Customer Stories: Allison Campbell of One Happy Dish

It’s no secret we’re big fans of our Clariti users. We love catching up with them and getting a behind-the-scenes peek into how they organize and optimize their blog content. We thought you might be interested too, so we are sharing their stories right here on the blog.

Everyone… meet Allison!

Allison, as a newer blogger, you have a unique story compared to most of our Clariti users. Please tell us about the site you have on Clariti.

I started using Clariti for my food blog One Happy Dish after publishing my first 75 blog posts. I was still in the early stages of developing my content creation process for the blog, and needed a tool that could help prepare me for long-term growth.

One Happy Dish focuses on cooking simple, fresh, seasonal recipes. I also love teaching people how to incorporate fermented foods into their meals. My motto is:  “Although life is complicated, cooking good food shouldn’t be.”

Why was it important for you to use Clariti at the infancy stage of your blog vs. waiting until further down the road?

I only have so many hours in a day, and I realized early on that I needed to use those hours well if I wanted blogging to work out and generate more revenue long-term. 

When I first started the blog, my only goal was to start publishing posts so I could gain experience. But after publishing about 75 posts, I realized it’d also be beneficial to optimize old content instead of exclusively creating new content.

I needed a way to track which posts I wanted to optimize with things like internal links, updated photos or videos, alt text, and high performing SEO keywords. I started to feel overwhelmed trying to manage this process on my own.

But I knew it was important as I wanted to make each post on my site the best that it could be to improve its search ranking and overall impact. 

Why did you decide to sign up for Clariti?

Being such a detail-oriented person, I was beginning to dread seeing the list of empty check marks on my ever growing Excel spreadsheet. I had a column detailing each way I wanted to optimize my old content, but this tracking system felt overwhelming and inefficient.

I heard about Clariti on the Food Blogger Pro podcast, and realized that it could potentially decrease the massive overwhelm I was starting to experience. I decided to sign up and was hooked immediately!

 In my opinion, it’s a very low amount of money to spend for the peace of mind of knowing my content is optimized and better positioned for my audience and for search. It’s helped me make sure all those hours I spent creating the content wouldn’t go to waste. That’s why I decided to go all in on Clariti as my content management system and see how it could improve my blogging process. 

What were you using to manage blog content before Clariti? 

Before Clariti, I was using one huge Excel spreadsheet. It worked for a while, but once I got to 75-80 posts, it became too tedious to maintain.

Not only that, but it wasn’t a great reference tool. I had columns for everything, like if I’d shared the post on social media, if I’d added an FAQ to the post itself, or whether the post had an equipment list with affiliate links.

With the spreadsheet, I couldn’t look back and see when I’d completed something or how it had affected the post’s performance. I needed a way to track this data that didn’t feel so ‘stop and go.’ I wanted to be able to pick up and continue a project with no lost time. 

How has Clariti helped you as a team of ONE stay organized and make progress? 

Like I said earlier, I quickly realized that I can’t do everything in terms of content creation, optimization and overall organization.

And let’s be honest, food blogging is a ton of work. It’s not only recipe development, but photography, editing, and writing the actual post. Plus you have to promote the blog once it’s published and continue to update it. If you think about it, hitting publish is just the beginning…

Because I’m not ready to hire a team member to help me with the content creation process, Clariti has been the perfect solution.

I no longer have to wade through endless spreadsheet columns or deal with analysis paralysis every day trying to decide what to actually do with this data.

Clariti is like having an assistant to help you decide which tasks you need to prioritize based on the data it provides – like how blog posts are performing, and which ones still need updating.

Starting in October 2023, I started using Clariti on a daily basis and decided to test my efforts. I organized all my reusable projects (each with a related to-do list based on my goals) and set up my labels to better filter types of blog content. Then I waited to see if the changes I was making would increase my site traffic — and after a few months, the results were pretty astounding to me!

“My organic search traffic went up over 400% this Q4 versus the previous Q4, and I attribute that success to leaning into Clariti, and trusting the system that I’d set up.”

What does site traffic growth mean for you in terms of your long-term goals? 

My first big goal is to qualify for Mediavine. 

Because I like to see things visually, I created a chart where I track and project my progress toward hitting the page views I’ll need to do that.

“SEO is the number one point of focus for me right now. It’s the one thing that can help my traffic grow faster, and set me up for success in the long term.”

Before using Clariti, my content wasn’t organized very effectively for SEO. But now that I’ve created a system inside Clariti that helps me track which keywords are performing best, the graph is finally ticking up, and there’s a possibility I could reach 50,000 sessions and qualify for Mediavine by this summer!

Are there tools you no longer need because of Clariti?

I definitely don’t need Excel for content management anymore.

I was also using CoSchedule to create “onboarding” projects for new posts after they were published. These projects are designed to remind me to link the post in existing content, share it with my email list, and promote it on social media. Clariti has helped me simplify this process, so I no longer need CoSchedule to onboard new posts.

To my knowledge, there’s nothing else like Clariti that can accomplish everything I need. 

What features of Clariti are your favorite?

Labels

There are so many, but I’d have to say labels because I love being organized. They’ve also become a key piece of my strategy. 

I label content for seasonality, my top 25 pieces of content (based on how much traffic they currently receive), and what I consider “cornerstone content” (related to my fermented food section), so I can make sure I give those posts extra attention regularly. 

I’ve even set up labels based on the SEO keywords I think will have low, medium, or high traffic potential. That way I can dedicate my time to the ones that will bring more traffic to my site. 

A reusable “New Post Onboarding” project

Once I got into the groove of mastering the steps of creating a blog post before I hit publish, I realized there’s so much that needs to happen afterward too!

I’ve created a “new post onboarding” project inside Clariti that makes sure once the post is published, it’s shared and optimized. Clariti syncs my to-do list instantaneously, so I remember to complete the entire onboarding process. This includes things like posting on social media, sending it out to my email list, and even linking to existing content so it has a better chance of ranking faster. 

What is your content updating “routine” with Clariti on a daily, monthly and quarterly basis? 

Daily

Every day, I log in and jump straight to the Projects tab, which sorts my upcoming tasks based on which project is due first. 

These tasks automatically float to the top of my to-do list without me having to think about it, which takes away a lot of indecision. Plus, I love seeing the burndown rate as I check things off the list…hello dopamine hit! 

Monthly

I have monthly projects that help me group content based on my keyword research. This helps me decide which posts have the most potential to gain popularity during specific times of year (for example, cookies at Christmas).

“I really feel like my posts are my babies and each has a ‘birthday.’ Everyone gets a month. So I focus on each one for that period of time.”

This helps me stay laser-focused updating seasonal content one month at a time instead of worrying about ALL of my posts all of the time. It also helps me prioritize which posts I should be promoting on social media month to month. 

Quarterly

Quarterly, I perform a mini audit that takes advantage of Clariti’s Explore screen.

I look for things like missing alt text or broken images that need to be fixed, and I make sure each post has a minimum number of internal links. Clariti makes this content auditing process quick, easy, and much more productive. 

How did you learn how to use Clariti? 

I love exploring new apps, and Clariti was easy to start playing with right away. There is no one-size-fits-all approach within Clariti; it’s very customizable depending on what you need. 

 “The more you use it, the more “aha!” moments you have. Within a couple of weeks, things just started coming together.”

I also read the articles on Clariti’s blog, which were super helpful. They gave me great ideas for how other people were making the most of Clariti’s features. 

How would you explain what Clariti is to someone who’s never used it? 

For anyone who values their time and wants to work smarter not harder, it’s an organized way to set up your blogging system.

It helps you feel like the super cool CEO who knows what to do, and when to do it. It helps you know you’re doing the right things, at the right time, and it saves you so much decision making! 

“In my opinion, Clariti has made blogging so much more fun and rewarding… and blogging should be fun, right? That’s why we’re all doing it.” 

What is one key takeaway or insight about your content that you’ve learned while using Clariti?

The number one insight that Clariti has given me is that small changes really add up to big results. 

I continue to make small improvements in Clariti, and it might seem like a little thing, but I know I’m creating more helpful resources for my readers. I don’t want to put stuff out there just for the sake of it. I want to create the best content I can, and Clariti helps me do that over time.

For anyone considering Clariti, it’s been so helpful for me and my mental health (no more content overwhelm!) It relieved a lot of pressure to manage all of my content manually and has made blogging more joyful. 

It’s a great feeling to know that everything is in Clariti — which means I can focus on being creative!