There is so much to learn as a college student and intern. I would never knock my school or the education I received, but if it weren’t for my internship at lotus823, I would be graduating with a semi blindfold when it comes to certain marketing skills.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a phrase I have heard numerous times throughout my college career. However, I only somewhat understood what it meant and had no idea how to put it to use. Ultimately, I knew it meant getting a website more views and higher rankings on search engines, but sadly, no professor ever taught me how to make that happen.
While interning at an integrated marketing agency like lotus823, I’ve learned about several helpful tools regarding SEO. Following are just a few things I’ve learned about SEO during my spring internship at lotus823:
The first SEO tool I learned about was link building. I discovered handfuls of directories that allowed me to submit a website to increase the amount of back links to that website. It is such an easy and useful tool that my college marketing classes left out. The same goes for social bookmarking. This activity allows users to bookmark links on popular sites such as Delicious and StumbleUpon.
As a public relations major, I’ve written many news releases for the classes and campus organizations I am involved in. Unfortunately, my classes never taught me how to optimize those news releases. Luckily, as a lotus823 intern, I was able to learn and gain an understanding of using keywords for search engine optimization to make content more visible online. I learned simple practices and tricks that make complete sense now that I am aware of them.
These are all great best practices for SEO but there is one last thing that most of us use on a daily basis and don’t think twice about it: social media. You or your company’s social media presence and reputation can equally help your search ranking. Being active on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. puts your foot in the door when it comes to search engine rankings. If you’re not active on social media then you are not giving yourself a chance. Quality shares, “likes” and follower engagement are certainly going to help your website rank in the cyber world.
As graduation slowly creeps up on me, having this added knowledge of SEO gives me more confidence and hopefully, an edge on my fellow graduates. I don’t consider myself an expert – yet – but I do consider myself extremely lucky to have obtained an internship that has been so beneficial to me.
Hey, fellow interns! Have you learned a new marketing service at your internship that you didn’t expect to? Let us know by commenting below.