This is part of the say something nice about an SEO/SEM series - feel free to nominate someone over here.
Ashley Berman Hale is 34 years old and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with her husband and two "confident" daughters ages 7 and 5. Ashley is a Google Top Contributor, which means she has answered a ton of questions from both new and frustrated webmasters and searchers in the Google forums for free, on a volunteer basis. As someone who spends a lot of time reading these forum posts, you have to give the top contributors a lot of respect and kudos for spending a nice part of their day helping these users, and all for free.
In addition, Ashley speaks at conferences and contributes to the community online in so many ways. She has been in the SEO game and space for about 15 years. She has a huge amount of experience, knowledge and is always very gracious about sharing what she has learned.
I believe being a Top Contributor in the Webmaster forum is one of the hardest places to get that label. She also has over 1,000 top answers in that forum with countless replies in the forum. She also has a super awesome attitude with a really wonderful level of sarcasm, which I love. I guess that is the only way to spend time in those forums are not go nuts?
Matt Lacuesta nominated Ashley and wrote:
As one of Google''s Webmaster Forum Top Contributors, she's helped so many people over the years by answering tens of thousands of questions. Her love for technical SEO and helping people navigate Google's guidelines is apparent not only by the amount of help she provides, but just in her personality in general.Beyond being a huge help online, she's a great person that engages with local SEO community in Colorado. Her enthusiasm towards SEO and helping others is infectious and we're so happy to have someone with such vast knowledge and curiosity as a part of the SEO community as a whole.
Ashley Berman Hale Bio: Ashley has been working to make websites better since 2003. Her specialties include technical SEO, mobile, accessibility, security, speed, platform migrations, internationalization, structured data, and indexing. With experience ranging from in-house with large companies, consulting, and working with agencies - she's covered verticals and business models across the board. She's always open to hear about new projects or supporting a great team.
Favorite thing about the SEO community? I love how curious we all are. Curiosity drives SEO. The people I admire most in the industry are self-taught and started with a question they had and just kept digging and digging to learn everything about the solution(s). Innovations happen when someone doesn't just follow the same guidance/workflow but instead gets curious about if we can do something better, if we can measure success differently, if the data can tell a different story, etc.
And the entire community is just full of spectacular humans. I don't know of another industry that devotes as much time to helping each other and helping people in our communities. I've seen countless hours of time given by SEOs to just help other people - to share knowledge and solve problems together. When I first started in SEO about 15 years ago this wasn't the case. It's awesome to see the positive evolution.
One piece of advice to the SEOs out there? Don't forget the people: the people who started the businesses and websites and what their hopes were, the people who worked on a site or product and the stresses they faced alongside the vision they had, the people you want your content to reach. Do they see themselves reflected in your content? Can they easily and safely access your site? Are they getting trustworthy and helpful content from you?
There's so much to SEO but I think we can all do better by bringing kindness and humanity to every element. As the industry continues to grow and evolve, this is what sets/will set top SEOs apart from the rest.
Favorite things in general? Hobbies include roller derby, riding bicycles, finding neat insects, tasting all of the beers, and dominating at Dr. Mario.
What you want to be known for in the SEO space? My personal work goal has always been to do really good work (and embracing that this can mean many different things). I want to be known as someone who is always willing to help solve an issue, advocate for others, connect people, work hard, and ask tough questions. Even though I can be salty af and have a terrible sense of humor, I hope niceness and a willingness to help shines through too.
To learn more about Ashley, you can connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter.
This is part of the say something nice about an SEO/SEM series - feel free to nominate someone over here.
