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Annina Hanlon

Field: Marketing, e-Learning

Major: Psychology

Host: sofatutor GmbH

Duration: 3 months in summer 2018

Job title: Search Engine Optimization Intern on the Marketing Team

 

Job description:"Throughout my internship, I primarily worked on gathering search engine and website data, and using various online tools to analyze this and existing data. I became much better at using Google Sheets and Excel, and organizing large quantities of information in strategic and descriptive ways. I did not have one large task, but rather worked on many smaller ongoing projects, monitoring and analyzing the performance of the sofatutor websites and their individual webpages and keywords in Google's search results.

I also did some proofreading, general market research, presentation-making and small website edits. There wasn't anyone focused on the small U.S. site that sofatutor published a couple of years ago, so I did a lot of work related to this, assessing its current position in terms of search optimization, market competitors, and available content. I created small presentations about most of the work I did in order to share my findings with my boss and other people on the team.

Since many Psychology majors end up in marketing, I had been considering this career path and wondered what it would be like. In my internship position on the search engine optimization team, I had the opportunity to meet individually with members of almost all other teams within the marketing department and learn about their responsibilities and goals. This was interesting and invaluable in helping me decide what I would like to do in the future. The internship was personally rewarding as well because I really enjoyed working with my coworkers and getting to practice my German. I also actually enjoyed commuting to work every morning on the U-Bahn, along with so many other Berlin workers. I got a feel for Berlin work-life.

I think the two most important skills I'm taking away from this internship are (1) experience working in a primarily German-speaking department and (2) a basic understanding of search engine optimization (SEO). I didn't know anything about SEO when I started my internship, but it is actually crucial for any business with an online presence. Despite this fact, most people are not familiar with it and often unintentionally harm their online presence while maintaining their sites. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms of SEO will be generally useful for whatever I may do in the future."

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