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 Nikki Halliwell, Technical SEO Consultant at PushON. Based in Manchester, Nikki specialises in tech SEO and has been working in the industry for around five years. She has extensive experience across clients of all sizes and industries, including travel, leisure, hospitality, clothing, eCommerce, and health.
We asked her everything from how she first got into SEO to what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is 💪🏽
Having studied music technology at university, I worked in the music industry for a few years and ended up creating and leading the marketing department there. After a while, we realised the need for a new website, but no one at the company had ever considered SEO until then. So I fell into SEO out of necessity, but I utterly love it. I taught myself everything I needed to know at that point and then learnt from others in the industry, especially when I left music and started working for agencies.
SEO audits are definitely my favourite. I Iove digging into how websites are built, what's holding them back, establishing how big of a problem there is and prioritising fixes and recommendations.
My go-to tools would be Screaming Frog and SEMRush, as I imagine is the case for a lot of people.
I use a lot of Chrome plugins too including Kristina Azarenko’s SEO Pro extension, SEO Minion, Redirect Path and Link Redirect Trace, Watt Speed, SEO Indexability Checker and more.
But Sistrix is another personal favourite. I enjoy the variety of data it provides and the depth that it goes into, especially when looking into competitor websites too.
I continuously have 'AHA' moments; I think that is the beauty of SEO. One of the biggest ones was probably early on in my career when I understood how Google crawls and indexes content. A lot of my processes and recommendations changed after I got my head around that.
Being part of the inaugural Women in Tech SEO Mentorship program was excellent. I loved being able to share what I'd learnt with my mentee Jess Buckley, and I know we both got a lot out of the process.
Imposter syndrome is an easy trap to fall into, but we all have something to share that is entirely valid, and it's brilliant to see so many women continue to pay it forward.
I'm very proud to have been a part of this program and to continue to share this knowledge in my conversations with others.
Never stop learning. SEO is always changing, and no one knows everything, even if they tell you they do. SEO will continually keep you on your toes and make sure you're subscribed to industry newsletters so you can keep up to date.
Know your worth and make sure your voice is getting heard; don't let others tell you what you are capable of doing.
I'm a big fan of Aleyda Solis, and Faye Watt has a bunch of excellent talks and resources too, plus I'd definitely recommend Roxana Stingu.
It also goes without saying that Areej AbuAli is doing amazing work with this community.
Right now, I'm inspired by the work we're doing at PushON. I love a challenge, and the team here are all incredibly passionate and hard-working, and we're making a significant impact on our client's websites. They encourage passion, insight and boldness.
----
Thanks Nikki for a truly insightful interview, you can check out Nikki's website and connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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! 🙌🏽