Hi! I am Alexandra Schoen, a second year at the Georgia Institute of Technology majoring in Applied Mathematics and minoring in Computer Science. I am hoping to get an internship for this summer at EverSpark Interactive as a Search Engine Optimization Intern.

EverSpark Interactive is an SEO(Search Engine Optimization) company, which means that they help their clients appear higher on the list of Google's search results when you search relevant terms. As a Search Optimization Intern, I would help with analyzing Google's search algorithm and finding ways to help EverSpark Interactive's clients appear higher on the search results without using techniques that would penalize them due to Google's algorithm updates, such as the Panda/Farmer update and the Penguin update. These updates made the algorithm stricter on thin content (duplicates, high ad ratio, internal searches), content farms (paying many people to write lots of content for your site), link diversity (do not want repeated links), and webspam (pages created to spam Google's search results). My Computer Science minor gives me the resources needed to read through and code and find techniques to optimize the search engine results. And my Mathematics major prepares me to check the math behind it and see if it truly works. Working for Everspark Interactive would give me a view into the world of SEO companies and see if that is the type of company I want to be working for once I graduate from Georgia Tech.

When I was growing up, my family had a card table in the corner of our living room, and there was always a jigsaw puzzle in some stage of completion laying out on it. Spending hours working on jigsaw puzzles with my dad and little brother showed me how much I enjoy solving puzzles. Now, I see solving a problem as working on a puzzle, that is why I choose Mathematics and Computer Science as my major and minor. Finding another way the optimize the search results sounds like a great new puzzle to solve, and I hope I get the opportunity.