Based out of London, Areej AbuAli has a splendid digital marketing career at Zoopla. She started working at Zoopla around a year ago as the SEO Manager. She specializes in Technical SEO and also founded Women in Tech SEO a year ago. Women in Tech SEO is a global support network aimed at women in the Technical SEO field that enables them to discuss, share, and learn from each other. The aim of this network is to empower each other in a positive, inspiring, and beneficial way and to help members build their network and accelerate in their careers.
Today she is one of the most influential technical SEO specialists in the world. Women in Tech SEO recently made the news with the Technical SEO Conference’s launching for women with a women-only speaker line-up. Areej has also been featured on the world-renowned MozCon and BrightonSEO. Let us find out more about the sensational Areej AbuAli.
In the Early Years
Areej AbuAli was born and brought up in Egypt. In her early years, Areej wanted to be an astronaut and was fascinated with the universe. This ultimately proves the theory that very few world leaders know what they want to do at an early age. In Areej’s case, she was absolutely obsessed with space. She would print out each planet and started reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time at the age of 7. Her favorite novel at the time was Sphere by Michael Crichton, which she read at least 30 times as a kid.
After a few blissful years with the universe, she ultimately decided to pursue an under graduation in Computer Science from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Egypt. Predictably, she completed her under graduation with an excellent grade point average and passed with honors.
From Egypt to the UK
Areej moved to the UK to pursue an MBA in Information Technology back in 2013 from Coventry University. Her MBA degree turned out to be one of the most important experiences of her career. The MBA introduced her to the world of digital marketing. During her studies, she did a few internships and charity-based work around digital marketing and eventually stumbled upon SEO. She started off in an agency-side content specialist role and, after a month, switched to the Technical SEO team.
Her Career
Areej’s very first job was a 2-week long internship at a local Fujitsu office in Egypt, which she doesn’t remember much about. Her first serious job was an internship at Omron in their Japan headquarters as a Data Analyst, where she conducted a data analyst internship in the health care department in the Omron Research & Innovation Center.
After finishing her MBA, she became the Technical SEO Specialist in Verve Search. She worked across a broad range of technical SEO projects for clients based in 10 countries in the travel, fashion, financial and education industries. She remained at Verve Search for two years before joining Authoritas as the Technical SEO Account Manager. She managed relationships with Authoritas’ customer base in major enterprises and digital agencies in UK, USA, and across Europe for a year.
Areej then returned to Verve Search as the Head of SEO, where she led Verve Search’s day-to-day on all things technical and on-site SEO, as well as monitored progress towards targets and communicated that to clients. After these brilliant and vast experiences, she finally launched Women in Tech SEO a year ago. She is currently working as the SEO manager in Zoopla and is responsible for leading and line-managing Zoopla’s SEO Team and building out our technical, on-page, and off-page strategy.
Being a compassionate person by nature, Areej AbuAli volunteered as an IT Instructor in the Coventry Resource Centre for the Blind. She was also the online sales coordinator for Oxfam, a disaster and humanitarian relief organization, for about a year.
Mistakes and Regrets
The mistakes and regrets that someone like Areej AbuAli had faced during her remarkable journey can drive young entrepreneurs and students and help them make if not better than smarter decisions. One of the mistakes that Areej made during the early years of her career is the lack of confidence. This lack made her consistently stop and think if she wants to pursue specific opportunities.
She is a Computer Engineering graduate but is convinced that she isn’t made for programming by people who repeatedly told her things like ‘Do you need hand-holding?’ and ‘You’re not strategic enough.’ This led to a sort of imposter syndrome in her, and she has continuously questioned whether she is good enough with Tech SEO as well.
One of the most extraordinary things that she has learned is not to hold herself back and not to let others dictate her strengths and weakness. This thought process went a long way in making her in charge of her own life and in helping others with Women In Tech SEO as well. She realized that when you learn to dictate your life without paying any attention to the pessimists around you, you can truly excel at what you want to do and can only then think of helping thousands like yourself.
She spent a significant part of her second year during her bachelor’s, feeling lost and unsure about what she wanted to do next. She was over-stressing about grades and the future always. And if she could tell her 18-year-old self that it’s going to be okay, and she would and relax a bit more while enjoying being young altogether. She thinks that when you are young, you should truly be carefree with life altogether. You should experience everything that you would like to experience because as you get older, you run out of opportunities and time to make these things happen.
She regrets not growing a network and building connections in the industry. This is something she has only started this year, and she feels like she missed out by five years being in the industry.
Her Legacy
Areej wants her legacy to be helping and supporting others. She was beginning to lose interest in SEO until she started the Women in Tech SEO community earlier this year. This community changed the entire perspective of the digital marketing industry and the work she does. By getting to know lots of women in the industry and discussing the challenges they face has and inspired her to give more to the community. She would like to be remembered for her work in the community.
About Women In Tech SEO
Whether you’re freelance, agency-side, or client-side, this group or in-house, this community welcomes women in all stages of their Technical SEO career to share their knowledge and learn from one another.
Their values are:
- To be kind
- To be helpful
- To be respectful
- To be a safe and judgment-free community
Women like Areej AbuAli are the epitome of empowerment and the perfect example of how much a modern-day woman has evolved and unmatched in terms of positive progress.
Started working as a digital marketing expert, Varun Sharma is now also a well-known digital marketing speaker – a speaker on performance development, and a trusted mentor to businesses in the digital world. His keynote expositions are based on the digital marketing theories, which provide a fascinating insight into the secrets of high performance.