- Assignment for Intro to Web Publishing Fall 2021 that received an A grade - 1 of 3 papers relating to LaurenBateman.com during this class

1. Lee Ann Wesley - LaurenBateman.com Content & Traffic Analysis
BUSINESS ANALYSIS
Industry Overview
The web-based guitar instruction industry has been booming in the past year and a half
despite many guitar moguls thinking the age of the instrument was coming to an end. With the
majority of iconic guitar players fading away as newer music takes hold of listeners, it was a
huge surprise when guitar companies, like Fender, were having record years in 2020. Andy
Mooney, the chief executive of Fender, stated that 2020 was the biggest year of sales volume in
the company’s history, among breaking other growth records. Jensen Trani, a Los Angeles based
guitar instructor, has seen views of his videos and lessons skyrocket in the past year. Trani noted
that his YouTube videos saw increased traffic shortly after the stay-at-home order was announced
in spring of 2020. The amount of people taking his private tutoring lessons also tripled. Trani is a
tutor through Fender Play, Fender’s guitar instruction website. Their website provides a learning
experience based on the speed of the learner, and they offer a free 7-day trial for new users. After
the free trial, which a lot of other websites offer, the service costs $10 a month, which is an
average price for similar websites. One of the biggest names in the guitar instruction industry,
Fender saw the users of their instructional website grow from 150,000 to 930,000 between late
March and late June. Other popular instructional sites, like GuitarTricks and JustinGuitar.com
also saw surges of users in the spring. For newcomers who do not want to pay for lessons,
millions of instructional YouTube videos are available online for free. There are also lots of free
options on websites that offer paid memberships and lessons, like LaurenBateman.com. Her site,
along with other similar sites, offer lots of free chord charts and song tutorials for different levels
of expertise.
In the past year and a half, people have had more time than ever to finally pick up
hobbies they’ve been meaning to learn. This includes learning to play the guitar, and amidst the
chaos of the pandemic, lots of newcomers found calm in the strumming. Also, because of the
stay-at-home orders and lots of storefronts being closed, web-based guitar instruction has been
wildly popular. Not being able to go to a music teacher in person also led to more people
learning online. One surprising aspect relating to the pandemic was that even though there were
high rates of unemployment and many were struggling financially, thousands of people still
chose to invest in buying a guitar. Although the industry saw drastic growth in the market in the
last year and a half, that does not necessarily mean everyone will keep playing once life returns
to some sort of normal. It is inevitable that some will drop their hobby once they can go back to
their original routines, but it is impossible to ignore the positive change that the pandemic made
on the guitar market and the web-based guitar instruction industry (Williams).

2. Online Guitar Instruction Audience
In the recent surge of guitar learners, a majority of the new users were female. With the
increase of new users on Fender Play, nearly 20% of these new users were under age 24, and
70% were under age 45. Females also accounted for 45% of the new users. Most of Jensen
Trani’s new users were also females in their late 20s or early 30s. Additionally, most new users
to these instructional websites are beginners (Williams). These instructional sites are very easy to
navigate, and the services available range from beginner level to expert level. Most of them also
come with a free trial, so players can test out the website before paying for lessons. There is also
lots of free content as well, like chord charts and song tutorials, so there are many options for
people who do not want to pay for lessons. When it comes to lessons, there are usually different
prices for the different levels of skill, and there are also packages that are more expensive for
what they include. LaurenBateman.com, for example, offers different packages with different
content, and the packages with more detailed content are priced higher. In general though, it is a
very easy process to identify what services a player needs and signing up for them. It is also
encouraged to practice daily, so learning is as easy as possible. There are also websites like
LiveMusicTutor where the learner is able to video chat with an instructor (Biersdorfer).
When it comes to acquiring the instrument, which can be the more difficult part, it is easy
to shell out at least $500 for a decent guitar, so many people use the option of renting. There are
many online tools to find a rental instrument that is desirable for the player. Music Rental Central
is a national site that rents out lots of different instruments, including guitars. It is also much
more affordable to buy a used instrument than brand new, and there are tons of ways to purchase
used guitars online. Ebay and Craigslist are two popular options, as well as Musician’s Friend.
Beginner players are more likely to rent or buy a more affordable guitar to start learning on, but
they may move up to a more expensive model as they gain more experience (Biersdorfer).
Company Information
LaurenBateman.com is a web-based guitar instruction website run by 27-year old guitar
player Lauren Bateman. She learned guitar when she was 16, and ended up going to college for
Biology and Archaeology. Lauren worked in the science field until deciding to make her dream
of teaching guitar a reality. She started teaching on her website in 2017, but also teaches at two
music schools in her area. She has a passion for teaching others to play and making music a fun
experience. Her YouTube channel has 125,000 subscribers and her website is easy to navigate
and offers many different lesson packages. Her main product is her Complete 7-level Beginner
Guitar System. This package includes more than 50 videos on chords, strumming, picking, tips,
and more, over 90 practice tracks, a 57-page PDF workbook, and a 30 day action plan. The
course also includes year long access to Lauren’s private Facebook group, the access to email her
with questions, and monthly live Zooms with her. This course costs $147, and there is an option
to pay with three separate payments for those that do not want to spend the $147 all at once. She
also offers a lifetime membership of this course, which gives the player lifetime access to her
Facebook group and Zooms, as well as access to any future materials she offers. This package

3. also includes lifetime access to all intermediate mini courses, which teach finger picking, music
theory, strumming, lead guitar skills, and power and barre chords. This package is much more
expensive, coming out to $497. The intermediate mini courses are also sold separately. The
finger picking, music theory, lead guitar, and power and barre chord topics all have their own
courses that cost $97 each. Another intermediate mini course offered is an expressive rhythm
course that costs $127. Lauren also offers the intermediate lessons, which is a package that
includes all the intermediate mini courses with the exception of the expressive rhythm topic. This
package costs $197. It is easy to tell that Lauren wants her audience to learn many different
aspects of playing, and encourages users to buy the bundles, which are more expensive, but more
cost effective than buying the topics separately. Although Lauren offers lots of paid content,
there are tons of free tutorials and chord charts on her website for those that do not want to pay
for lessons. Most of this free content takes the user to an article related to a certain topic and
usually has one of her YouTube videos embedded. One example is How to Read a Chord
Diagram. Her free content also includes guitar chord charts and song tutorials, with some of the
tutorials including a video of her teaching it. There is also a free guitar crash course for beginners
that includes basic information on starting to play.
In general, Lauren offers a very personalized experience that shows her passion for music
and desire to teach others. This is an aspect that makes her different from big name websites like
Fender. Her website also claims that she “focuses on the fundamentals and skills necessary to
have fun with your guitar as soon as possible.” Her offerings of Zoom calls and her private
Facebook group also show that she wants to help every player learn personally. She also told us
in the Zoom that her main demographic is older white men, usually over the age of 50. She
talked to us about the unique connections and relationships she has with men since she identifies
as a lesbian woman. She told us she feels that her and her demographic have a lot in common,
and she likes to upload song tutorials and chord charts for the music they like. Her ‘Meet Lauren’
page also lets users get to know more about her and why she is now running her website. As far
as looking at the website goes, it seems that Lauren is a one-woman show. There is no Careers
tab, and she doesn’t mention other teachers within her content. She told us in the Zoom that she
makes 85% of her money from users buying her lessons, 10% from YouTube ads, and the
remaining 5% from donations and other platforms. There is also a Donate tab on the site that
states that people using the free content can donate if they would like.
Competing Site
Justin Sandercoe, the face of JustinGuitar.com, has been teaching online guitar lessons
since 2003. Although he has been around a long time, he is still a competitor of
LaurenBateman.com. They offer similar services with one personality as the face of their brand.
There are similar personal feelings to each of their websites, and it feels like you are learning to
play guitar from a friend rather than a stranger on the internet. They also both aim toward
beginners and intermediate level players, but Justin teaches expert levels as well. The
JustinGuitar.com site is also similar to LaurenBateman.com in the way that there is lots of free

4. content as well as paid products. He offers chord charts and song tutorials for free and has paid
courses as well. When browsing his website, it seems that there is more free content than
premium courses, which is good for learners. He offers many lessons in each expertise level for
free as well as courses in essential knowledge and skills. For his paid content, he doesn’t have as
much as LaurenBateman.com. He only has 4-5 paid courses that focus on different topics, but
they are more affordable than Lauren’s. He also sells his own music and shirts/other merchandise
similar to how Lauren does. His site also encourages donations in order to keep the free content
free. Although there are no major flaws with Lauren’s site, it is easy to tell that Justin’s website is
a bit more professional and fancy. You can just tell from his site that more money probably goes
into maintaining it, and that Justin is not the only one working on it. On his site, there is a page
about his support team, which shows his team that works on various aspects of JustinGuitar.com.
Also, with how much more free content he provides, one could think that his site generates more
money so they are able to provide more content without cost to the learner. Overall, Justin and
Lauren take very similar approaches to the way they teach their content and provide it to the
learner. It is easy to tell that Justin has been going at it longer and has a lot of help behind the
scenes, though. Justin also is mentioned in more articles online than Lauren has. He has been
teaching online since 2003, so he has quite an advantage over Lauren in that aspect. He is also
just a bigger name in the industry, and most likely holds more authority in general.
Quality Content Assessment
Content Overview and Quantity:
LaurenBateman.com is overflowing with free and paid content. Her content is located
under products, songs, and lessons tabs located on the top of her website. All of her paid content
is under the products tab. This includes all of the paid courses (beginner and intermediate levels.)
The products tab also includes her own music and shirts she sells. The courses section within this
tab is very organized and shows lots of information about what you will learn from each course.
Each course has large text that describes everything included for the price and it is easy to read.
The products tab also shows her guitar product recommendations, which conveniently links to
Amazon for each product, like guitar picks. The products tab in general is very important since it
includes her paid content, so it makes sense that it seems very up to date and organized. The
content there is high-quality. The songs tab also has high-quality content as well. This songs tab
includes all the free chord charts, beginner songs, intermediate songs, and Christmas songs.
These will mostly be basic pages with the chords written out on top of the lyrics, which is helpful
for those wanting to sing and play, or just wanting to know what lyrics go along with the chords.
She told us in Zoom that she manually types out the chords on top of the lyrics just using the
spacebar. A lot of the songs also have one of her YouTube videos attached to the top of the page.
There are over 150 songs for people to learn, and include detailed chord and strumming
instructions. On the chord charts page, Lauren even includes a few paragraphs highlighting that
she makes sure her chord charts include specific aspects that make it easier for learners. Lastly,

5. her lessons tab shows lots of her free YouTube lessons. These lessons are based on a topic and
usually take the user to a page with her YouTube video related to that topic. The lessons tab also
includes her free guitar crash course for beginners. Compared to the other tabs, I think there is
less work that went into the lessons tab, mainly because all of the lessons just direct you to a
page with her YouTube video there. This can lead more people to check out her YouTube
channel, which is smart. She also told us that she puts the links to her website in the description
of her YouTube videos, so people are coming to her site from there too. When it comes to the
quantity of the content, there are more than enough songs to learn as well as different courses for
different levels of players. The free songs also range in genre, from pop to country to rock, and I
noticed many newer songs as well, showing this range.
Quality and Value Content:
When it comes to the quality and value of Lauren’s content, she puts in a lot of work to
make sure that it is up to par. She puts hours of work into her chord charts, and she adds 1-2 of
those each week. That means she adds 4-8 each month, and she currently has over 200 charts on
her website. This content is fresh and timely since she adds them on a weekly basis. Her song
tutorials are also added often and include songs that her learners want to see. Since she
acknowledged that her demographic is mainly older men, most songs she adds are older classic
songs, but she does add some newer pop songs as well. As far as typos and grammar goes, there
are a few minor typos that I have spotted on her website. These were errors that a lot of people
would probably not notice, and Lauren told us herself that she is not the best speller and she will
have a virtual assistant help edit her site. When it comes to uniqueness, Lauren brings skills to
the industry that others do not. Firstly, she is one of the few women that teach in the web-based
instruction industry, so she is able to stand out that way. A main aspect of her content that is
unique is the way she makes her chord charts. She types them out manually and puts the chords
over the matching lyrics, so that someone can see what lyrics would be sung at the time they are
playing that chord. This is something that JustinGuitar.com does not do. Another way she stands
out, but is not necessarily unique, is that she is a smaller business, so she is more personable and
is able to make connections with her audience better than a bigger name would be able to. This
aspect means a lot to her audience and they are able to get to know her and grow with her. She
also tells her audience how she is not university trained in music, implying that you do not have
to have a college degree in music to learn the guitar. This shows her audience that she is like
them, and that helps them connect better as well. Lauren told us that what sets her apart from
other teachers is that she meets her clients where they are in their guitar journey; she does not
expect perfection and she encourages them to find confidence through music. She even
personally emails her clients if they have questions, despite having around 1,300 people enrolled
in her paid courses. That is something that bigger name teachers would not be able to do. You
can tell from her personality that she has a genuine passion for what she does, and the personal
approach she takes enhances that. Although she has around 1,300 students in her paid courses, I
believe the most valuable content is her free tutorials and chord charts. I think this because she

6. told us in Zoom that she gets roughly 40,000 visits to her website per month. I think these
visitors could include tons of people using her free content, which is more than just 1,300. I also
think that some learners might pay for her lessons once they want to move up from the chord
charts and song tutorials.
Brand Trust & Authority
News Coverage:
The first relevant article that I read that mentions Lauren is The New York Times
Wirecutter article about playing the guitar during isolation. She is “another good online teacher”
according to the article. She comes into the article right after they mention JustinGuitar.com,
who was chosen as their favorite online guitar instructor. They wrote a bit more about what he
offers, which is more specific and advanced than Lauren’s content. Despite that, Lauren is still
mentioned here without ever even trying to be. The New York Times is a very respected and
authoritative news source, so being mentioned in this article was very beneficial for Lauren
(Butterworth). A separate New York Times article, “Guitars are Back, Baby!” mentions
JustinGuitar.com briefly. This article mentions how he saw a spike in his users in the spring of
2020 (Williams). The Guitar Works ranking of the 9 best online guitar teachers also mentions
JustinGuitar.com, ranking him #6 on the list. This article hits on the quantity of his content, and
how much of it is free, as well as his presentation style (Corfield and Schwarten). Justin is also
mentioned in the other two articles pertaining to the best online guitar teachers, “5 Best Online
Guitar Lessons Websites in 2021” and “15 Websites to Learn Acoustic Guitar Lessons Online.”
Lauren is not mentioned in those three articles, but she was a guest on The Red Bra Project,
which is a blog that shares the stories of inspiring women. The Red Bra Project interviewed
Lauren and chose to write a piece about her, which shows how inspirational she is to others. The
blog post shares her whole story, including how she eventually took the leap to become a guitar
teacher and also stories from some of her students. One of Lauren’s music schools also has lots
of great reviews, with tons of parents and students commending Lauren for her teaching style.
Lauren’s beginner guitar course also has a 4.7 star rating on CourseMarks.com. Overall,
JustinGuitar.com is mentioned more frequently in ratings lists and is just more well known in
general because he has been teaching online for 18 years now. He has had a lot more time than
Lauren to build his authority. In Lauren’s case, she has only been teaching online for 4 years. It is
understandable that Lauren has not made as many rankings lists as Justin, or been mentioned
online as frequently. Where Lauren is written about though, like The New York Times and The
Red Bra Project, brings her a lot of authority and trust within the guitar instruction community.
Social Presence:
When it comes to social presence, Lauren has a pretty good following on both YouTube
and Instagram. On YouTube, she currently has 128,000 subscribers. Social Blade shows us that
she has been gaining at least 8,000 subscribers per month since February of 2021. She also has

7. 7.6 million total views on her channel. On Social Blade, it shows that Lauren gained the largest
amount of views in April 2020, February 2021, March 2021, and April 2021. She gained around
430,000, 460,000, 545,000, 500,000 views in those months, respectively. She has been gaining
around 500,000 each month since then this year. Her channel has been in existence since 2010.
JustinGuitar has around 1.45 million subscribers on YouTube. He usually gains around 10,000
subscribers a month, and even gained 40,000 in May 2020 and 20,000 each month from June
2020 until March 2021. He currently has around 217 million total views on his channel, which
was created in 2006. He has gained over 1 million views a month since August of 2021. As we
can see, Justin’s YouTube audience is much larger than Lauren’s, but Lauren still gains plenty of
views and subscribers each month. They have both had months where their metrics were higher
or lower than normal, which is to be expected. Since Justin has a larger following, his social
brand authority is probably higher than Lauren’s. On Instagram, Lauren has around 17,500
followers. She usually gets an average of 88 likes and 15 comments on her posts. Recently, she
has been losing followers, around a couple hundred each month. JustinGuitar has around 71,000
followers. On average, he gets 900 likes and 36 comments on his posts. He gained 2,200
followers in August of 2021, and has been gaining around 800-2,000 followers per month
recently. I think that Justin also has more social brand authority on Instagram since he has a
larger following. Another important thing that would lead to higher social brand authority on
Instagram is that he is a verified user on the platform. More people are going to see his account
since verified users show up first on searches, and people in general will think he is more
trustworthy because of that blue checkmark. Verified users tend to have more followers and
engagement as well. The numerical difference between Lauren’s and Justin’s followers on
Instagram is much smaller though. Justin does not have an overwhelming advantage on Lauren
there, but obviously he does have about 50,000 more followers. I think that the difference
between their followings is smaller on Instagram because more people want to see Justin’s and
Lauren’s content on their YouTube channels rather than seeing snippets on their Instagrams.
Especially when it comes to in-detail song tutorials, more visitors will want to see the whole
thing on their YouTube channels, which would result in them having larger followings on that
platform. Their websites also link to their YouTube channels, so more people are probably
heading to their channels from there.
TRAFFIC ANALYSIS
● Visit Analysis

8. ○ Definitions: As we learned in class, visits represent the number of times a user
visits our site each month. A unique visitor is a user that has visited our site at
least once, but is counted as one user. A unique visitor might visit our site 10
times in one month, but we would have one unique visitor and 10 visits. Visits per
unique visitor shows how many times each unique visitor visited the site. The data
above shows the visits, unique visitors, and visits per unique visitors for
LaurenBateman.com and JustinGuitar.com in August 2021.
○ Comparison: Comparing the July and August 2021 visit analytics shows major
drops in Lauren’s and Justin’s visitors. From SemRush, we see that in July,
Lauren has nearly 50,000 visits, and only about 17,000 in August. Justin’s site
also went through a similar experience, because his visits went from 2.6 million to
1.9 million between those two months. We also see that Justin has a higher
amount of visits per unique visitor than Lauren. This could be because his site is
more popular and caters to all kinds of players, so more people are visiting more
often. Lauren will obviously receive much less visits in general since she has a
smaller site. As shown earlier, Lauren was gaining around 500,000 views each
month on YouTube, so it is possible that more of her learners find what they need
on her YouTube channel, and do not feel the need to visit her website. The exact
reason behind why both sites were experiencing these drops in visits is unclear,
but another possibility is that people learning the guitar got busier with work or
school in August and did not have as much time to visit Lauren’s or Justin’s site.
○ Returning Visitors: According to the “visits per unique visitors” number, we see
that Lauren’s visitors visit around one time each month. The number of unique
visitors is very close to the number of visits, showing that most of the visitors are
one-time visitors. There are obviously still repeat visitors, but that number is
pretty low. This could just be another effect of August being a slower month,
because Lauren did have a lot more repeat visitors and visits in July. In July, there
were around 1.6 visits per unique visitor, and a total of 40,700 visits. Her visits
went down 26% from July to August, which also usually means less unique
visitors. Repeat visitors are a very good thing for a website, especially in this
industry. Repeat visitors show that people want to come back and continue
learning from that site, rather than just checking it out once.
● Engagement Analysis

9. ○ Bounce Rate
○ The bounce rate indicates how many visitors only visited one page before leaving
our site. The bounce rate percentage shows the percentage of visitors that only
visited one page before leaving. From the August 2021 data, we can see that
LaurenBateman.com had a very high bounce rate of 85%. This shows that 85% of
her visitors only visited one page before leaving. JustinGuitar.com had a bounce
rate of 49%. Lauren’s bounce rate is much higher than the average rate by about
40%.
○ This high rate is not necessarily a bad thing though when it comes to the industry
that Lauren is in. Spending the visit time on only one page could indicate that the
visitor was looking at one specific song or tutorial for the duration of their visit,
and then left once they were finished. For example, if a learner was only visiting
to learn how to play “Sweet Home Alabama'', then they would probably only be
visiting for that purpose. Also, Lauren usually links to her website from her
YouTube tutorials. This could mean that her viewers on YouTube are watching a
video tutorial and simply click the link that leads to her website for that same
song. This action could definitely lead to visitors only looking at one page during
their visit. Learners also might want to be only learning one specific song at a
time that they like and choose to focus on that when they visit her site. This data
makes sense because of what LaurenBateman.com is used for.
○ Pages Per Visit
○ Pages per visit indicates how many pages a visitor visits during their session.
LaurenBateman.com’s pages per visit was 1.2, and JustinGuitar.com’s was 4.3.
Justin’s was pretty close to the web average of 4.6. Justin’s higher number for this
statistic could be because his website is much larger than Lauren’s and contains a
vast amount of information. It might take visitors longer to navigate to the page
they want to view, and Justin’s website just contains more pages in general.
○ LaurenBateman.com’s pages per visit number being 1.2 is well below the web
average, but like the bounce rate, that is not always a negative thing. I believe this
number ties in with her high bounce rate. Since a majority of her visitors are
leaving after only looking at one page, it makes sense that her average pages per
visit is 1.2. Again, because of the industry she is in, a lot of her visitors could just
be looking at around 1 page per visit because they are focusing on learning one
specific song or chords. Her number is still lower than JustinGuitar.com’s, which
could be because of her site being smaller. Although it is good that her visitors are
focusing on one song, it would not be a bad thing to have a higher page per visit
number. If she had a page per visit number of 2-3 that would be even better,
because her visitors could be learning multiple songs in one visit and really
exploring the content she has to offer.
○ Average Visit Duration

10. ○ Average Visit Duration shows us the average time that visitors are spending on
our site during their visit. We can see from the August data that
LaurenBateman.com’s rate is nearly 25 minutes. JustinGuitar.com’s is around 18
minutes, with the web average being only 3.1 minutes.
○ When it comes to this statistic, Lauren’s number is much higher than the average,
and a good amount higher than JustinGuitar.com’s. Again, this is because of the
industry they are in. Unlike visiting Amazon to browse for a few minutes, visitors
are using LaurenBateman.com to spend a larger chunk of time that is necessary
for learning to play the guitar. It is not easy to learn a new instrument by only
spending a couple minutes on the website, it takes a larger time commitment. This
makes sense since Lauren’s number is around 25 minutes. This is a good amount
of time to start learning a new song or going back over what someone might have
learned a few days prior. Having a shallow website with not very much quality
content could lead to a low average visit duration, so Lauren’s number indicates
that visitors find her content engaging and useful.
POPULARITY ANALYSIS
● Definitions: This data shows the total backlinks, number of referring domains, and
average number of backlinks per domain for LaurenBateman.com and JustinGuitar.com
for the month of September 2021. A backlink is a link to a website from other sites. The
referring domain is the website that these links come from. The average number of
backlinks per domain shows us the amount of backlinks that come from each referring
domain, on average. It is important to calculate this number because it shows us how
many backlinks we are getting from each domain, on average. This gives us insight into
how often our referring domains are mentioning us. We do not want this number to be
very low, but also not super high either. If it is very high, it will look like only a few
domains are responsible for nearly all the backlinks. As we see with
LaurenBateman.com’s data, her referring domains each contain about 3.5 backlinks to her
site, on average.
● Analysis of Link Quantity: From this data, we can see that JustinGuitar.com’s numbers
are much higher than those for LaurenBateman.com. His site generated 483,218
backlinks this month, and his average number of backlinks per domain was 58.
LaurenBateman.com received 722 total backlinks and 3.5 average number of backlinks
per domain. We know that Justin has a much larger and well-known site, which could be
a big factor in other sites referring to him. We also saw that Justin was covered more

11. often in news stories and articles about the guitar instruction industry. This lines up with
him receiving a lot more backlinks than LaurenBateman.com. He also has a much higher
number of Youtube subscribers, so it is more likely that articles will mention him because
of his presence there. Along with this, JustinGuitar.com has a much higher average
number of backlinks per domain. Part of this is because he has a lot more backlinks in
general, but we also just see that his referring domains are mentioning him more than just
a few times. He could be getting mentioned in multiple articles across his referring
domains, which spreads his name even further. LaurenBateman.com has 3.5 backlinks
per domain, on average. It would be beneficial for her site if this number was higher,
because then her name would be getting out more often on each of her referring domains.
As we saw in the news coverage section, she was not mentioned in online articles and
rankings as often as JustinGuitar.com.
● Trend Analysis: When it comes to the trend of number of backlinks,
LaurenBateman.com’s number has been on the rise for the past 2 years. In September of
2019, her site only had around 230 backlinks. There was also a large jump between July
and August of this year. Between those 2 months, her number of backlinks went from 476
to 670. JustinGuitar.com’s number of backlinks has been pretty steady in recent months.
His number has been in the high 400,000’s since around February of 2020. Before then, it
was around 300,000 for about 6 months. His site’s number of backlinks grew a large
amount then, and the number is starting to increase slightly since August of 2021.
● Analysis of Link Quality: When analyzing the quality of the backlinks for
LaurenBateman.com, we can see that a majority of her referring domains are trustworthy
and authoritative. From Ubersuggest’s data, lots of the referring domains have domain
authority scores of 80 and above. This means that the websites that refer to
LaurenBateman.com are likely to appear near the top of SERP. These referring domains,
for the majority, are websites relating to rankings and evaluation of teachers in the online
guitar instruction industry. The top ranked domain in her list of referring domains is the
New York Times Wirecutter article, which makes sense since they are a very popular and
trustworthy news site. The websites that show rankings for guitar teachers are very
relevant because lots of learners use information like that to decide who they want to
learn from. When analyzing page authority from Ubersuggest, the highest score for
LaurenBateman.com’s referring domains was 55. This means that the page is around the
middle of the rankings of appearing in SERP. These numbers are not as high as the
domain authority rankings. JustinGuitar.com’s page authority rankings are slightly higher,
as well as the domain authority rankings. Also, there are a lot more domains with these
higher scores, probably because he has a lot more referring domains than
LaurenBateman.com in general. Similarly to Lauren, most of Justin’s referring domains
are from news articles and rankings related to their industry. JustinGuitar.com does
appear in more of these articles though, and appears in more high quality news sources as
well. For example, he is mentioned in The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and BBC.

12. Although it is obvious that JustinGuitar.com possesses more referring domains and
appears in more relevant news articles because of that, LaurenBateman.com’s numbers
are impressive for the size of her website. She is mentioned in The New York Times as
well as many articles about the guitar instruction industry.

13. Works Cited
Biersdorfer, J.D. "How to Take Music Lessons Whenever (and Wherever) Works for You." The
New York Times, March 19, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/technology/personaltech/online-music-lessons-app
s.html
Butterworth, Brent. "Use This Time During Coronavirus Isolation to Learn to Play Guitar or
Ukulele" The New York Times -- Wirecutter, March 25, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/coronavirus-learn-guitar-ukulele/
Corfield, Chris, and Schwarten, Chris. "Best online guitar lessons 2021: our pick of the 9 best
remote learning platforms for guitar players" Guitar World,
https://www.guitarworld.com/features/best-online-guitar-lessons
CourseMarks.com, Ratings for Lauren Bateman's "Beginner Guitar Course: Have More Fun
With Your Guitar",
https://coursemarks.com/course/beginner-guitar-course-have-more-fun-with-your-guitar/
The Red Bra Project: Episode 59, "Scientist Turned Musician -- How ONE Decision Can
Change Your Entire Life's Path with Lauren Bateman," Sept. 9, 2020,
https://www.theredbraproject.com/2020/09/09/scientist-turned-musician-how-one-decisio
n-can-change-your-entire-lifes-path-with-lauren-bateman/
Yelp, Reviews for Lauren Bateman's LB Music School,
https://www.yelp.com/biz/lb-music-school-medford-2