Today I shadowed Dave and Beth in the marketing department at SAS. I spent the morning with Dave who works on ensuring that SAS is always one of the first websites to show up when you look up a “key word” on google. Dave described to me that a “key word” is a word or phrase that he expects customers to search on google and that are applicable to SAS. Dave makes SAS pop up for these key words through Google ads, meaning that they pay for their spot in the search results. I was surprised when Dave told me what he did because I had met someone in the web development department who I at first thought did the exact same thing as Dave. Dave went on to explain to me that him and Katy in web development had the same goal: for SAS to pop up at the top of Google searches. However, they both achieved this goal in different ways. Dave was achieving this goal by “out bidding” other companies for the top spots in a search, or in other words being more willing to pay more for each click on their search results by a customer. Katy, on the other hand, achieved the same goal by manipulating SAS web pages themselves. She changes the code and prevalence of words in the website to make it more relevant to Google searches without paying money for ads. It was interesting to see two people working on the same goal in their own individual styles. Dave later went on to explain to me the many ways that companies access your demographic info and use this to select the ads they show you without you even knowing. Needless to say it was a very eye opening morning.
