I interviewed Ruth in the sunny lobby of the OPUBCO building, where she informed me that the Oklahoma sunlight was a new experience for her when she moved from Seattle this past May. She laughed as she told me about an “accidental tomato farm” she and her husband harvested due to the difference in Oklahoma climate: “In Seattle, you have to plant a bunch of tomato plants. Some of them die, and the ones that don’t die really struggle and then bear some fruit. So we planted 18 tomato plants and they all did great! And so that was a learning experience.”
Not only has Ruth reaped enough tomatoes to stock a ketchup factory, but she has harvested 8 years of SEO experience and brought them to Oklahoma City.
Ruth started in the SEO world in 2006, and became the SEO Manager at OPUBCO Digital Marketing Services after moving to Oklahoma in 2014. Luckily, she isn’t being selfish with her plethora of SEO knowledge – she is more than willing to teach it. Ruth beamed as she told me about her love for public speaking and education. I decided to take a look at some of her previous video blogs from when she was Head of SEO at Moz to get a preview of her teaching style, and it is evident that this is an area in which Ruth shines.
Based on what she told me about her topic so far, her talk titled “SEO musts for the non-SEO” at Confluence should be quite engaging.
“There’s so much opportunity for businesses to reach people there and to build brands, which makes [SEO] so much more powerful than advertising. Advertising is also really useful, and I usually recommend that people do both, but when it comes to [the] long-term, finding your audience, connecting them with where they are, and then building a relationship with them so [that]when it’s time to buy: they come directly to you – that is the real power of SEO.”
Ruth explained that a lot people in the SEO world have outside projects such as blogging and speaking, creating content and contributing to the industry – which she loves to do. Ruth has a personal blog that has received quite a bit of attention over the last year, and it exudes her unapologetic, feisty personality with posts that demonstrate her strength and professionalism. She also recently got involved with Launch Oklahoma, an accelerator program made up of entrepreneurial mentors.
Although Ruth is involved in the tech community during a lot of her free time, she admits that she spends a lot of her energy trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance. When she’s not wearing her SEO hat, Ruth spends time with her new husband, Justin, and her cute dog, Ozzie (who she has featured in one of her MOZ presentations). Ruth was also on a lacrosse team in Seattle; she has yet to find an OKC team to join. So if you know of one—give her a shout. Or a tweet.
Which brings me to my last fascination with Ruth Burr Reedy: her amazing twitter skills. Not only is she a live-tweeting phenom, but her daily life tweets are fantastic. You can look forward to her live-tweeting the Confluence Conference this weekend as well.
