How the placement started
The placement started with a shift from classroom examples to live websites. Instead of tidy exercises with one correct answer, every task came with context: a real business, existing content, limited time and a result that had to be explained.
My first week was mostly reading: Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4 and the agency’s internal reporting sheets. Nothing about the interfaces matched the tidy diagrams from class.
The useful shift was learning to explain not only what changed, but why it mattered.
What I worked on
Keyword research and content briefing
Building keyword sets for client pages, checking search intent against live results and writing briefs a writer could follow. The recurring question was not only “Can this keyword rank?” but “Does this page deserve to answer that search?”
On-page optimisation
Titles, descriptions, heading structure, internal links and image alt text. Repetitive work with visible results, and the fastest way to learn why structure matters.
Reporting
Pulling Search Console and Analytics data into monthly client reports and explaining movement in plain language. Learning to say “impressions rose, clicks did not, here is why” took longer than learning the tools.
Technical checks
Crawl errors, indexing problems, page speed and mobile rendering. The first check became simple: confirm the page exists in the index before spending time polishing how it performs.
Tools I used daily
What I am doing next
I’m using the final weeks of the placement to turn daily observations into repeatable habits: analyse before changing a page, explain the cause behind every metric and keep evidence for the decisions that matter.