An Intern’s Intro to Organic Search Engine Marketing
Hi! My name is Khalil Gordon and I am a senior at Canisius College majoring in Integrated Marketing Communication. While I did not come into college thinking I would end up in this field, I have since come to fall in love with it’s vastness. That love is what has led me here — to being the most recent intern at Bean Media Productions.
Over the past week I have been reading a lot into Google Search Console and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In this post, I intend to share with you what I have found interesting thus far.
A Bit More About Me
This is my first time doing an internship, and I am beyond thrilled to have ended up with one of Buffalo’s best content marketing teams.
BMP is a small online advertising and digital marketing agency just off of Niagara Falls Boulevard. I had the pleasure of interviewing with their Director of Marketing, Jeremy Mountain. I knew this was the place I wanted to work when he ended up talking considerably more than I did during the interview. My interest was further solidified when I came in to meet the team and could hear them laughing among themselves before I had even rounded the corner into the office.
It was that intoxicating sense of investment in their work that made me, someone with no real investment in the digital side of advertising, want to devote a large portion of my semester to this company.
Snow Days and Google Crawlers
Last Friday I had the absolute delight of waking up to an email stating that my only class for the day had been canceled. Of all the delightfully whimsical ways I could have spent the day, I could not think of anything more fun than familiarizing myself with Google Search Console. That’s what I get for scheduling myself for Friday’s I suppose, but jokes aside, the articles I was assigned to read took barely an hour to complete and actually contained a lot of interesting information.
I don’t know what I thought the case was, but learning that Google has to learn what web pages exist was somewhat of a revelation to me — though it’s obvious in hindsight that would have to be the case. Google does this through a process called “crawling”, wherein it uses bots to look through the content of existing web pages in order to find out their contents and what web pages they link to. Website owners can also submit a sitemap to Google directly that contains a list of page URLs for it to crawl.
What does this all mean for SEO?
When Google successfully crawls a page, it begins the process of indexing it. Indexing is the creation of a catalog of web pages and their content that Google can pull from when a search query is made for something relevant to that page. SEO can be looked at as a way for websites and web pages to showcase their relevance to Google so that it is more likely to show them on it’s SERP.
The processes of crawling and indexing helped to clarify the reason as to why a lot of major SEO ranking factors functioned the way they did. Having concise headings and focused keywords throughout the page helps Google more easily understand what the web page is about. And Google’s ability to crawl pages through links to them on other pages explains the importance of high quality backlinks and why many web pages will have a table of content that links to itself.
As a part of this exercise I was given access to Bean Media’s search console page, as well as the search console page for some of our clients. A lot of our clients are businesses looking for an SEO team in Buffalo that can help them with creating localized marketing plans. Search Console allows us to keep track of how much traffic they’re receiving, which helps inform us as to return on investment (ROI) of our efforts.
My Thoughts?
My internship has barely just started, but I can already tell that it will provide me with a host of new insights on Search Engine Optimization and digital marketing. I look forward to learning more about Google Search Console, and how SEO combines with other digital marketing efforts to help maximize ROI. Stay tuned here on the Bean Media blog where you can always find helpful information and tips for your digital marketing strategy.
If you have a question about an internship with Bean Media, or are seeking information regarding your company’s digital marketing, just give us a call! We are always available to help!