The night before my first day at Digital Firefly I just couldn’t fall asleep because I was thinking about all the things I was going to learn about SEO and social media. I didn’t think I was nervous until about an hour after I laid my head on my pillow with my eyes wide open and then realized, “Well, I guess I am nervous.” I finally fell asleep only to wake up a few hours later to get ready for the day.

As I was driving to Princeton I found myself racing to make it in on time. I got to work about 15 minutes early and thought to myself, “Why was I so nervous that I would be late?” Never had I been late for any other job before so why did I think this time would be any different? I was psyching myself out for no reason at all.

Getting Started

After getting my desk set up with the help of Rob and Frank, my two new coworkers, Rob helped me set up all the new tools I will be using to help me learn about SEO and social media. As Rob explained Basecamp, Google Analytics, and Tweetdeck, (just to name a few) I really thought my head was going to explode. Basecamp is a website that company use to communicate not only with each other but with their clients as well. You can assign “to-do” assignments to coworkers and as they finish each one they can cross the assignments off. This lets everyone in the office stay up to speed with what assignments have been completed and which ones have not.

Google Analytics is a website that digital marketing company’s use for various reasons but the main thing Rob showed me was how to see which posts are viewed the most by people who visit your site. This is how we know which posts are the most popular and we repost them onto the websites social media to drive traffic back to their site. Tweetdeck I found to be the most interesting because you can tweet from multiple accounts at the same time. You can also tweet for your business up to 6 months in advance by scheduling posts for a specific date and time. He then showed me how to do my first social media posts for Youth1.com.

SEO & Social Media

The second half of the day I was with Frank learning about SEO and social media. Frank took me to lunch, which was a nice break and helped me remember to breathe. When we got back we jumped right back in with Frank teaching me everything I would need to know about audits. He went over everything from keyword utilization to localization. Once again I thought my head might explode.

I sat back down at my desk with an assignment from Frank to do my own audit score sheet and then prepare an audit template for the client. I was so intimidated at first but then I just started breezing through, remembering everything Frank taught me, I thought to myself “Wow this really isn’t that bad!” To make everything Frank taught me easier to remember I wrote all the important terms down in a notebook describing them in my own words.

I found that one way to help me learn about SEO and social media is by writing down the key terms in my own words. I asked myself “What is keyword utilization?” Keyword utilization is using keywords that are diverse and often searched to drive search rankings by placing them in key areas for indexing by the search engine. “What is a page title?” Page titles are the first 65 characters in the web browser that describe what is on that page. The greater the diversity the higher the page will rank.

“What are H1 tags?”

The first 70 characters of the headers of the different sections of the site. These also get tagged by search engines as keywords. ”What is a meta description?” A meta description is the first 156 characters of the description under the URL. Meta is NOT used for keywords by search engines but keywords that are found will be BOLD in the meta description.

I continued to do this until I was familiar with all of the new terms. “What is an image alt tag?” An image alt tag is the text that describes the image. The text consists of relevant words to explain the image. “What are URLs?” URLs are the websites address. “What is a link profile?” A link profile is a snapshot of the website from other websites and if they are broken. “What is a domain authority?” Domain authority is an industry metric that grades the strength of a site. The higher the grade the stronger the site. It is calculated through a variety of website profiles and link profile’s metrics.

“Why is blogging important?”

Blogging is important because it helps with the longtail keywords and shows that the website has relevant content. This builds a good reputation for the site and drives up more traffic to the site. Blogs should be under the sites primary domain so that the site gets credit for the blogs visitors of links.

“What does index ratio mean?”

Index ratio is the amount of pages indexed compared to the total pages on the site. This ratio lets us know if some pages are not being indexed correctly. If some pages are not being indexed correctly it will be harder for users to find them. “What does mobile enabled mean?” Mobile enabled is making the website more easily accessible from the user’s smartphone. And lastly “What is localization?” Localization is a strategy that is implemented when a website only serves a specific location. You can implement this strategy by using keywords that are geo targeted and by hosting your site within the region you’re located. This helps search engines detect your general location.

More SEO and social media key terms I learned are called site attributes. These terms are important for the growth of your website. Starting with structured data. Structured data is the HTML code that accurately identifies what the site and its information is about. Website speed is the amount of time it takes for your site to load. If your site takes too long to load the visitors will leave which is negative because it causes bounce offs. Sitemap is a list of content that the search engine uses to crawl the site for changes or updates. SSL certificate secures the connection between users and the site and provides the users with extra security. In the URL you will see https.

An End to the Long Day

After I was done with the audit I sent my work back to Frank so he could go over it and make sure I did everything the right way. I was free to go! Finally, I walked out to my car, put on some music and sat in my car with the biggest smile on my face. I hadn’t felt so accomplished in a long time. So much was learned in just a few hours and it made me feel so good.