Our Experience at the Women in Tech SEO Festival – London 2024

The Women in Tech SEO London Festival was back for the fifth time on March 8th 2024. 

And it was the biggest one yet! 

Attendees of the ever-growing global community came together to learn about SEO and personal development topics from the experts. The day was full of insightful talks and great opportunities to connect with wonderful people.

For those unaware, Women in Tech SEO is an international network of people working in the SEO and marketing industry. The group aims to empower members to exchange their stories, expertise and abilities.

The full-day conference was packed with 10 talks from 10 experts and featured four categories: Analyse, Advance, Innovate and Empower.

Majestic was the proud headline sponsor of the event. The team hired large arcade games and the stand was filled with giveaways like tote bags for the attendees. The goal was to ensure that all attendees enjoyed themselves.

Natalie

WTS Fest London was a positive and interesting experience.

The atmosphere was friendly, fun and inclusive. I met many new people and made new connections. Among the many interesting talks, the one that stood out to me was Joyann Boyce’s talk ‘Starting with Bias in AI Might Be the Solution’.

In this talk Joyann spoke about the impact of bias in AI and how to use it to break stereotypes in marketing campaigns. Joyann used data to show what AI will output if you ask for images of job roles.

In her data it showed a heavy bias towards cis white men for jobs such as doctors, senior roles and technical roles, black women were portrayed as cleaners and housekeepers. 

One strategy to resolving this issue is to train AI like you would a puppy.

Input information to get the desired outcome and don’t be afraid to use keywords to gain the outcome you need. The most important message of the talk was AI does not reflect society yet but we can change that. Communities like Women in Tech SEO are vital to opening the door for women into the industry. I appreciate all the work that went into this event. As someone at the beginning of my career this event gave me a chance to network and learn more about the SEO industry.

Kainat

Around 400 talented individuals from diverse backgrounds came together to acquire new knowledge and make wholesome connections.

The experience was truly uplifting. 

It was our second time attending the event, this time as the headline sponsor. I enjoyed meeting the attendees. For the people who wanted to find out more about Majestic, I explained how our software could meet their needs. 

The experts delivered engaging talks, full of useful information.

We left the sessions with wonderful new knowledge and fresh outlooks. The talk which stood out for me the most was The Future of User-Centric Search Experiences by Veruska Anconitano. Veruska is a globalisation consultant and learning about Search from a linguist was eye-opening.

She shared how understanding the evolution of the language is crucial to understanding the future of search. 

We explored concepts such as the Speech Act Theory and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

At the end of her talk, she gave actionable tips for improving search experiences such as adopting an inclusive and Omni channel search strategy.

This approach has the potential to boost customer satisfaction and business growth.

Bethany

I truly enjoyed attending WTSFest this year. This was my second year attending, and first time exhibiting, and it was a pleasure to meet so many people.

Joyann Boyce (Founder & CEO, Inclued AI) delivered a stand-out talk on ‘Starting with Bias in AI Might Be the Solution’.

She talked about how we can work to make AI more inclusive by understanding and using its biases. It is incredibly important to understand the shortcomings of AI as it becomes more prominent in society.

Knowing strategies to help avoid these flaws can help us leverage it for more inclusive outputs. We learnt to contradict this bias, which will help the AI learn to be more reflective of what we want it to be.

She likened AI to a puppy – you should approach an unknown dog cautiously as you don’t know how well they are trained, and work to train the puppy yourself.

Requesting better representation of a more diverse audience in your prompts for AI will help train it to be more representative in the future.

I also left Stevy Liakopoulou‘s (SEO Expert, Search Magic) talk on ‘Turning Clicks into Revenue: A Video-Centric Ecommerce Strategy’ incredibly inspired.

Video marketing is becoming a very important avenue to look down, and she highlighted some brilliant ideas in the area, such as the importance of closed captions. Videos are shareable, can help add a lot of value, and can demonstrate products to build trust with potential buyers.

My favourite part of the day was definitely getting to meet all of the attendees who came to the Majestic stand. Seeing people come from so far and wide, and all joining together in this community was amazing.

Everyone was so friendly and welcoming!

It was great to meet our customers face to face, and be able to chat and connect with each other.

I am very glad that an event like this exists, as it brings so many amazing people together. I found this event very empowering: I learnt a lot from a diverse range of individuals, and felt inspired by seeing the heights they are reaching, and thinking about what I can achieve in the future.  

Vanessa

As a software developer I always enjoy getting opportunities to interact with SEO professionals. In my experience, this prevents gaps between the tools I work on and our clients’ needs.

Events like WTSFest gives me a unique opportunity to understand my stakeholders better.

Attending a specialist conference as a non-specialist is always a risk, however, I found WTSFest to be a very welcoming space. Everyone was willing to engage in conversation with me and was interested in my experiences as a developer. This allowed me to learn lots from the talks and the attendees.

This has been my second year attending the conference and my first time assisting with a sponsor stand. I found this year’s talks to be incredibly accessible and easy to understand, even with my limited SEO knowledge.

They gave me a better view of the goings on in departments outside my own, and offered insights I can use in my work.

While each talk was engaging, I found “The Future of Ecommerce” by Emma Russell and the entire Innovate section to be standouts. One main takeaway was the concept of writing copy and designing URL structures to facilitate search engine discovery, specifically for specialist keywords.

Veruska‘s talk on multi-lingual search was very interesting from a linguistics perspective. It offered me food for thought as someone who works with NLP and writes copy for our multi-lingual site.

And, as someone who helps design front end, Billie Geena’s talk on accessibility provided me with some tools to aid in making our site more accessible.

Overall, the event was a big success in my eyes, and I’d like to extend my thanks to the attendees, speakers, volunteers and organisers for making it such a great experience.

Gabriela

Connecting with numerous individuals and engaging in discussions about crucial SEO topics was a delightful experience.

It’s encouraging to see events like the WTSFest making a positive impact and contributing to a more inclusive and diverse tech community where the members have the chance to get together and feel empowered and supported! Among the noteworthy talks, Stevy Liakopoulou‘s presentation on ‘Turning Clicks into Revenue: A Video-Centric E-commerce Strategy’ stood out for me.

She expertly delved into the transformative power of videos for E-commerce websites, offering valuable insights on converting clicks into revenue.

With the increasing importance of multimedia content, especially videos, in online platforms, it’s great that such events bring attention to effective strategies for leveraging these tools.

I enjoyed learning how to optimise videos for E-commerce, as it can significantly impact a website’s performance and enhance the overall user experience.

Overall, there were many great discussions where attendees had the chance to learn, laugh, and enjoy themselves! I recommend attending this event to anyone who wants to learn more about the SEO industry as well as to have a bit of fun talking to so many intelligent and passionate individuals!

Conclusion

A huge thanks and gratitude to Areej AbuAli and all the people who contributed and helped make this event happen.

Without their efforts, this event could not have happened.

The team worked hard to make sure that all the attendees enjoyed themselves. 

If you are interested in finding out more about Women in Tech SEO and attending future events, please see the following link: https://www.womenintechseo.com/.

Thanks for reading!   

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