Customer Story: Karishma Pradhan of Home Cooking Collective

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 — and use the data from Clariti to make clear decisions about their site. We thought you might be interested too, so we are sharing their stories right here on the blog.

Everyone… meet Karishma!

Karishma, please tell us about the site you have on Clariti.

I run the Home Cooking Collective, a diverse collection of flavorful, small-batch recipes made from scratch. In addition to these recipes, I also offer workshops and cooking guides aimed at creating memories and moments of joy in the kitchen.

I currently have 168 posts on Clariti. 

What role does updating and optimizing blog content play in your content strategy?

Updating my content has played a major role in growing my site traffic and revenue, especially as a smaller blogger.

The way I see it, content optimization has a large effort to reward ratio because it takes far less effort to optimize an existing post than to create a new one from scratch.  You’re basically starting with 80% of the work already done. I’ve noticed that anytime my site traffic drops, it’s because I’ve spent less time updating existing content.

I’ve seen posts climb from position four to position one or two in search rankings just from making a few thoughtful updates. 

What were you using to manage your content before Clariti?

Like many bloggers, I started with a Google spreadsheet to track post updates. Eventually, I moved to Airtable but there was an incredible amount of manual work to import and track all of my content. For example, every time I published a new post in WordPress, I had to manually create a new record inside Airtable to track it.

After performing an SEO audit in September 2023, I was overwhelmed by the amount of technical and content updates I needed to improve my posts. I knew if I wanted to accomplish this project, I couldn’t manually manage the process anymore.

“I needed something that could automatically organize and import my content, track changes and identify issues.”

That’s where Clariti came in. Clariti made the process much more efficient and organized, saving me weeks of time and manual effort. 

How did you find out about Clariti?

I first heard about Clariti on the Food Blogger Pro podcast in one of their ads. 

Then I heard about a fellow blogger who was using Clariti to manage the result of her own SEO audit. Since Airtable wasn’t a fun experience, I thought, “Why not try Clariti, and see what happens?”

I remember the moment I integrated my Google Analytics account with Clariti, and all of my posts appeared on the Clariti dashboard. It felt amazing to have everything in one place, and I knew Clariti was going to help me feel less overwhelmed. 

What was your process for taking your audit and putting the details into Clariti?

The first thing I did after signing up for Clariti was identify which features could help me accomplish the remaining tasks inside my SEO audit.

Because my site was small, I knew I had to tackle every single technical and content issue to build authority. I organized my posts into two categories: posts that needed big updates, and posts that needed small updates. Big updates included things like rephotographing recipes and rewriting content. Small updates included fixing broken links and adding alt text to blog images. 

Clariti helped me track the changes I was making to each post, and within a few weeks, I was already seeing traffic growth. 

After updating 40+ posts from my SEO audit, I cancelled my Clariti subscription. My site traffic had improved and I was happy with the results, but I was burnt out by the amount of work it took to update my content and needed a break.

It wasn’t long before I realized that regularly updating content is a crucial part of blogging. My site traffic was hit hard by the Google core updates in August 2024, and I knew I needed Clariti again. 

“This taught me that Clariti could not only help manage a large project like my SEO audit, but also help with the day to day maintenance of optimizing my blog content.”

What does that day to day maintenance look like now that you’re using Clariti again?

I check Clariti several times a week (if not every day) to track traffic on my posts, and see how new content is performing. 

I use Clariti’s Project feature to create checklists for new posts to make sure I’m not missing anything like meta descriptions or alt tags on featured images. Clariti has helped me catch minor technical mistakes I didn’t realize I was making before. 

On a quarterly basis, I assess any improving or failing content and flag it for an update. From there, I try to make one big update and one small update per week based on the posts I have queued. Clariti makes it easy to consistently optimize my content and stay productive even with a small amount of downtime. 

What features of Clariti are your favorite?

The Google Analytics and Google Search Console Integration

It’s no secret that Google Analytics is difficult to use. I love that Clariti merges both Google Analytics and Google Search Console so I can see all of my data in one place. It makes it easy to track performance by keywords, site traffic, and queries, instead of visiting four or five different locations to get the same information.  

Labels

I use the Labels feature to categorize posts by season. For example, if summer is coming up, I can quickly pull up all my summer related content and see what needs updating. 

I also label posts based on their keyword position. Every six months, I label posts with keywords in positions 1 – 4, so I know not to touch them, as well as 5-8, so I know to update them at some point.

“This process gives me a high-level overview of my site performance so I can see better opportunities for growth.”

Have you seen an increase in site traffic or revenue since optimizing your content with Clariti?

Yes I have! After updating 40+ posts inside Clariti following the initial SEO audit, my sessions nearly doubled over the next four months. In September 2023 (right after the audit), I had 32,926 sessions. By December 2023, I hit 64,258 sessions and qualified for Mediavine!

By the following year, my sessions were steadily hitting 110-120k per month. After the Google core update in August 2024, my sessions plummeted. After signing up for Clariti again, I was able to improve my site traffic from 96,899 sessions (September 2024) to 125,688 sessions by December. In January I was hitting nearly 150k sessions  (with under 120 posts)! 

It’s been amazing to see how much progress I’ve made in the few years I’ve used Clariti. Without Clariti, it would have taken me another 6 months to a year to qualify for Mediavine. This success has taught me that you don’t need a large content library to qualify for ads; you need high quality content that serves the reader and is performing well. 

What is the number one way Clariti has helped you manage your blog content?

Clariti has given me control over the entire optimization process. It has become my second pair of eyes to make sure my content is performing as well as it can. This is crucial for smaller bloggers like me, who can’t afford to make mistakes larger sites can get away with. 

“It’s like having a personal analyst I can consult with instead of having to manually collect data from multiple places and analyze it myself.”

In under five minutes, Clariti tells me everything I need to know to make higher quality decisions about how to optimize my content for the week, month, and year ahead. It’s the project management tool I didn’t have before (and honestly, didn’t know I needed!). 

If you were to recommend Clariti to a fellow content creator, what would you say?

I cannot stress how important it is to make sure your content is as fresh and updated as possible. Anything that prevents you from accomplishing this is going to lead to worse outcomes down the road (especially if you’re a smaller blogger and want to qualify for ads). 

If you feel overwhelmed and frustrated by the optimization process, Clariti can help you make decisions about what to prioritize so you get better results with a lot less effort. 

I’ve seen so much progress in traffic and revenue growth from having Clariti using a part of my content strategy and I highly recommend trying it for yourself.