Jill Whalen is an

Ashland, Massachusetts Ashland is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the MetroWest region. The population was 18,832 at the 2020 United States Census. History The area now known as Ashland was settled in the early 18th century an ...

based former

search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or " organic" results) rather than dire ...

consultant (SEO), speaker and writer. Whalen was the CEO of High Rankings, and co-founded Search Engine Marketing New England. She was a regular speaker at

Search Engine Strategies Search Engine Strategies (SES) is a conference series focused on search engine marketing and search engine optimization.Jefferson Graham (August 14, 2006)Google search ads find momentum ''USA Today'', retrieved March 8, 2008 History The conference ...

Conferences. High Rankings included a top-rated SEO discussion forum. Whalen has been quoted as an authority by major publications including ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', and '' Inc.'' She has also written search engine optimization articles for business websites including ClickZ and

Search Engine Land Danny Sullivan is an American technologist, journalist, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Search Engine Watch in 1997, one of the earliest online publications about search engine marketing. He also launched ''Search Engine Strategies'', one ...

, and her work on search engines is shared in marketing programs focused on attracting new clients.

Early life and education

Whalen grew up in

Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The city proper covers with a pop ...

and graduated from the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...

with a degree in

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

Career

Whalen started a chat room for parents when her three children were young, and the chat room became popular with other parents. As more people joined in her forum, they sought her help in developing websites for other forums. Whalen taught herself how to setup websites that would be found with search engines based on the keywords on the website. In 1998, she talked about her company Web Whiz, which provided guidance on making web sites early in the period of internet browsing. By 2007, the company was providing services helping companies improve their websites and website rankings, and she was running an online newsletter, a free forum, and sharing tips in magazines all with the goal of helping people with websites. She was interviewed for the 2017 movie on search engine optimization: SEO: The Movie, where she described optimizing search as a means to improve marketing for a company. She founded the search engine optimisation company High Rankings, serving clients including the Discovery Channel Proctor & Gamble, and Geico. In 2003, she described how she was able to negotiate the terms she wanted in contracts with companies seeking the services of her company, and discussed how her company improves websites to maximize web traffic and search engine hits.

Retirement and family life

Whalen announced her retirement from search engine optimization in 2013. She lives in

with her husband and three children.Whalen, Jill
"The Video Game of Parenting"
. ''Parentsroom.org'', accessed October 28, 2011.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Whalen, Jill Living people Search engine optimization consultants Year of birth missing (living people) University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Social and Behavioral Sciences alumni American women chief executives 21st-century American women