To Sum Up: Special Edition

2022 has started so fast!

Whenever I thought about writing a monthly blog post or sharing updates about my journey, I always found myself preparing for an upcoming event, a plan, or getting excited for a new update in my career path etc. My short and long trips followed those busy days, and here I am, finally ready to share what I have been up to for the last months with you, my lovely readers!

Some more background info on why I decided to create this blog post format;

I used to keep a diary, to make my job easier to save moments and share them later within my posts in the past. However, I haven’t been able to do it much over the last year because of the busy schedule in my professional and personal life. Thus, I decided to create/come up with a new column on my freshly launched personal website, “To Sum Up”. This section will be a playground where I will share updates from my life & my career journey, challenges I face and solutions I found to overcome them, conferences and activities I attend, and other thoughts and ideas I want to share in public.

I aim to share my life updates every season so we can catch up as the weather changes 🙂

Well then, in honour of my first post, let me start with a special edition as I have included what happened during the last two seasons for my first digital issue: To Sum Up: Special Edition | Winter & Spring

2022 Events/Conferences Where You Have Probably Seen Me as a Speaker:

International Search Summit Barcelona – Webinar | February 2022

Together with Gemma Fontane, we talked at the Webcertain team’s webinar organized for the same conference, which was held in Barcelona in November 2021. It was my first in-person conference speaking experience and I will never forget those days yet will always have the same excitement!

So, here you can access the webinar here: Webinar Linki

You can also find the slides and more details of my speech that I delivered in Barcelona at the link below:

Good Things Come in Small Packages: How to create a Success Story with a Limited Budget

What It’s Like to Do SEO as an Expat – The SEO Rant by Mordy Oberstein | February 2022

You may have seen my social media posts on this but for those who missed it (and maybe luckily haha), I did something “first” in my life as I was invited to become a podcast guest for Mordy Oberstein’s The SEO Rant podcast show. Thanks to Mordy, I had a chance to share my experiences as an SEO expat living in London. We talked about “how it’s like to do SEO as an expat” abroad, where the mother tongue is not spoken.

According to his feedback, it was a great episode full of fun and insights and I really enjoyed our conversation. I must also admit that I ended up thinking “Oh nooo, I definitely need to improve my English” – well, this is a never-ending journey right? 🙂

Asides from my own takeaways, I did have a lot of fun thanks to his story about his Turkish Coffee experience as well!

Digital Marketing Europe Conference – Virtual

At the Digital Marketing Europe Conference in March 2022, I gained a new experience since I started working in this industry; I had the opportunity to present an online webinar that lasted 3 hours. Together with the participants, we had a chance to have a more extended conversation on the topics such as how do we develop a content strategy for startups from the beginning, what issues we need to think about first and what steps we need to take afterwards, which tools and especially free platforms, how much data and information can we access.

Digital Marketing Europe Conference SEO content strategy for startups Yagmur Simsek

Afterwards, I had the chance to talk about a similar subject to a broader audience in a short speech on the virtual stage of the DME conference.

Icerik Bulutu Moderator: Post BrightonSEO: The Future of SEO?

After BrightonSEO, we had a pleasant conversation where we shared our experiences with the Icerik Bulutu’s audience as a Turkish community who joined BrightonSEO. We listened to the experiences of Begum Kaya and Koray Tugberk Gubur, who had the opportunity to speak for the first time on the BrightonSEO stage, and I had the opportunity to share my own comments as a moderator. We could not have a chance to listen to Tevfik Mert Azizoğlu’s experiences as the webinar was clashing with a different event he had to attend, but by following the links below, you can reach the BrightonSEO presentations of these three valuable names from the industry. Also, if you have questions, you can reach them on Twitter or LinkedIn; I’m sure they will respond to your questions as soon as they have time 🙂

Begum Kaya: Assessing Remote Talent to Scale Up SEO Success

Koray Tugberk Gubur: Brighton SEO: 3 Days of Hogwarts for the SEO Industry

Tevfik Mert Azizoglu: SEO Automation Without Using Hard Code

You can also watch webinar here: Brighton SEO Sonrası: SEO’nun Geleceğinde Neler Var?

Events I Attended:

Women in Tech SEO: WTSFest 2022 – 25th February 2022 | London

BrightonSEO – 7th-8th April 2022 | Brighton

Search London – 26th April 2022 | London

Re:signal – SEO Breakfast – 27th April 2022 | London

London SEO XL Meetup – 4th May 2022 | London

Articles/Blog Posts Written by Me Within the Last Months:

How to Create an SEO Content Strategy for Your Startup from Scratch

Tips for Creating a B2B SEO Content Strategy: Key Questions to Answer

Exciting News & Upcoming Events

First of all, I was thrilled to learn about my promotion to the SEO Strategist position at Re:signal, starting from February 2022.

While I was already thinking about what could be better than this, I felt honoured to be nominated for the “Rising Star” category in two of the prestigious awards in the industry. I appreciate that my managers and our team spent their time and effort to submit this entry for me and contributed to one of the most unforgettable experiences of my professional career. This made me feel so special, and I even cried; Especially when I heard that I was on the finalists’ list for both awards;

The Drum Search Awards – Rising Star Nomination

Europen Search Awards – Rising Star Nomination

Coming to the results, I didn’t win the prize at The Drum Search Awards, but I won the fantastic Re:signal Team who won “Organic Team of the Year” and “Best in eCommerce” + “highly commended in Best in Music / Entertainment” at The Drum Search Awards that night💫 Even being nominated was an incredible experience, which again, our amazing team made it real! To add this, I am sure that the award’s winner has outstanding contributions to our industry and their team. So congrats to Maddie Davies, the Rising Star 🙂

I won the Silver Award at the European Search Awards which took place in May 26 in Barcelona. I kept posting “emotional” posts on my Twitter account just so you know:D https://twitter.com/yagmrsmsk

Another happy news from my journey is that my applications for being a speaker at the Search Y Paris and BrightonSEO conferences have been accepted. Here I share the details below 🙂

Search Y Paris Conference – 1st July 2022 | Paris

UnGagged Conference – 11-12-13 July 2022 | London

BrightonSEO – 6-8 October 2022 | Brighton

I’m so excited for all of them!

So, here is a section where I will share my honest opinions, the recent challenges I face, my recent conversations and takeaways, and anything that I want to share with you in public, and so on. I may not add this section to all “To Sum Up” seasonal wrap-ups. My comments may change for the Turkish readers so I will keep this section separated from each other (as I will publish these posts both in Turkish and English.) – Just so you know!

Honestly

If the things I shared about my journey have already made you a little happy for me and inspired you to push your limits too for giving a speech, writing content, or being more present in the industry you are in; then I’m glad I shared them. It just makes me excited again and again even while I’m writing here. But just let me share this; everything may not go so well and smoothly all the time. Even though it seems like I’ve had quick progress in the last 1,5 – 2 years, especially since I moved to the UK, I feel like it has been 5-6 years already:) This means that I’m tired, as it hasn’t been an easy process as it is seen from the outside of the picture;

Sleepless nights that I can’t remember the number of; social events that I couldn’t attend while my friends were attending; London, this fantastic city, where I couldn’t introduce myself to properly yet; more foods and drinks which did add extra weight to my body because of stress; less communication with my friends and family who live in Turkey (luckily I’m surrounded by them as they were always understanding my situation and were not taking that radio silence personal), and my self-confidence issues, especially for the public speaking, writing and more.

So everything in the garden is not rosy – We just need to double-check our direction and intention from time to time and ensure we are meeting halfway with our feelings, our thoughts and our dreams.

That’s all I want to share for now… Catch up soon with the Summer Edition 🙂