On May 30, 2007, Lisa Myers wrote the first post for the new SEO Chicks site. At that time we were three: Lisa, myself, and Anita Chaperon. Lisa was working for Base One, I was working as a contract SEO for a company in London where Anita handled PPC. I’m not sure that any of us had written much back then (I’m pretty sure that I’d only written one online article, and that was about a band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!) but we felt there was a dearth of visible female writers in SEO at the time so we decided to fix that.
We’ve been through several changes at SEO Chicks over the years, most notably with our regular bloggers who currently consist of Lisa, myself, Judith Lewis, Hannah Smith, Nichola Stott, Annabel Hodges, and Anna Lewis. Past bloggers included Anita, Jane Copland, Stephanie Weingart, Donna Fontenot, Rebecca Kelley, Sarah Carling, Shimrit Elisar, and Rebecca Weeks. We’ve had a redesign but hey, we kept the green shirts (we just got newer ones.)
Last year for our 4th anniversary, Sam Murray even donned a lovely wig for us. See? We totally know how to rock a celebration.
For this anniversary I thought I would spare you the links to past posts that I thought were awesome, and focus on what this blog means to me and has meant to me throughout the past 5 years. I am going to channel my innermost sappiness.
First of all, every blogging opportunity that I have currently can be traced back to SEO Chicks. When we first started, a few people (all male, ahem) made some derogatory remarks about the concept of an all-female blog with “chicks” in the name, finding it too cutesy and thinking that we wouldn’t be taken seriously. Back then, the original three of us worked for other people. Today, Lisa and I own our own companies. I write for Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, and my own company blog on a regular basis and have contributed to Search Engine Journal, Search Engine People, Search Marketing Gurus, and State of Search. I kind of love this writing thing. Lisa’s accomplishments are too numerous to mention but she has spoken at just about every conference that I know of, co-founded State of Search, she’s organized the beJaysis out of some after-conference parties, and was last year’s Search Personality of the Year at the UK Search Awards. She has been the driving force behind this blog, both in terms of handling the setup, pursuing the redesign and logo, and trying to organize a group of women who are doing a billion things every day. She’s the backbone of the blog, and when you mention the SEO Chicks, I can almost guarantee you that she’s the name that pops into someone’s mind.
We have some serious talent on board. Nichola runs her own company, The Media Flow. Judith Lewis (another one I have to give props to for promoting the hell out of the site and just generally being a serious sweetie pie), Anna Lewis, Annabel Hodges, and Hannah Smith are all very visible in the search world and work for some rockin’ companies themselves. They speak at conferences, write about the industry, and can hold their own with anyone.
I also have to say that the best part about this blog is not the blog itself…it’s the group. It’s the truly amazing support that we get from each other, and it’s the friendship that we have formed with each other. We are each thrilled with another one of us is successful and it’s very genuine. It’s annoying for me to be in NC and not be able to see everyone more than once a year, but that doesn’t seem to matter the second I see them all. I just wait for those drunken conference-party phone calls really. Oh, and the chance to take photos in the toilet again..what the hell started that anyway??? Anna, get ready for it sister.
Anyway, to our readers and those of you who have supported us through the past 5 years, we’d all like to say thank you. Thanks for reading, thanks for coming up to us at shows and parties and actually seeming happy to meet us. To the rest of my co-bloggers, thank you for continuing to be there.
