Driving Engagement for The Peale Museum Through SEO & Social Media Analytics
This project partnered with the Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum to analyze the website performance through dashboards and social media, and make strategic insights to help improve their website engagement and conversions.
Info
- Timeline: Nov 2025 - Dec 2025
- Team: Aayushi, Krishna, Iris
- My Role: Content strategy, Social Media analysis, Dashboard design
- My takeaways: How to analyze the complicated web analytics dashboards and make strategies to improve the website engagement and performance.
The Peale wanted to:
- Increase conversions (donations, memberships, volunteer sign-ups)
- Expand reach beyond existing audiences
- Improve Instagram’s ability to drive website traffic
- Strengthen SEO visibility—both on search engines and emerging AI-powered search tools
Key Insights
#1 SEO & Content Visibility Issuesa. Over-reliance on branded keywords
→ Opportunity: Build content around non-branded discovery terms (“Baltimore museum,” “free things to do in Baltimore,” “Baltimore art”), expanding the keyword portfolio and reaching new audiences.
b. Large keyword gap with competitors
- "Baltimore free" = budget-conscious younger visitors who could become members later
- "Creatively black baltimore" = socially-engaged younger audience aligned with The Peale's African American history
→ Create targeted content (2–4 blog posts/month) around themes like Baltimore history, African American heritage, local artists, and cultural tourism.
c. Low performance on commercial-intent keywords
→ Optimize key pages for these queries and ensure consistent presence on platforms like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.
d. Technical SEO barriers
→ Compressing CSS and JS to improve page load speed and reduce bounce rates
→ Find-and-replace all internal HTTP links with HTTPS versions; Implement site-wide 301 redirects from HTTP to HTTPS
→ Either fix the URL, redirect to the relevant page, or remove the link entirely
#2 AI-Powered Search Visibility
Also, 626K monthly audience is being reached, but not converted.
→ Add clear FAQs, optimize for “best of” listicles, and partner with blogs and guides commonly used as AI sources.
#3 User Behavior & Web Performance
a. Weekend traffic surges
→ Align social posts with these peaks and place social links in the footer for better cross-navigation.
b. Low engagement on donation and membership pages
Membership content is hidden under “Donate,” causing confusion.
→ Create a clear “Become a Member” page, improve transparency of benefits and costs, and highlight membership as a primary CTA..
As for catering to other countries, it could be a separate category if there are benefits for users in different countries.
c. Untapped global audience
→ Highlight online events and virtual membership options.
d. Missing event tracking
→ Implement event tracking and build dashboards for donation flow, membership funnels, and user journey insights.
#4 Instagram content lacked structure
→
- Create a seasonal content calendar (holidays, events, etc), and publish themed Reels 2–3 weeks before big events to capture early interest
- Themes:
- Gift ideas (e.g., Gift Ideas Under $xx )
- Event highlights (e.g., What I’m taking to [event]; [Event] highlights i n 1 min)
- Holiday recommendation/related museum content (e.g. Gift Guide for [holiday/event])
- Behind-the-scenes event preparation
- Add interactive hooks (e.g.,“Tell me which one is your favorite!” “Tag someone who needs this)\
- Add clear CTA (e.g., full info in bio; more gift idea on our website)
- Create compelling covers (simple background, clear topic, consistent visuals)
I designed some mock-up Instagram posts for the Peale’s future reference:
Tips: Consistent style (layout, color, typography, image selection) will lead to good branding
Redesign the first image of each carousel to fit Instagram’s preview ratio (3:4)
OutcomeWe consolidated all findings into an actionable SEO & Analytics Dashboard:
- Search engine and AI Search visibility
- Keyword optimization
- Traffic growth
- Technical SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- On-Page SEO
- Keyword Research
- Tracking Membership Signup
- Donation Rates
- Adding events for purchases and revenue for memberships and donations
- Tracking the performance on the donation and membership pages
- Engagement rates on donation and membership pages
- Traffic analysis
- Performance breakdown by device
We also created social media dashboards to help the Peale monitor the traffic and adjust strategies:
- Instagram likes and comments
- Top liked & Top commented posts
- Instagram follower growth
- Followers demographic & geographic profile
- Top performing Instagram posts
A general template for social media analytics that can be used across all platforms
- Followers growth
- Engagement time
- User profiles and attributes like age, gender, etc.
- Top performing posts
Since other social media platforms for The Peale are newer, this template can be used once enough data has been acquired
These provided The Peale with a clear roadmap for improving discoverability, engaging new demographic segments, and converting more visitors into supporters.
Reflection
- How to extract useful data from a complicated analytic dashboard, and identify the patterns through charts
- How to make UX and content strategies based on the data and the pain points
- How to deal with the trade-off (we only prioritized the major tasks)
- Built 5 mock-up dashboards that help Peale’s future dashboard customization
- Provided practical and insightful suggestions for the Peale to increase engagement and business conversion
- Created Instagram mock-ups and content guidance to drive traffic from social media
- Good collaboration
-
Start the project earlier so we can create a website redesign
- Communicate more with the client to know their thoughts