A Blogging Bricker

  SEMrush  I have chosen to conduct my project on ACE Adventure Resort, where I have worked in the marketing department for nearly 3 years. Prior to my time in the marketing department, I worked as a zipline guide, so I a strong connection to the company and want it to succeed. While my company recently began using SEMrush, I have not worked in it much in my position as social media coordinator. I’m excited to learn more about the program so I can share my knowledge with my company. I chose to use my Guru account instead of my business account for this project so that I can explore the functions of SEMrush on my own. In exploring SEMrush I am astonished by how powerful the tools are and I find the data to be really incredible. I’m really looking forward to learning more about everything that I can use it for in the coming weeks.  I have also set up a project for my blog, Blogging Bricker.  What does SEMrush do?  SEMrush utilizes 11 different tools so that impro...

Social Media-An Ever-Changing Landscape Social media is ever-changing and evolving. That’s why it has become a crucial part of every brand’s marketing strategy to put both time and money into developing a social media strategy. New social media channels are constantly being added into the mix, so it’s imperative that social media managers stay up to date with what is happening in their industry. The results of social media and marketing speak for themselves. With targeted ads, brands can reach audiences like never before, introducing consumers to their company in ways that would have never been possible just 20 years ago. Billions of dollars go towards social media advertising every year, with projections that the trend will only continue to grow (US Social Media Ad Spend, 2021). Social media is the way that many people, myself included, see the majority of ads. As a person who doesn’t have cable, like many in my generation, social media ads are how brands can reach their target audien...

  Hotjar Heat Maps Google Analytics is the largest analytics tool in the world, currently occupying 35% of the market share (Web Analytics Market Share, n.d.). While competitors exist, Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool and remains a monster in the data world. And, why not use Google Analytics? The base product is free, and it allows data to become more accessible. In response, many brands have turned to creating analytics tools that integrate with Google Analytics. The example that I chose is one that I think is interesting, dynamic, and very helpful to find out the “why” for data collected through Google Analytics--Hotjar, a heat mapping tool.   What is a Heat Map?  Heat Maps are a way to visualize data. Heat maps are used across a variety of fields, including in the science and health care professions as a way to make data easier to read.  Heat maps are becoming more popular in web analytics as analyzing websites has become even more granular. A ...

  Bounce Rate  Bounce Rate can be one of the important (and frustrating) things for marketers to consider when conducting an SEO analysis. So, what is a bounce rate? Your website’s bounce rate is the number of people who visit your website and leave without clicking any other links. If you have a high bounce rate, this means people are leaving without converting, which would indicate that your website is not “sticky” (What is a Bounce Rate, n.d.). If the goal of your website is to encourage visitors to browse in order to convert, a high bounce rate could indicate issues with your website.  A high bounce rate could indicate any number of issues. It could be related to broken links being present, or it could be a flaw in the design of the site. Maybe the site is cluttered and needs to be streamlined. Or, in some cases, the bounce rate matters very little because the site is designed for a visitor to not navigate (Patel, 2020). At any rate, this is one of the factors that Go...

Landing Pages, Explained  Landing Pages are an important part of a marketing strategy and SEO Analysis. A landing page is unique from other pages on a website. It is focused and can be related to a certain ad campaign as a way to funnel traffic and track response rates to the campaign. Landing pages are where your website visitor lands when you click on an ad from a search engine, from social media, or even if they see a link typed out on an out of home ad. Many landing pages include a form for the visitor to fill out so that the landing page owner can capture a lead, this is known as a lead generation landing page (Baldwin, 2020). Landing pages are typically short and concise, with a call to action and fewer links included. This is all by design, of course, to increase conversions or to capture a lead (What is a Landing Page? n.d.).  Examples of Landing Pages Where I work, ACE Adventure Resort, we use the landing page FallRafting.com to direct traffic for our Gauley Season gu...