HP’s In-House SEO is a Woman

Being a girl in a man’s world (there goes that tagline again), I’ve always been an advocate of girl power — of women being exceptional at what they do and excelling in their own fields and in their own rights.

Precisely why pinkseo happened, back when the realization dawned on me that SEO Philippines, an organization of the best and thriving Filipino SEO gurus, needs a touch of pink somewhere in that testosterone-infested world. Hehe. Hence, this site’s participation in the ituloy angsulong keyword ranking contest. Apparently, I wasn’t the only female participant who stepped up, proved a point, and finished the race with flying colors. It was a lovely experience getting to know some of the best female SEOs in the country. (See there? No man would dare use “lovely” to describe an SEO experience haha).

Which is perhaps why female SEOs still never fail to inspire me. And why it thrilled me to find out that Hewlett Packard’s In-House SEO happens to be a woman too. In an interview made by Search Engine Journal, HP’s global In-House SEO Tanya Vaughan was put on the spot.

HP has a few in-house SEOs within various divisions, one is a full-time SEO, but most do SEO as portion of their role, and Tanya is HP’s central SEO hub. Tanya is the dream find for an in-house position; she had been working with HP for several years and knew about SEO, but more importantly was passionate about its integral role in the company’s web presence. Having already been with the company, she was ahead of the game when it came to what I call “the human side of SEO” – she already knew how to navigate through the personalities and corporate politics to get things done at HP. Tanya started dabbling in SEO as a content manager for HP.com, knowing that she wanted her content to be found. She’s a self-taught SEO that successfully works with all the HP divisions across the globe.

Oh wow, and she started out as a Content Manager. Yay! *hint,hint* Maybe I have a future in SEO after all. Haha.

Some notes I got from her interview:

• Passion to learn. Starting out as a Content Manager whos initial goal was to drive traffic to her content, she “read books, articles, and blogs, attended conferences and took any opportunity she could to start up a conversation with the more seasoned SEO professionals.” This only goes to show that success in this field all boils down to one’s passion and seriousness to learn and to explore.
• NO SEO is an island. One cannot do SEO ALONE. Tanya credits her success to her (remote) SEO team and to her manager ’s span of influence. As an SEO, she needs to focus on building relationships. So yes, SEO ain’t some technical job that requires robotic skills. Relationships matters in SEO.
• Transparency. Her four “key areas” are Strategy, Training, Research and Resources. She promotes transparency among the people she works with as far as the implementation of these key steps is concerned.
• SEO & PPC, not SEO vs PPC. For her, SEO and PPC complement each other, and are not two facets that come in different levels of importance.

Read more about Tanya Vaugh and how she does SEO here. ;)