Megantic Mentor High School Students in SEO

The Megantic mentor program has been running for the past four years. We have been working with The Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School to run a program for a select group of Year 12 students to upskill them in SEO.

This program provides great benefits for both the students and our mentors. Our 2024 mentors were Emily, Xavier, Frezel, Kristina and Dale.

Session 1: Building Professional Relationships

Emily and Xavier ran the first session. It was an introduction to Megantic and working life, and how to build professional relationships.

The workshop delved into the significance of first impressions, coachability, adaptability and reliability; all essential skills for entering the professional workforce.

Students asked hard-hitting questions to the team:

• “How do I adjust to the long hours?”
• “How do I maintain a healthy work-life balance?”
• “What if I don’t get along with my co-workers?”

Session 2: What is SEO

Kristina began the second Megantic mentor program session with a definition of SEO, and bought out her favourite metaphor:

If you think about the internet like a library, and all the websites on the www are like books. When you look up a book in the library’s catalogue, you use ‘search terms’ or ‘queries’ and the library’s system uses an algorithm to search all the text in the books and bring up the most relevant ones in a list. 

This is like when you perform a search on Google – but their algorithm quickly screens all websites and pulls the top 10 that it thinks are the most relevant into the top 10 positions. Onsite, offsite and technical SEO help to get your website into the top 10.

We reviewed some of our current client’s websites, pointing out areas where SEO adjustments were made, including URLs, metadata and filters.

Session 3: Keyword Research & Website Structure

Frezel described the difference between different types of keywords, what keyword research is and how it is used to improve SEO for an eCommerce website.

Giving real-life examples, she explained how difficult and unsuccessful it can be to write metadata without strong keyword research. Contrasting this, she shared Megantic’s custom CRM keyword research tools. This allows us to easily review keyword statistics from a few sources to create the strongest onsite content and metadata for our clients using the best keywords.

Frezel then taught the students about site structure and identity, including the benefits and potential consequences of updating a pre-existing site structure.

Session 4: Technical SEO

Dale began the session with some icebreakers and a description of a day in the life of an SEO. This provided the students with an understanding of what happens when working with clients on their business.

He then showed the students how they could inspect website elements using Chrome Developer Tools. They played around with editing websites, including changing text, colours and size, and finding SEO elements in the code.

After explaining site maps and their SEO benefit, the students found site maps for their favourite websites. We had some great discussions about robots files and why certain pages should be disallowed.

Finally, students visited Google Page Speed Insights and uncovered which of their websites have poor accessibility, performance or SEO.

It was a great session and introduction to the students on why SEO is interesting and should be a contender for their future career prospects.

Extremely positive feedback all around

“I found the mentoring sessions really engaging and useful in terms of the things we learnt. I’ve come out of this program with new knowledge and insights into the workforce. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to mentor and teach us, we really appreciate it” – Anonymous Student Mentee.

“It’s been very enjoyable to learn about SEO and the eCommerce industry alongside all the mentors! Thanks for taking the time to create engaging presentations and activities!” – Anonymous Student Mentee.

“[The Megantic mentor program] is a great introduction to networking and how to get started in the professional world. The program teaches us things that school doesn’t teach us, like setting up a LinkedIn profile and how to connect with others. – Anonymous Student Mentee.

“It was really informative and enjoyable. I really liked how the mentors gave us an insight into their jobs, as well as SEO itself.” – Anonymous Student Mentee.

“It is highly beneficial for students, providing guidance, support, and valuable insights from mentors who have experience in various fields. The program helps students develop important skills, explore career options, and build confidence.” – Anonymous Student Mentee.

“The Megantic mentor program was an important experience for me. It was great to connect with the younger generation who are interested in technology to work with them to expand their skills.” – Xavier Davis, Digital Web Analyst.

“It was so fulfilling for me. I would’ve loved to have this type of opportunity when I was in high school to give me a sense of direction for my future.” – Frezel Enriquez, Technical Project Manager.

“It was a great environment of collaboration. We as mentors learnt during the sessions as well as teaching.”  – Dale Underwood, Technical Project Manager.

We hope to continue our partnership with Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School and continue to empower Women in Digital in the coming years.

See more information about the program in 2023, 2022 and 2021.