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 Sarah DeGeorge, Freelance Digital Marketing Specialist. Based in Philadelphia, USA, Sarah is a digital marketing specialist who works in paid marketing, SEO, public relations, and social media marketing and management to help small businesses find their authentic voice for their audience. When Sarah is not working on digital marketing strategy, you will find her on a walk at a local park, reading, or working in animal rescue and rehabilitation.
We asked her everything from how she first got into SEO to what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is 💪🏽
SEO came into my life after I had acquired my first freelance position in paid marketing. I had gone to school for journalism and public relations which is how I started at this marketing company and led to me combining my paid marketing knowledge I had learned with SEO as they needed someone with content writing experience to work with the SEO Manager. I was able to combine a lot of my background in journalism and public relations into this new world of SEO which gave me my new, and favorite, skill set that I have now as a digital marketing specialist.
I love taking a client's needs and creating an SEO plan to cover the bases they need to begin to build out a more robust plan for their business goals. It's fun taking their existing platform and finding ways to improve upon it such as creating content plans that are keyword focused, diving into keyword and link data, and exploring avenues for on and off-site optimization to build domain authority in a proper and consistent way.
Google Search Operators (think site:, intitle:, etc.) make it really easy to see what others have spoken about a specific subject, indexed sites, and how your organic listing looks on Google. This can help so many different pieces of the SEO puzzle get noted and then you can dive a bit deeper in platforms like Analytics and Search Console knowing what data or information you may need.
I learned that most of us learned from our own teachings.
I had a weird experience in college when SEO wasn't as big of a concept as it is now. A company I had applied to an internship for wanted an article written on any knowledge on SEO. Due to myself not having any background, I took a shot and this individual came back and was like "You probably won't do well in this field because you don't have any idea about what SEO is." Now looking back, most people in the industry were probably in my shoes too in that moment, so I took the time to teach myself and now SEO has become such a large part of my work that I think back to that moment as one that drove me to learn on my own and become the best I could be in Tech SEO.
My proudest achievements are seeing a client's website get placed organically in a top spot or creating a sustainable plan that a client is proud to continue to work on after a digital strategy session with me. Having them be a part of my own SEO journey and providing them with results is a constant achievement.
Keep learning. We are all constantly learning and adapting. You do not need to know it all but be willing to take on new challenges as you go.
It is a rewarding industry because you do not see the results right away sometimes but when you do it's great!
I have to give a shout out to two women who I admire greatly in the industry and am lucky to know as well. Julia Bocchese and Rachel Vandernick are constant inspirations and I look up to both of them.
I strive to be brilliant so that I can share my knowledge with the next generation of digital marketing experts and budding SEO-er's. I want to see others rise so if that includes my knowledge, my network, and anything else, I do what I can to grow so that I can then help plant the seeds for others.
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Thanks Sarah for a truly insightful interview, you can learn more about Sarah on her website.
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! 🙌🏽