Welcome to a new Weekly Interviews edition where we interview brilliant women in our industry and share their stories with the world! Anyone is welcome to share their story by simply filling this form, we encourage women from all walks of life in our industry to do so.
Introducing Naomi Gallula! Based in Israel, Naomi is a Technical SEO Manager at Wix. With 15 years of experience in SEO, Naomi has worked in several companies including a global e-commerce company. Responsible for Wix Stores, Wix Groups and Wix Online Programs Platforms, Naomi’s work has an impact on millions of Wix websites.
We asked her everything from how she first got into SEO to what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is 💪🏽
I was very young (22 years old) when I left my country of birth (France) to immigrate to Israel. At this time, I graduated with a post MBA in marketing and my dream was to work in marketing for a big corporation like L’Oreal.
Starting from scratch in a new country was not so easy. The language and the mentality were different and I had to adapt to them. Digital marketing was more developed in Israel than product marketing, so I started to work as a French content writer. And very fast, I got into the field of SEO. I literally fell in love with SEO and started to learn everything I could by reading and participating in conferences.
I love the part about auditing websites and discovering new technical issues (it is really like a game).
Finding the most complex issues, understanding how much they are impacting the sites and how to solve them is super challenging and never the same for any website. This is what makes technical SEO so special!
I would say that the essentials are: Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Ahrefs and of course Google Search Console! Google Search Console is the essential tool to understand what goes well or wrong on your website from rankings to indexing or fail rates issues.
Regarding the resources - I would recommend SERoundable, SearchEngineJournal and SearchEngineLand. I personally consult all these blogs with my morning coffee, and eventually Twitter to get all the news and insights from the industry.
For all technical questions, the Search Console Help is a great way to get advice from Google’s own Product Experts.
Honestly, I have AHA moments on a daily basis! I handle a lot of technical issues across a range of teams. I am curious and like to ask a lot of questions. So I am always looking for how to solve the problems based on industry best practices: debugging with SEO tools, checking the internet for what Googlers are saying, or connecting with industry professionals who have faced the same issues and managed to fix them. I am also lucky to be part of a great team of SEO technical experts who can advise me on complex issues.
Each “SEO enigma” that I succeed to clarify and resolving is for me an AHA moment and this is what I love about SEO….to be amazed again and again.
I think that I am currently living my proudest industry achievement at Wix, as I know that my work is contributing to the success of millions of users that are not necessarily SEO experts.
It feels really good to help enable small companies or independents to claim their place in search results and even without necessarily having to pay an agency to improve their technical SEO. I am contributing, as part of the tech SEO team at Wix, to provide the users with out-of-the-box and automated solutions and I am really grateful to be a part of it.
SEO is a very wild field and there is a lot to learn. So take a breath, set goals to achieve, learn topics step by step, and always keep in mind that nobody knows everything about SEO. SEOs are constantly checking and learning. There is no end because the field is so dynamic!
As the technical SEO field still has an overweight of male SEOs, I would also like to tell all women starting their careers not to be scared. Women have all the abilities to succeed and to be major actors in the industry.
I think that Areej AbuAli is a true inspiration, as she is the first woman to really commit to the idea of true equality between genders in the Tech SEO industry.
I am convinced that thanks to this approach and the community created by Areej, a lot of women found the help and the strength to become entrepreneurs and to believe in themselves.
Many women turned out to be real icons of the SEO industry in recent years: Aleyda Solis, Lily Ray, Marie Haynes, Crystal Carter, Alexis Sanders, Orit Mutznik, Jamie Indigo (and many more not mentioned here!). They are truly helping the community with their experience and daily insights.
I would say that my family is giving me a lot of strength and energy. As a mother, I never saw having kids as an obstacle. On the contrary, I think that being a mother gives me additional skills such as time management, prioritization, and a will to excel, evolve and progress continuously.
To me, every woman can make her dreams come true, it is just a matter of will: “The sky is not the limit, it is just the view".
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Thanks Naomi for a truly insightful interview. You can learn more about Naomi through her LinkedIn and Twitter.
To view more interviews with brilliant women, check out our Interviews page. If you've enjoyed reading this interview, then we'd love for YOU to share your story with the world! Simply fill this form here, we welcome brilliant SEOs from all walks of life! 🙌🏽