Women Webmasters

Women Webmasters

The internet has sparked one of the greatest influxes of women into a single job field in recent history. While women traditionally have been relatively under-represented in technology careers, women webmasters are a major exception to that rule. Not only are women strongly represented in the ranks of web design professionals, they are increasingly becoming a major presence in the more 'technical' field of search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.

While women in web design may come as no surprise, being somewhat related to graphic design and publishing (two professions with high numbers of women in the work force), SEO/SEM comes as somewhat more of a surprise. But perhaps it shouldn't, for a number of reasons.

The struggle to balance work and home life has long been an issue for many women. While economics and personal interest push towards a professional career outside the home, the demands of child rearing (and the expense of child care) make maintaining a full-time position with good advancement difficult or impossible in many cases. With webmastering or search engine optimization and marketing though, any motivated and capable individual has the potential to operate a thriving business from their own home, allowing parents (men and women alike) to work on flexible schedules that allow more time with their children and partners.

Women may be especially suited as web masters, the jack-of-all-trades of the internet world. Many studies suggest that while men have the advantage in focused, technical tasks like programming (where they still dominate the work force), women do better on average at tasks requiring broad knowledge of multiple topics, and coordinating disparate skill sets and subject areas. The webmasters' job requires nothing so much as the ability to bring together a wide variety of tasks and skills under one umbrella. A woman webmaster will need to know something about computers in general, something about graphics, something about coding, something about site promotion, and something about customer service if she's working for clients.

Additionally, school tests have consistently shown girls perform better on average than boys on most linguistic tasks, suggesting women may be uniquely well-suited to many essential search engine marketing tasks like keyword research and content writing. Being able to think up longer lists of synonyms, or thinking laterally to develop more comprehensive lists of alternate search phrases can make a significant difference in the effectiveness of a pay per click advertising campaign, and help in creating more relevant, engaging content for site development and traditional search engine optimization.

Also, for many women the draw of self-employment has other factors involved. Often held back from lucrative promotions in traditional workplaces due to fears that "family loyalty" would prevent female employees from contributing as much to the company as their male peers, many women are thrilled to truly hold the keys to their professional advancement in their own hands. Whether working out of a home office, or setting up a small business outside the home, self-employment eliminates worries about sexual discrimination and harassment, being penalized for taking time off for family emergencies, and the universal hassles of navigating office politics and negotiating holiday time or sick leave. A prime example is Joanne Willoughby, click here to read more - or Keighley Bicknell, click here to read more

Of course, average aptitudes aside, one cannot assume an internet professional is qualified or highly skilled by their gender. Whether you're interested in specialist search engine optimization or search engine marketing services, or looking to hire a general webmaster to manage a small business website, a little basic knowledge goes a long way towards ensuring your hire will be well-suited for your business needs.

If you're looking for traditional search engine optimization services, be wary of anyone offering guarantees about achieving specific ranking results. If a search engine optimizer promises you #1 ranking in the search engines, ask which specific search engines they mean, and how they decide which phrases to target for their work. It may be very easy to get a number one rank for a five-word phrase on a major search engine, or for a two-word phrase on a search engine nobody's heard of, but neither strategy is likely to bring very much lucrative traffic to your site.

Also ask any SEO you interview about the techniques they use. If they're very secretive about the specifics, it's possible they're using risky promotional strategies that may put your site at risk of being penalized by the search engines. If they mention 'exclusive' or 'reciprocal' linking networks, your site may risk being dropped by the search engines altogether. In general, any optimizer you talk to should be very open about answering your questions and ensuring that you fully understand what risks you may or may not be taking with their services.

Search engine marketing is almost no risk, as far as possible penalities are concerned. When interviewing for SEM services, your primary concern should be whether or not the search engine marketer will provide you with comprehensive, detailed reports on the expenses and effectiveness of your pay per click advertising campaigns, so you can decide if your return on investment for the PPC ads is acceptable. At minimum, you should know what keywords and phrases you are targeting, how much each phrase costs you per click, how much traffic each term brings to your site, and -- if your site is designed to track visitors from a referring link through to a shopping cart or sign up form -- how many of the visitors for each term actually turn into customers.

If you're interviewing for a general web master, ask if s/he has ever designed a site like yours before. If you want a mailing list, do they have experience setting that up? If you want a shopping cart, have they administered shopping carts for other customers before? If you need a comprehensive customer support system, do they have a system they recommend or use regularly? Any webmaster should be able to provide you with referrals and URLs from other customers, so you can decide if their skills and style are a good match for your needs.

And don't be surprised if many of the people you're interviewing turn out to be women working from home! It certainly doesn't mean they're not fully capable of providing whatever internet services you need. In many cases, smaller, independent webmasters or SEO/SEM professionals are more willing and able to tailor their services to best match your individual needs!