Kristen Uppercue

In 2019,  ASOS, a British online fashion and cosmetic retailer, made headlines for a few major search engine optimization (SEO) mistakes the company made, resulting in the company's pre-tax profit to drastically fall 87 percent – from $29.9 million in August 2018 to $4 million February 2019 (G2, 2019). However, ASOS's SEO downfall can be a good reminder of the importance of paying attention and equipping strong SEO tactics for other e-commerce brands, and as Coleby (2019) says, "It's not often SEO makes front-page news."  What went wrong?  One of ASOS's downfalls is reaching new consumers, and in 2019, they hoped to address this problem by launching 200 versions of its website – each copy featuring slight variations depending on the country the website visitor was located to match specific user-search queries (G2, 2019). However, these microsites created duplicate content causing link issues and doorway pages – something that Google explicitly condemns (G2, 20...

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...