Customer Stories: Jenn Fishkind of Princess Pinky Girl

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 their blog content. We thought you might be interested too, so we are sharing their stories right here on the blog.

Everyone… meet Jenn!

Jenn, tell us about your blog. 

My site is Princess Pinky Girl, and I started it in 2013. It’s all easy, fun recipes–comfort food! I had a large social following on Pinterest before starting my blog, so I turned that into a business. It was never just a hobby blog for me; I went into it as a business.

Why did you decide to try Clariti?

A friend told me about it at a retreat I attended. I saw the previews for Clariti and thought I would give it a try.

But, let’s be honest, we’re also tool junkies! I didn’t think I’d use it as much as I did. I thought, “Yeah, okay, so we’re going to use it for three months, and we’re going to put a reminder on our calendar to cancel it.” We got to three months, and we said, “Yeah, no, we love this.” My blog manager is as much of a data geek as I am, so we totally nerd out over it, and she loves Clariti too!

What got you excited about using Clariti?

With at least a couple thousand blog posts (we post a new recipe every day), we have a lot of data to work with on Clariti. 

And for me, it’s all about the data. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Clariti allows me to track the data I need to manage my business, and it shows me everything all at once, so I can make quick decisions about what needs attention next. In fact, we use it so often that it’s tabbed on my computer!

Why is it important to you to update and optimize your blog content?

What Google wants is always different; they’re always updating what they want. 

Three or four years ago, it was all about the length of content and having to fit 1,200 words into one post. That’s when everyone was making fun of food bloggers and saying, “I don’t want to hear your life story.” We would put that information in there because we needed each post to be longer… but now, Google has shifted to prioritize more useful and relevant content, so we’re updating that older content to make it more concise.

Our pictures have gotten much better, and our recipes have gotten much tighter in their instructions. Our posts are more valuable, as well as how we use H2s and want to interlink between posts. Clariti makes it easier to swap out these edits to individual posts!

How did you manage and update content before Clariti?

Before Clariti, we used Airtable with Zapier to track how a post was performing and if it was hitting our marks. It was a very labor-intensive setup, and even just maintaining it was challenging because we would have to scroll and scroll through so much information, and the filtering was complicated. Not only was this costly, but it was also very time-intensive for my blog manager. 

What was a big project you’ve completed using Clariti?

With Google wanting our content to be more useful and relevant, Clariti really helped me revisit all of my oldest, most outdated blog posts. I was able to identify what needed to be updated and create projects to get it done quickly. 

For example, when I first started blogging, there was a “trick” trend of using a “Click to Continue” link at the bottom of each blog post to collect multiple page views quickly (it was sort of like cheating). I knew I needed to fix all of those, so I created a project on Clariti to address each of those posts, and I was able to just click them off one by one. 

What projects are you currently working on in Clariti?

The big project we’re focusing on now is further increasing page views for any post that has over 5000 page views by optimizing each post.

We set up a project for this in Clariti — it’s basically a technical checklist of what needs done to each post — which has been super helpful. It includes things like:

• Moving content around within the blog post
• Putting an FAQ section into the post
• Updating internal links

How do you track the impact of your updates through Clariti?

Although we just started using Clariti this past year, we already see boosts in traffic when we update and republish blog posts. After making those updates (and tracking the details in Clariti), we can see what changes have made a positive or negative impact and which posts had bumps in traffic and why. 

What is your daily routine using Clariti?

First, I’ll go in and see how yesterday’s posts have performed and then analyze the metrics from the last seven days. Then, I look at where the traffic is coming from and ensure the keywords I’ve selected for each post accurately reflect the content and difficulty I want to rank for. 

With Clariti, I can easily see what blog posts need more attention and create reminders to analyze them further. It allows me to focus on what can help us grow! 

Do you feel you’ve made the best use of Clariti?

In short, yes! I’ve worked enough with Clariti to confidently say it pays for itself. Of course, I’ve tried plenty of different paid tools that have not been useful, but I know now we’re keeping Clariti for good.