SEO
10 Women In SEO & Marketing Share How They #BreakTheBias
This International Women’s Day, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are top of mind.
Why? Well, women are expected to make up 47.2% of the workforce by 2024.
Yet even still, the gender pay gap still has a long way to go. Women’s wages were only 82.6% of the average man’s as of Q1 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
International Women’s Day focuses on a specific message each year, and this time it’s #BreakTheBias.
Employers cannot rely on their teams to naturally promote diversity, equity, and inclusion on their own.
It’s up to each and every one of us, from the front lines to leadership, to actively call out gender bias, discrimination, and stereotyping where and when we see it.
What else can you do to nurture an inclusive culture in your organization – especially if it hasn’t been an area of focus before?
And how can you, as a woman in the industry, combat bias in their working relationships and situations?
These women in SEO and marketing have some tips to share with you.
Some are from the recent ‘Showstopping SEO: Women Making Waves‘ panel talk I attended, while others were shared with SEJ by email.
I hope each one inspires you to find creative ways to break the bias when you see it – and to recognize it more often as it happens.
Know The Value Of Your Skills
Julie Adams, Affiliate SEO
“Sometimes women are used as a buffer in the industry or in meetings.
Sometimes women are seen as the note-takers or a body double without providing any value to a conversation.
I busted my butt for 5-6 years learning SEO at an agency, managing 80-90 clients. Affiliate marketing was my way of making money without having to deal with clients.
I’m able to make money based on my skills and not my skills at keeping clients.
You have to exude confidence.”
You Don’t Want The Clients You’ll Lose By Getting Paid Fairly
Bibi Raven, Bibibuzz
Do you get nervous about asking for an increase or a rate you worry may scare off a prospective client?
“When showcasing your work to potential clients, try to be as transparent as possible. Show them, ‘This is how I work, this is what you’re getting, and manage expectations from there’.
I keep everything on my website so potential clients know what to expect. From there, I send them a questionnaire to see if they’d be a good fit.
You determine what you think you’re worth, then double it.
People sometimes see raising rates as a life or death situation. Surprisingly, if you raise your rate, you get better clients.”
Know Your Non-Negotiables
Cassandra Le, The Quirky Pineapple Studio
“Removing gender is a great start to inclusiveness when you’re writing. Refer to people as people.
With the way the world is currently moving, it’s better to be inclusive. There are a lot of people who identify with different genders, are more in tune with their identity.
The more inclusive you are, the wider the audience you can reach.
If you are a freelancer, sometimes your values don’t match your clients’ ideology or language. So think about what your non-negotiables are.
Sometimes, there are values that can be negotiated or flexible based on the situation.
Sometimes, it’s best to end a relationship with a client if they breach your non-negotiables.”
Get Used To Women In SEO Taking Space
Marie Ysais, Rule Your Rankings
“To be successful in SEO, being consistent is key.
Stubbornness is another quality to have. You can’t give up and have to want to keep going, no matter what.
Having a support system is so beneficial in this industry because you have a safe group of people to talk to, who you know will have your back.
Sometimes clients feel they know more than you do, yet they hire you. If I can’t run the show because they’re getting in their own way, I part ways with them immediately.
We need to speak up and be ourselves. Let’s get used to women in these positions and taking up space.”
Speak Up & Share Your Expertise
Kayle Larkin, Marketing Analytics Consultant
“I used a male pseudonym earlier in my career. I was a young woman in the space and it was challenging.
I also hid behind my agency name. When I started my own business, I didn’t want to be the face of the business.
The people I work with now want to work with me because of my skills. My alter-ego at the beginning of my own business was not respected as much as I am today.
Sometimes, what you think you’re getting out of doing actually provides the opposite effect.
Don’t be the note-taker. Be the speaker.
You’re going to be shaky, your heart will be pounding, but the more you speak up and show your expertise, the more people start to trust you and stop questioning everything you have to say.”
Challenge Your Own Biases – We All Have Them
Chiara D’Ambra, Clearpier
“Having gender balance and a diverse workforce is important, because the more diverse the group is, the more wisdom it contains.
Everyone has assumptions and biases, it is human nature. Unfortunately, they are not healthy and helpful.
That’s why awareness is so important.
Whenever I get caught in a bias, I try to switch perspectives and have a rational view of things.
Whenever someone is having a bias about me, I’m trying to not take it personally.”
Own Your Mistakes & Actively Move Your Career Forward
Alina Dobrzinsky, Spyke Media GmbH
“If you stand behind your work with passion and creativity you can achieve anything. Always follow your goals.
When we are aware of our strengths and weaknesses we can adapt better to different circumstances and positions.
We can only fully exploit our potential if we dare and aren’t afraid to take on responsibility.
Every woman should actively influence her career instead of waiting for others to do so. We do not have to be perfect as long as we do our best.
Don’t let setbacks or bad decisions lower your self-esteem. Everyone makes mistakes, including men.
Stand by your decisions and show passion for the job.
Be self-confident and open to learning new things, because, to continue to be successful in marketing, you should consider that technical understanding is increasingly required.
Always create an overview and stay ‘on top of things,’ and don’t be afraid of confrontation.”
Find Your Mentors
Iuliana Popa, Ads and More
“If you want a career in the tech industry, start as soon as possible. Be flexible and do the best you can.
Chase your idea no matter what and seek advice from people who started something similar or from those who achieved what you want to achieve.
And always remember nothing is perfect and you should not be too: problems happen, good things too.
Having someone who knows tech on your side is always a clever idea: it can be a tech person you hire, a good tech solution, or a tech advisor.
This is the industry of the present and because of that, it is very volatile.”
Go Where Your Talents Are Appreciated
Oleksandra Gipsh, Apptrust
I believe the best advice I could have given to my younger self is – don’t be afraid to speak up.
So often, our fears of being judged or misunderstood stop us from contributing with our opinion. I think this advice comes along with ‘don’t doubt yourself,’ as well.
All ideas are valuable and all ideas are worth hearing – and if your work environment doesn’t appreciate your input – you probably are in the wrong place.
I am happy & proud to be working in an environment where ideas are welcome – processes are there to be changed and developed.
My source of energy at work is people.
Seeing our team succeed, seeing our interns growing professionally – is what gives me joy at work.
I believe the main priority for me was building a true team and I love seeing how people connect and create true bonds at work.
Shatter Your Own Glass Ceiling
Yogeeta Chainani, Swaarm
“Confidence and self-trust are key qualities that I would attribute to success in any industry.
Women can be held back for a variety of reasons, including a lack of recognition and trust from colleagues and peers – but also by their self-doubt.
My most important piece of advice to them would be to shatter the glass ceiling of social norms and mindsets and to flaunt their self-assurance.
No one else will believe in them if they do not believe in themselves.
Thank you to each of the above women for their participation in this campaign and advocacy for DEI in the workplace!
We have a lot more work to do together.
IWD 2022 organizers ask that women do the following this year:
“Strike the IWD 2022 pose and share your #BreakTheBias image, video, resources, presentation or articles on social media using #IWD2022 #BreakTheBias to encourage further people to commit to helping forge an inclusive world.”
You can learn more about IWD-approved charities, fundraising activities, and cause-related marketing on the official website.
More resources:
Featured image: Shutterstock/Southworks
SEO
How To Drive Pipeline With A Silo-Free Strategy
When it comes to B2B strategy, a holistic approach is the only approach.
Revenue organizations usually operate with siloed teams, and often expect a one-size-fits-all solution (usually buying clicks with paid media).
However, without cohesive brand, infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts, they’re pretty much doomed to fail.
It’s just like rowing crew, where each member of the team must synchronize their movements to propel the boat forward – successful B2B marketing requires an integrated strategy.
So if you’re ready to ditch your disjointed marketing efforts and try a holistic approach, we’ve got you covered.
Join us on May 15, for an insightful live session with Digital Reach Agency on how to craft a compelling brand and PMF.
We’ll walk through the critical infrastructure you need, and the reliances and dependences of the core digital marketing disciplines.
Key takeaways from this webinar:
- Thinking Beyond Traditional Silos: Learn why traditional marketing silos are no longer viable and how they spell doom for modern revenue organizations.
- How To Identify and Fix Silos: Discover actionable strategies for pinpointing and sealing the gaps in your marketing silos.
- The Power of Integration: Uncover the secrets to successfully integrating brand strategy, digital infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts.
Ben Childs, President and Founder of Digital Reach Agency, and Jordan Gibson, Head of Growth at Digital Reach Agency, will show you how to seamlessly integrate various elements of your marketing strategy for optimal results.
Don’t make the common mistake of using traditional marketing silos – sign up now and learn what it takes to transform your B2B go-to-market.
You’ll also get the opportunity to ask Ben and Jordan your most pressing questions, following the presentation.
And if you can’t make it to the live event, register anyway and we’ll send you a recording shortly after the webinar.
SEO
Why Big Companies Make Bad Content
It’s like death and taxes: inevitable. The bigger a company gets, the worse its content marketing becomes.
HubSpot teaching you how to type the shrug emoji or buy bitcoin stock. Salesforce sharing inspiring business quotes. GoDaddy helping you use Bing AI, or Zendesk sharing catchy sales slogans.
Judged by content marketing best practice, these articles are bad.
They won’t resonate with decision-makers. Nobody will buy a HubSpot license after Googling “how to buy bitcoin stock.” It’s the very definition of vanity traffic: tons of visits with no obvious impact on the business.
So why does this happen?
There’s an obvious (but flawed) answer to this question: big companies are inefficient.
As companies grow, they become more complicated, and writing good, relevant content becomes harder. I’ve experienced this firsthand:
- extra rounds of legal review and stakeholder approval creeping into processes.
- content watered down to serve an ever-more generic “brand voice”.
- growing misalignment between search and content teams.
- a lack of content leadership within the company as early employees leave.
Similarly, funded companies have to grow, even when they’re already huge. Content has to feed the machine, continually increasing traffic… even if that traffic never contributes to the bottom line.
There’s an element of truth here, but I’ve come to think that both these arguments are naive, and certainly not the whole story.
It is wrong to assume that the same people that grew the company suddenly forgot everything they once knew about content, and wrong to assume that companies willfully target useless keywords just to game their OKRs.
Instead, let’s assume that this strategy is deliberate, and not oversight. I think bad content—and the vanity traffic it generates—is actually good for business.
There are benefits to driving tons of traffic, even if that traffic never directly converts. Or put in meme format:
Programmatic SEO is a good example. Why does Dialpad create landing pages for local phone numbers?
Why does Wise target exchange rate keywords?
Why do we have a list of most popular websites pages?
As this Twitter user points out, these articles will never convert…
…but they don’t need to.
Every published URL and targeted keyword is a new doorway from the backwaters of the internet into your website. It’s a chance to acquire backlinks that wouldn’t otherwise exist, and an opportunity to get your brand in front of thousands of new, otherwise unfamiliar people.
These benefits might not directly translate into revenue, but over time, in aggregate, they can have a huge indirect impact on revenue. They can:
- Strengthen domain authority and the search performance of every other page on the website.
- Boost brand awareness, and encourage serendipitous interactions that land your brand in front of the right person at the right time.
- Deny your competitors traffic and dilute their share of voice.
These small benefits become more worthwhile when multiplied across many hundreds or thousands of pages. If you can minimize the cost of the content, there is relatively little downside.
What about topical authority?
“But what about topical authority?!” I hear you cry. “If you stray too far from your area of expertise, won’t rankings suffer for it?”
I reply simply with this screenshot of Forbes’ “health” subfolder, generating almost 4 million estimated monthly organic pageviews:
And big companies can minimize cost. For large, established brands, the marginal cost of content creation is relatively low.
Many companies scale their output through networks of freelancer writers, avoiding the cost of fully loaded employees. They have established, efficient processes for research, briefing, editorial review, publication and maintenance. The cost of an additional “unit” of content—or ten, or a hundred—is not that great, especially relative to other marketing channels.
There is also relatively little opportunity cost to consider: the fact that energy spent on “vanity” traffic could be better spent elsewhere, on more business-relevant topics.
In reality, many of the companies engaging in this strategy have already plucked the low-hanging fruit and written almost every product-relevant topic. There are a finite number of high traffic, high relevance topics; blog consistently for a decade and you too will reach these limits.
On top of that, the HubSpots and Salesforces of the world have very established, very efficient sales processes. Content gating, lead capture and scoring, and retargeting allow them to put very small conversion rates to relatively good use.
Even HubSpot’s article on Bitcoin stock has its own relevant call-to-action—and for HubSpot, building a database of aspiring investors is more valuable than it sounds, because…
The bigger a company grows, the bigger its audience needs to be to continue sustaining that growth rate.
Companies generally expand their total addressable market (TAM) as they grow, like HubSpot broadening from marketing to sales and customer success, launching new product lines for new—much bigger—audiences. This means the target audience for their content marketing grows alongside.
As Peep Laja put its:
But for the biggest companies, this principle is taken to an extreme. When a company gears up to IPO, its target audience expands to… pretty much everyone.
This was something Janessa Lantz (ex-HubSpot and dbt Labs) helped me understand: the target audience for a post-IPO company is not just end users, but institutional investors, market analysts, journalists, even regular Jane investors.
These are people who can influence the company’s worth in ways beyond simply buying a subscription: they can invest or encourage others to invest and dramatically influence the share price. These people are influenced by billboards, OOH advertising and, you guessed it, seemingly “bad” content showing up whenever they Google something.
You can think of this as a second, additional marketing funnel for post-IPO companies:
These visitors might not purchase a software subscription when they see your article in the SERP, but they will notice your brand, and maybe listen more attentively the next time your stock ticker appears on the news.
They won’t become power users, but they might download your eBook and add an extra unit to the email subscribers reported in your S1.
They might not contribute revenue now, but they will in the future: in the form of stock appreciation, or becoming the target audience for a future product line.
Vanity traffic does create value, but in a form most content marketers are not used to measuring.
If any of these benefits apply, then it makes sense to acquire them for your company—but also to deny them to your competitors.
SEO is an arms race: there are a finite number of keywords and topics, and leaving a rival to claim hundreds, even thousands of SERPs uncontested could very quickly create a headache for your company.
SEO can quickly create a moat of backlinks and brand awareness that can be virtually impossible to challenge; left unchecked, the gap between your company and your rival can accelerate at an accelerating pace.
Pumping out “bad” content and chasing vanity traffic is a chance to deny your rivals unchallenged share of voice, and make sure your brand always has a seat at the table.
Final thoughts
These types of articles are miscategorized—instead of thinking of them as bad content, it’s better to think of them as cheap digital billboards with surprisingly great attribution.
Big companies chasing “vanity traffic” isn’t an accident or oversight—there are good reasons to invest energy into content that will never convert. There is benefit, just not in the format most content marketers are used to.
This is not an argument to suggest that every company should invest in hyper-broad, high-traffic keywords. But if you’ve been blogging for a decade, or you’re gearing up for an IPO, then “bad content” and the vanity traffic it creates might not be so bad.
SEO
Is It Alternatives You’re Looking For?
Whatever the reason, in this article, I’ll share some alternatives to HARO and a few extra ways to get expert quotes and backlinks for your website.
Disclaimer: I am not a PR expert. I did a bit of outreach a few years ago, but I have only been an occasional user of HARO in the past year or so.
So, rather than providing my opinion on the best alternatives to HARO, I thought it would be fun to ask users of the “new HARO” what they thought were the best alternatives.
I wanted to give the “new HARO”—Connectively—the benefit of the doubt.
Still, a few minutes after my pitch was accepted, I got two responses that appeared to be AI-generated from two “visionary directors,” both with “extensive experience.”
My experience of Connectively so far mirrored Josh’s experience of old HARO: The responses were most likely automated.
Although I was off to a bad start, looking through most of the responses afterward, these two were the only blatant automated pitches I could spot.
These responses weren’t included in my survey, and anyone who saw my pitch would have to copy and paste the survey link to complete it—increasing the chance of genuine human responses—hopefully.
So, without further ado, here are the results of the survey.
Sidenote.
The survey on Connectively ran for a week and received 101 votes. Respondents could vote for their top three HARO alternatives.
Price: Free.
Help a B2B Writer was the #1 alternative platform respondents recommended. In my survey it got 22% of the vote.
Help a B2B Writer is a platform run by Superpath that is similar to HARO but focused on connecting business-to-business (B2B) journalists with industry experts and sources for their stories.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $99 per month.
Coming in joint second place, Featured was popular, scoring 18% of the vote.
Featured connects journalists with experts and thought leaders. It allows experts to create profiles showcasing their expertise and helps journalists find suitable sources for their stories.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $99 per month.
Qwoted is another platform that I’ve heard talked about a lot. It came in joint second place, scoring 18% of the vote.
Qwoted matches journalists with expert sources, allowing them to collaborate on creating high-quality content. It streamlines the process of finding and connecting with relevant sources.
Price: Free for ten pitches per month
Despite being the “new HARO,” Connectively came 4th on my list, scoring 12% of the vote—surprisingly, it wasn’t even the top choice for most users on its own platform.
Connectively connects journalists with sources and experts. It helps journalists find relevant sources for their stories and allows experts to gain media exposure.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $5.95 per month.
SourceBottle is an online platform that connects journalists, bloggers, and media professionals with expert sources. It allows experts to pitch their ideas and insights to journalists looking for story sources. It scored 9% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free.
JournoRequest is an X account that shares journalist requests for sources. UK-based journalists and experts often use it, but it can sometimes have international reach. It scored 7% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Paid. Plans start at $1,150 per year.
ProfNet connects journalists to expert sources. It helps journalists find knowledgeable sources for their articles, interviews, and other media content. It helps subject matter experts gain media exposure and share their expertise. It scored 5% of the vote in my survey.
Price: 7-day free trial and paid plans. Paid plans start at $147 per month.
JustReachOut is a PR and influencer outreach platform that helps businesses find and connect with relevant journalists and influencers. It provides tools for personalized outreach and relationship management. It scored 3% of the vote in my survey.
Price: 14-day free trial and paid plans. Paid plans start at $50 per month.
OnePitch is a platform that simplifies the process of pitching story ideas to journalists. Businesses and PR professionals can create and send targeted pitches to relevant media outlets. It scored 3% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free.
PitchRate is a free PR tool that connects journalists and highly rated experts. Useful for subject matter experts looking for free PR leads, media coverage, or publicity. Or journalists looking for credible sources. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at ~$105 per month.
A UK service that connects media professionals with expert sources, press releases, and PR contacts. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Invitation-only platform.
Forbes Councils is an invitation-only community for executives and entrepreneurs. Members can contribute expert insights and thought leadership content to Forbes.com and gain media exposure. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Price: Free.
Yes, you read that right.
HERO was created by Peter Shankman, the original creator of HARO, who said the platform will always be free. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.
Peter set up the platform after receiving over 2,000 emails asking him to build a new version of HARO.
Price: Paid. Sign up for details.
Meltwater received no votes in my survey, but I included it because I’d seen it shared on social media as a paid alternative to HARO.
It’s a media intelligence and social media monitoring platform. It provides tools for tracking media coverage, analyzing sentiment, and identifying influencers and journalists for outreach.
Price: Free.
Expertise Finder also received no votes in my survey, but it was included as I saw it had been recommended as an HARO alternative on LinkedIn. It’s a platform that helps journalists find and connect with expert sources from universities.
HARO had a dual purpose for SEOs: it was a place to acquire links, but it also was a place to get expert quotes on topics for your next article.
Here are a few more free methods outside the platforms we’ve covered that can help you get expert quotes and links.
We’ve already seen that JournoRequest is a popular X account that shares journalist requests for sources.
But you can also follow hashtags on X to access even more opportunities.
Here are my favorite hashtags to follow:
I used to track the #journorequest hashtag to find opportunities for my clients when I worked agency-side, so I know it can work well for quotes and link acquisition.
Here are two opportunities I found just checking the #journorequest hashtag:
Here’s another example from the Telegraph—a DR 92 website:
Certain types of content are more likely to be shared by journalists and PRs than others.
One of these types of content is statistics-based content. The reason? Journalists often use statistics to support their points.
Once they have included your statistic in their post, they often add a backlink back to your post.
We tested this with our SEO statistics post, and as you can see, it still ranks number one in Google.
Another method is to use the Linking authors report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. This report shows the authors’ names who link to any website you enter.
You can see which authors link to their site by entering your competitor’s domain. Some of these authors may represent outreach opportunities for your website as well.
- Head to Site Explorer, click on Linking authors
- Type in your competitor’s URL
- Contact any authors that you think may be interested in your website and its content
Tip
If you download your website’s linking authors and your competitors into a spreadsheet and put them into separate tabs, you can compare the lists to see which authors are only linking to your competitor’s website.
When I was about to wrap up this article, I was contacted by Greg Heilers of Jolly SEO on LinkedIn.
He said he’d sent 200,000+ pitches over the years and wanted to share the results with me.
These are his top three platforms over the last 1,000 pitches he sent. Interestingly, we can see that it’s similar to my much smaller-scale survey.
Hopefully, the data here speaks for itself. The high-quality links and traffic from HARO alternatives is considerable.
This research shows that Featured gained the most link placements in this campaign.
We have compiled some helpful content related to link building that you can get your teeth into. These hand-picked guides will take you from beginner to expert in no time.
Here are my favorite resources on this topic:
Final thoughts
There are many options for sourcing expert quotes and getting links for your next marketing campaigns. HARO may be dead, but its legacy lives on.
My highly unscientific survey suggests that most “new HARO” users liked Help a B2B Writer the most, but for HARO purists, there really is only one choice—HERO.
Give your favorites from this list a whirl, and let me know if you have any success. Got more questions? Ping me on X. 🙂
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