Kristen Uppercue

SEMrush is "an online visibility management and content marketing SaaS ['software as a service'] platform" (SEMrush About, n.d.). The program not only lets you see how your company is performing across search engines and social media platforms, but also gives you insights into your competition and tips for improving your company's location within search engine results and overall engagement. More than 6 million marketers around the world use the service to "do their job more effectively and deliver superior results" (SEMrush About, n.d.). For my project, I decided to analyze the news organization I work with so I could not only learn about what SEMrush has to offer, but also take away some insights into new tactics we can use when publishing content. I started the project and already learned a lot about where we need to focus our time.  Of the 50 pages that were dissected in the site audit, 41 had some kind of issue – most of which were missing meta tags

Social media provides an accessible, convenient way to directly connect with your target audience. Companies can easily keep an eye on their target audiences, such as what their interests are, new trends within the audience and what they're talking about, by paying attention to what's happening within that demographic on social media.  But with a plethora of social media platforms available – with new ones consistently entering the scene – how do you know which platform is the best for your company to invest its time and money?  For starters, knowing where your audience lives online is key.  Know Your Audience  According to Pew Research Center's (2019) most recent fact sheet , different demographics are attracted to different platforms. Take a look at this list of preferred platforms by demographic from Pew Research Center (2019):  (StrikeSocial also lists different demographics that make up social media platforms. You can view it here ).  So, before diving into social medi

For e-commerce companies, it's important to know who is visiting your website – and the companies they represent – so business leaders and marketers can send specific, targeted sales pitches to the companies that are already interested in their products and services, as well as promote their newest services and even build relationships. According to Oldroyd, et al. (2011), the sooner you contact a lead, or potential customer, the more likely your company is of closing the deal.  This is where Leadfeeder comes in.  Example of Leadfeeder's analytics page (Crowe, n.d.).  What is Leadfeeder?  Leadfeeder is an analytics tool to inform subscribed companies who their website viewership consists of, identifying companies that visit the website and gathering contact information for someone within the interested company – even if the site visitors did not fill out a contact form (Crowe, n.d.).  Leadfeeder identifies the companies that are visiting your site, tracks the specific pages the

Conversion rates tell marketers whether or not a company is meeting its overall goals. If a conversion rate is lower than intended, that means that there are aspects of a company's website that needs to be improved – an issue needs to be resolved, a page needs to be easy to navigate or new aspects of the website (such as sign up buttons) need to be introduced to convince consumers to complete an action.  To take a step back, conversion rates tell you how many times a user completed an action, whether that be a sign up for your email newsletter or purchase of a product or service (Google, n.d.). Google (n.d.) classifies conversions to be micro (the smaller, lower stake actions such as email sign up) or macro (the larger actions such as a product purchase). Other examples of conversions include submitting a form, engaging in online chat and downloading something from your website (Andrus, 2020). Conversion rates vary across industries and within their own brand – it's important f

In regard to web analytics, a bounce is considered a single-page session on your site, or the action of a user visiting one page of your website and closing their browser (Google, n.d.). This is the opposite of what most marketers and business owners want, and by looking at the overall bounce rate of your website, you can almost exactly pinpoint the reason your website visitors are "bouncing."  "Bounce rate is a metric that measures the percentage of people who land on your website and do completely nothing on the page they entered, " van den Berg (2017) writes. "So, they don't click on a menu item, a 'read more' link or any other internal links on the page."  To get technical, the bounce rate is the rate of single-page sessions (or the total number of users that viewed a single page and nothing more) divided by the total number of sessions to your website (Google, n.d.).  If a page on your website has a high bounce rate, that doesn't entir