lifts? No. We decided climbing the stairs was quicker than waiting, and good cardio!

With the promise of pastries and the fear of being too late to grab one, we made sure to get to the Barbican for just after 9. We signed in, grabbed all the free merch available, and had a quick look around the conservatory before the first talk. On the way we found a turtle sleeping by his pool. The rest of the day followed a similar pattern of an hour of talks with half an hour of breaks (with snacks at every opportunity).

Everyone we met at the conference was super friendly, and being new to the industry, I don’t know many people yet. Of course, coming from a well-known company certainly helps act as an icebreaker (and luckily no one asked me any tricky questions about the SEO Spider).

4 Things I Learnt

Analyse

Thanks to Lidia, Rejoice and Crystal for starting off the talks strong!

In the first section, I learnt about the possibility of repurposing old content, checking if content can be rewritten to target different keywords. Thinking of new ideas every month is one of the most tricky parts of SEO, so I’ll be sure to check what we’ve previously done and see if I can repurpose any of it.

Advance

Two more great talks from Roxana and Aleyda, unfortunately, Aleyda couldn’t be there in person but it was a great presentation nonetheless.

In the advance section, I learnt about writing reports, just in time for our monthly reports! It made me think about my client’s KPIs, how to write my reports to reflect them and to make sure I don’t include unnecessary and confusing data. (Roxana did a great talk about the internet, however it went completely over my head.)

Innovate

This was my favourite section of the day thanks to Paige, Lazarina and Miracle.

The overall theme of these talks was how to use machine learning to improve the speed and efficiency of certain SEO tasks, such as writing meta descriptions. Shout out to Miracle for her great talk on how to use ML to make websites more accessible. My main takeaway however was to start small, by searching for 10 minute ‘Machine Learning for SEO Beginners Guides’ on YouTube.

Empower

The final section of the day rounded off the conference well, Lou and Shannon were indeed empowering.

In this section, I learnt how to improve myself in the work environment, not only how to use my negatives as positives, but how to identify things I consider negatives. It made me think about my inner person, and make sure I allow myself to process and be honest with how I’m feeling.

Final Thoughts

Overall I really enjoyed WTSFest. The order of the talks was well thought out, and it went from simple concepts like how to write competitor analysis, to more complicated concepts such as how to use machine learning. It really inspired me to continue to grow.

I may be new to working in SEO, however, I have gone to other conferences and the quality of the talks was much better at Women in Tech SEO festival!

Mega thanks to Areej and the Women in Tech SEO community! Hope to see you at the next conference!