Customer Stories: Paula Morgan of Sydney Expert

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 Paula!

Paula, please tell us about the site you have on Clariti. Do you have a specific niche?

I run Sydney Expert, a destination travel website with around 275 blog posts. The site gets approx 150,000 page views a month and up to 300,000 during busier travel times of the year. 

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

While we create at least a couple of new blog posts each month, I would say 80% of the content on my site is evergreen. 

That said, whether it’s a post on how to ride a particular ferry or about a tourist attraction, that content still needs to be updated regularly. Whether it’s a price change or something about the attraction changes, it’s important that our content is relevant and our posts are showing up on search when people are looking for things to do in Sydney.

Clariti helps me identify the blog posts where I can make these edits from year to year — helping me work smarter, not harder.

What were you doing before? Why did you decide to use Clariti?

Before Clariti I was using a combination of other services and Excel. I was fortunate that someone in a mastermind group mentioned Clariti to me. I’m all for shiny new business software, and I hate Excel – it gives me nightmares! – so I went home and bought Clariti that afternoon to try it out. 

My initial impression was, “Wow, I really enjoy being able to manage all of my projects on this.” In the end, I actually ditched a couple of other things I had been using that were more expensive and kept using Clariti. 

What did you like about Clariti?

I used to track all my websites’ blog posts in an Excel spreadsheet or via Google Search Console. But with Clariti, I can see what is getting the traffic and how long it’s been since I updated something much more quickly. I can also see how long people spend on the site and any dead links, all on one dashboard. Clariti makes it easy for me to know what’s tracking well and what needs attention. 

When I wake up in the morning, and I have one of those days where I’m wondering, “What am I going to do today? If I’m not motivated and need to get some easy wins.” I can just open Clariti, and do some of those housekeeping type tasks — such as fixing dead links or tweaking keywords to drive more traffic – and update my content bit by bit. It’s great for those times when you get stuck and think, “I don’t want to write today! What can I do?”

What are some features of Clariti you think have helped you most?

With Clariti, I can filter my posts for a certain keyword — such as “2022” — and batch-add tasks to those posts so I know exactly what needs updated in each one for the current year.

Fixing Dead or Old Links

I can swap out dead links much faster than before. The dashboard shows dead links, and I can visit each blog post’s page on Clariti, scroll down, and see exactly which links need fixed.

If I want to change out links for an affiliate partner, for instance, I can use Clariti to pick my top ten traffic posts for that partner, scan to see any links to that affiliate partner within the post (via Clariti) and quickly know which blog posts I need to come back and update with a new link. (There are other ways to do that with other paid tools, but they’re way more expensive.)

Improving SEO Strategy

I started setting custom keywords in Clariti, and I’d be able to see, “Ok, I have this as my keyword, but this other one is getting way more impressions and way more clicks… maybe I should work on getting that (other phrase) as my keyword.” 

Clariti has made it possible for me to quickly shift my SEO strategy based on data.

In fact, this is why I can sometimes rank higher than competitors, often much larger brands (like TripAdvisor), because I have my keywords defined and can constantly keep the blog post content fresh by monitoring it with Clariti.

How does Clariti save you time and increase your productivity?

It reduces my procrastination time. On days I feel I am not being creative, I can go on Clariti and choose a project — say, updating some formatting or changing out the Table of Contents — and I just start making changes one by one.

It’s boring work, but it’s got to get done! I can clearly see my progress, and that really motivates me again. When I tick off those to-do boxes, at the end of the day I can say, “Wow! Look, I did all that.” It can absolutely turn my day around. 

How did you learn to use Clariti? Did it take you some time?

It’s actually super intuitive – I love that about Clariti. 

“I have a paid subscription to an expensive SEO tool, but I’m not using it very much because there’s a really big learning curve. However, using Clariti has been a way to manage my workflow without really having to learn anything at all.”

“I have a paid subscription to an expensive SEO tool, but I’m not using it very much because there’s a really big learning curve. However, using Clariti has been a way to manage my workflow without really having to learn anything at all.”

I don’t think there was too much of a learning curve; after two weeks of playing around with it, I became more clever with setting up projects. So, it didn’t take long at all. 

What results have you seen from updating your content with Clariti?

I’m not the type of person who wants to create content every day. With Clariti, I don’t have that pressure to write new content as much as I used to; I can update existing content and keep reaching my goals with website traffic.

Would you recommend Clariti? If so, who would be a good fit to use it?

I’m always looking for new ways to help other people and teach them new tricks! Yes, I’d recommend anyone with a blog to use Clariti. It’s straightforward, and you can easily manage it on your own.