Women in Search – Techie or Tacky?

At Chicago SES, I had the pleasure of attending the first women in search luncheon hosted by Ylayn Meredith Ousley, SEOFan Girl, at a beautiful white table cloth restaurant. It was far and away the most unique event that I attended – a celebration of women in search. It was a chance to enjoy the companionship of other successful women who share a passion for search.

At SES New York, Li Evans, who champions women in search and recently included me in her series on the Women of Internet Marketing took up the cause and arranged for another luncheon for women in search. Rebecca Leib wrote an insightful piece on the event that struck just the right notes. Rebecca opined that search is obviously no longer dominated by the classic stereotypical propeller-headed geeky guys, but now includes a generous measure of women. Danny Sullivan in a follow up post at his personal blog noted that there always has been a strong presence of women in search and at SES.

As a veteran in the industry, I would have to agree with both writers. The shift noted by Rebecca is real. Search is less geeky and more marketing than ever before. As search has moved to the C-level suite, it requires those who can speak to more than technical issues. C-level executives want marketing, many of the best and brightest in search are women marketers.

This being said I was quite taken aback by the comments to Danny’s post and a recent ClickZ column (read rant) by my long-time friend and colleague Shari Thurow; wherein, she inaccurately in my opinion noted:

“most of the women I shared lunch with were heavily involved in search engine advertising. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Search engine advertising is a rather challenging and detail-oriented niche. Kudos to my colleagues with the skills and patience to effectively compete in this arena.

Nevertheless, where were the women like me? Where were the techie women?”

Where were the techie women – the same place many men were – working for the women gathered at the luncheon? Those in attendance were not just “detail-oriented niche” players. They were agency heads, industry thought leaders, and search marketing pioneers. These are women who play large. Many have rich and varied experience bases and solid technical credentials.

Web marketing and in specific search marketing does require technical understanding. It is, as Shari contends, a left-brain/right-brain integrative discipline. Those of us who work in organic search must be able to understand and articulate the technical requirements of the discipline to be successful at what we do. I contend that we are architects of success, not just the carpenters.

I for one personally don’t ever intend to stand in front of the mirror and ask – “mirror, mirror on the wall, am I the geekiest women of them all?” I’ll leave that to others.

Comments

[christine]

Classy eloquent response Amanda. I whole heartedly agree. I too was shocked by the inaccuracy of Shari's statement about the lack of technical experience in search women. She obviously doesn't know the background on a number of the ladies who attended that luncheon. Many have techie experience – not IT necessarily, but technical. For starters the hostess Li Evans worked as a programmer and I worked nearly a decade in missile engineering. I know Shari has had some tough times going on in her personal life lately, so I'll chalk up her comment to oversight.

[Jill]

I was also surprised by Shari's article. I don't have a technical degree, and am not half as technical as Christine or Amanda, but I do have that left-brain/right-brain thing going on. I'm pretty sure I can hold my own in regards to most technical SEO stuff as well!

The whole women in SEO thing is a bit weird, imo. Not sure why we need/want to be singled out from the men, personally.

[Shari Thurow]

Hi all-

First, I want to make it clear that I did contact Li directly because I know she is a "techie" person like myself. We both designed databases as part of our job responsibilities before venturing out in the search industry. Due to my grandmother's passing (I was in NYC less than 24 hours after her funeral), it was an unfortunate oversight that I addressed immediately upon realizing my error.

So please do not make incorrect and inaccurate assumptions without contacting the original author first. I give you that courtesy.

I know that some of the women attending the lunch had some technical skills, but I don't think there are enough women in this industry with the high-level technical skills needed to truly understand the information retrieval process. One can only progress so far in SEO without having high-level technical skills.

That was and is my point.