Episode Transcript
Ashley Segura: Let’s kick things off when you’re not experimenting with content and you find yourself in the kitchen what is your go to dish to cook?
Christine Skopec: So this is funny i it feels like two lifetimes ago I was a line cook long before I got into editorial or marketing I don’t cook anything at home that is anywhere near I’m not gonna I’m not spending like eight hours prepping something at home
skill sets for me I don’t know it really depends on the time of year so all summer long and even into like late fall I do I grill everything it doesn’t matter what it is grill it but it’s winter here in Minnesota so it’s soup season probably gonna make soup tonight I don’t know I don’t know what it will be but there’s gonna be soup on the menu tonight
I make a really good black bean chorizo soup ooh! Yeah I was gonna say that one’s nice I made that for my sister once and she tried to recreate it and she told me I don’t know what you did I know what ingredients you put in it but every time I try to make it it just doesn’t come out as good
and I’m like sorry yeah it’s your recipe it’s your creation it’s got to come from you to be good it’s my baby it’s my recipe I apparently needs my love or something like that yeah exactly your special touch with it
Ashley Segura: yeah precisely can you start us off with in the content side of things sharing your journey on how you got into content marketing and how you got into your current role at SEMrush?
Yeah
Christine Skopec: for sure it’s been a long and winding journey for me i like a lot of other people started out on this journey in the editorial side of things I went to journalism school for my master’s degree and then I was in traditional media right after that I worked for an online publication for a number of years
it was one of those places where we were just publishing so much content I started out as a writer there then I moved up the ladder a little bit I became an editor and then I feel like I was at a crossroads I knew that I wanted to take another step in my career but I didn’t really know what to do
I found myself in a weird position of I was interviewing with an agency that was for a content marketing position and I was also interviewing with a traditional health magazine and I just didn’t have I don’t know how to explain it I didn’t have a good feeling about the magazine so I decided to go with the agency role and I’m really glad that I did
it was really it was totally different than what I had done it was my introduction my true introduction into SEO that was foreign territory for me prior to that like we had one person at the online publication who was our sEO person I don’t even know what his job title was but it was impossible
his job was impossible because we had one SEO person working with all of these writers and editors who didn’t know how to do it it was here are keywords you should target but we didn’t even know what that meant what does it mean to target a keyword? We didn’t know anything about cannibalization any of that stuff
so it was interesting then to get into a position where I was able to learn about those concepts and then start applying them and I did the agency thing for a while and then decided that I wanted to focus more on one brand obviously when you’re working for an agency you have multiple brands
I was interested in getting to really dig into one specific brand as opposed to feeling I don’t know sometimes you can feel a little bit scatterbrained I feel like when you’re in an agency depending on who your clients are sometimes they can be a lot sometimes they can be very different
knew that I wanted to get into the software space don’t tell me how I knew that me 10 years ago if you had said oh yeah one day you’re gonna do content and it’s gonna be B2B like software or software in general I would’ve been like what are you talking about? That’s not I wanna do with my career
but that was that’s how I got to SEMrush effectively I don’t know how if I can explain it in a way that’s more concrete but a little bit of a winding path I was gonna say obviously way before that the line cook thing happened but
Ashley Segura: oh yeah
Christine Skopec: yeah
Ashley Segura: very important part of the journey
Christine Skopec: it was an important part of the journey you learn a lot about having to manage a lot of things and wear a bunch of different hats so I think it was useful from that standpoint and then for spec for me specifically getting into SEMrush I had been using sEMrush’s tools for a really long time
that first agency job that I got we used SEMrush I had never heard of it before but I was like wow these tools are awesome so it was I feel like I’ve come full circle now that I work for SEMrush it’s great
Ashley Segura: it’s like the fourth or fifth person I’ve had on the show that comes from a journalism background and I come from journalism to five or no excuse me seven years in the food industry like prior to journalism
and I feel like it’s this natural progression for so many of us going from print journalism to then digital journalism to okay it’s not just enough to write content anymore if you want anyone to even see it pick up the paper from the traditional standpoint or pick up the magazine then you have to figure out what optimizing was
and it was like this whole new world of web dev and then optimization and then email marketing came with it and social media and now you need to know a little bit of everything to be
Christine Skopec: truly successful with your content for sure and the thing that I always find most fascinating is writing for the web versus writing a traditional print is very different because if you’re thinking about writing for a magazine they always want to cover something new and interesting
it’s a different take and thus it’s it’s something that nobody would ever search enter into a search engine the idea was more to come up with something that people had never heard of before and if you do that for online content unless you have a really great distribution plan it’s going to be hard for people to find it
Ashley Segura: yeah and for people to even want to find it because now the content that’s on the internet is give me an answer to something tell me how to do something or entertain me it’s very black and white whereas traditional writing is I’m going to find a story and I’m going to tell that story and I’m going to include my style and my voice in it
and now we’re writing for brands or for clients so it’s all about their voice their style can we mimic that? And maybe put a little bit of storytelling in it but also get to the point of what’s the user intent behind this? And are we getting to that? Whereas traditional journalism is like user intent
that’s out the window we’re telling them a great story
Christine Skopec: for sure and one of the things that I think is that you need to keep in mind at least for me and like the brands that I work for it’s so different from that traditional that traditional media background where you’re writing for people who are reading in their leisure time and stuff that they’re interested they’re going to spend a lot of time on something
now I feel like I feel like the content that I work on now it’s like somebody is rapidly trying to learn something over their lunch break which is maybe true maybe not but that’s the way I always think about it this person is in a hurry to learn something they don’t have a lot of time to waste get to the point and tell them what it is they came to learn about
don’t spend don’t spend 20 paragraphs doing all of this backstory that isn’t even relevant to them they don’t care
Ashley Segura: no and I think when that was popular to do the whole I work with a lot of food bloggers and it’s always like the history behind meatballs that used to be the first five to 10 paragraphs before you got to the meatball recipe
and I try and remember was there ever a time as a personal user where I was like Oh I really want to know about the history of meatballs or no did I always just want the recipe? But I dealt with it cause that that’s the way content was presented and now there’s this major switch to where users really are prioritized
and so when we’re like experimenting with new content and especially as we go into a new year I feel like post helpful content update there is a lot of experimentation going on and trying to figure out that balance of okay how do we do that lunchtime answer which I love that analogy versus how do we also meet the brand story and what does experimenting for you in these scenarios look like like how do you find that happy medium
Christine Skopec: it’s
it’s tricky but at the same time experimentation can mean so many different things it depends on what your goals are it depends on what is most meaningful to you and your brand it also just depends on what you actually have the capacity to do we test things all the time and sometimes they’re big things sometimes they’re really small things
you can literally test title tags we’re let’s what if we form all of these title tags as questions or what if we just make all of them shorter? Maybe you want to set like a really specific character limit for yourself just to see what happens do people click through more?
Do they not click through more? You can do obviously Huge more meaningful things too if you want to start experimenting with one thing that we’re thinking about is how can we let’s test including more originality and it can be again big it can be little do we want to start doing a bunch more like large scale surveys?
Do we want to start including more of the data that we can get from our tools that other people can also access but maybe not quite in the same way that we would do it there are all sorts of things you can test and I feel like figuring out again it’s what you’re interested in and what you think is going to make an impact
and sometimes the experiment will be like okay cool we learned that nothing major happened that’s not bad but yeah that’s
Ashley Segura: true that’s true cause cause usually we are trying to like chase this KPI and hopefully you’ve identified the KPI before the experiment and put the cart before the horse but sometimes we’re just like let’s just change things and see what works and what doesn’t
I love that you’re acknowledging that sometimes what works and what doesn’t is that nothing changed
Christine Skopec: and
Ashley Segura: that’s enough of a KPI have you seen that recently with The SEMrush blog on when you’re making big changes that you’re able to get a lot of data that tells a big story or is it like a lot of data that doesn’t tell much of a story?
Christine Skopec: I was going to say it can be both I feel like that’s always the way it is sometimes you get a lot of data and the answer is this didn’t really we didn’t really learn a whole lot from this again that’s not necessarily a bad thing there was I’m trying to think of a specific example
I can’t think of one I know that we’ve tested a bunch of different like CTAs like call to action banners and I don’t know that we’ve ever gotten anything super meaningful from using more of those versus using less of them again that’s not a bad thing it may maybe it means that it that just doesn’t matter
we should focus on something else
Ashley Segura: that’s true that’s a story and report of its own what about the content itself? What are some ways that you can experiment with? I like how you gave the title tags and asking questions as an option but looking at say a singular blog post what are things that you can experiment with in that blog post and change with it?
And then how do you test do you need a heat mapping tool? Like how are you identifying that an experiment is working or not?
Christine Skopec: It can be something that you’re testing and looking at a heat mapping tool I feel those sorts of things are really helpful for if you’re testing calls to action especially but one thing that I think about is something we were talking about earlier having those posts that have a really long Backstory introduction something that we started doing a while ago was what if we just skip the introduction altogether?
What if we just go straight into the first H2? I know ooh it’s a little scary and it people don’t care it doesn’t matter that we don’t have the introduction there sometimes it’s actually better for the post it gets to the point sooner people start getting to the stuff that they care about which is often stuff that we care about too
that’s something you can certainly test with you can experiment with you can also test the order in which you arrange things to a certain extent and structure as a whole do we want to cover this in a way where we’re segmenting it down to H5s? Or do we want to focus on the bigger picture and maybe just have fewer subsections as a whole?
So I don’t know the sky is the limit There are a ton of ways you can experiment with your content it can be the specific language that you can use It can be I’m trying to think of other examples I don’t know but it truly is whatever you want to test any anytime you have that question of what if I feel like that’s worth
Ashley Segura: testing?
Yeah a hundred percent how long should you be testing though? What’s a good chunk of time to be like okay this was successful or not I know this could probably range from depending upon site size or company size but do you have a general rule of thumb where you’re like it needs to at least be live for this long?
Christine Skopec: I don’t know this is one of those questions I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask about this we have other people who I know have specific limits on it for time I don’t know that I would say testing for a couple of months is important especially if we’re talking about sEO where your result you there might be a couple months lag
I don’t know that I have a great answer to that question though
Ashley Segura: that’s true because it it also depends on what you’re testing because if your goal is improving rankings then you do need to give it at least two months regardless of if you have a huge site in tens of traffic or a smaller site and you’re trying for traffic but if it’s more of a CTA and you’re testing Okay
moving the CTA here versus there are we getting more calls or email opt ins or signups whatever that looks like you could see that a little bit quicker from a timeframe perspective than something like oh we’re trying to improve rankings that’s going to be a lot longer
Christine Skopec: for sure and the other thing to keep in mind too is that sometimes the rule is often you want to make the test be long enough to get statistically significant results
sometimes you never get there though if you’ve had a test running for nine months and you still don’t have statistically significant results I feel like you should probably just call it at that point
Ashley Segura: yeah that’s true putting a timeframe on it is always very important and then okay maybe a quarter nothing happened extend it for a month
okay that’s enough but going like a whole year nothing’s still happening you have to know when to pull the plug but how do you first make the decision that we should experiment with this content are you looking at drawing and content that isn’t performing or is performing really great?
What’s your methodology behind let’s experiment here
Christine Skopec: I feel like it’s always worth looking at stuff that is not performing as well as it used to sometimes it might just be that it’s the information itself is outdated but if you’re seeing that you have posts that aren’t performing the way they used to and you’re looking at them and saying
these are still great quality this is all still really relevant maybe it’s not even that old maybe it’s only a couple of months I feel like that’s that to me at least is a signal that it’s time to test something and it’s time to experiment with some other ideas for sure
Ashley Segura: is there ever any kind of indicators that you’ve seen with the SEMrush blog where you’re going to test something but it’s new for the team or it’s a big
test it’s not just making something a question and you need to go through stakeholders or you need to go through other departments have you ever been in those scenarios to where? It’s now a all hands on deck test and we need other departments involved if you have what does that
Christine Skopec: communication usually look like?
Yeah we’ve certainly tested those sorts of things I feel again it depends on what the test is but sometimes it’s just putting together it can be like a really informal proposal but putting together some sort of proposal of this is what we’re seeing this is what we want to test
here’s why these are the things that we’re going to be measuring i I know who I need to present it to usually but yeah I don’t know I don’t think it has to be Like a huge presentation or anything like that but putting together putting your thoughts down and just making sure that you are providing rationale for why it is that you want to test something as long as you can provide that rationale if you are presenting that to stakeholders they at least have something to go on instead of just being like so and so wants to test this
what? What even informed that? Why are we doing this? If you’re providing that background information you still might get a no but at least you give yourself some possibility of moving forward
Ashley Segura: versus we’re just doing this for funsies and we’re just doing it for fun because testing is fun yeah
yeah we saw another brand do it so we’re going to do it too yeah when it comes to experimenting I like to think of it from okay the content already produced and we’re going to experiment on how to improve it like you gave a great example of if there’s something used to perform really well and it’s not anymore
but what about going from the strategy? Like the initial concept? Are you experimenting with? Different topic ideas that are maybe say similar titles and which ones to move forward with what’s the depth of experimentation within your content marketing? I don’t know if
Christine Skopec: I understand the question entirely
Ashley Segura: let me rephrase it are you mainly experimenting with content that’s already produced or are you experimenting at the strategy standpoint of coming up with the topic ideas or the internal linking structure? Like where does experimenting start? At SEMrush is it when content is already post publication and now we want to see how we can make it even better or revive something?
Christine Skopec: I feel like it often happens after something is published for us so many at least my immediate team We have we’ve covered so many of like our target keywords that we’re focused on there’s always certainly new things to cover but there are so many of those topics that we’ve covered already
it would be silly to not experiment with stuff that’s already published because there there is such a huge body of work that we’ve published I think the SEMrush blog has been around for like 12 years something like that I think it’s I think it’s been around since like 2012 obviously a ton of that stuff has been updated
there’s obviously old blog posts and some of them are things that are just not as relevant anymore things change we wouldn’t have had a post on AI overviews years ago because they didn’t exist yet so yes we’re really focusing on testing stuff that’s already been out there and I feel like it’s helpful to do that with things that are already published to because then you can very you have that historical data right?
So you can very clearly see Oh yes this change was impactful or no this change wasn’t impactful if you are you decide that you want to start experimenting with a bunch of new URLs and you publish all those things and they perform great that’s awesome but you also don’t necessarily know whether what you’re experimenting with is responsible for that
Ashley Segura: ooh okay so responsibility and assigning responsibility I feel like this is the hardest part about content marketing yes this piece of content is the reason why our sales are up how do you associate that? Or have you found a way regardless of experimentation just talking real quick on measuring content because I’m always curious about how content marketers really measure their content whether it’s a new piece of content or you’re experimenting with a change or an update how are you quantifying success with contents?
Christine Skopec: My team is focused on like non branded organic search so it is obviously helpful to look at rankings and the organic traffic we’re getting there is a complex attribution model that I couldn’t even begin to explain to you that we use but I think everybody is dealing with some sort of attribution model but I think it’s actually helpful to focus on just a few of those
kPIs I feel like you can focus on every metric if you want and sometimes it’s helpful for telling a story I feel like especially when you are in an agency setting and you’re trying to explain performance to your clients your stakeholders you need to rely on more of those metrics just to paint a fuller picture for them
but I don’t know I feel like we keep things relatively simple if you’re focused on those couple of KPIs then it’s very clear we’re hitting our goals or we’re not hitting our goals and sometimes that can feel like disappointing because maybe your engagement rate has gone way up
and yeah and that seems like a super positive thing but if everything else all the things you’re actually measured against Aren’t doing well it doesn’t really matter
Ashley Segura: yeah that’s that makes me think of the one meme I think it’s Perks and Rec where he has the board behind him and a bunch of things are pointing to another thing and he’s stressed out by trying to connect the dots
it’s cool we hit engagement metrics but that wasn’t even a primary or secondary KPI but there’s a story here maybe we can say that it was successful and it’s hard to not be excited when a piece of content gets any measurable success but you’re right if you have just a couple core KPIs that you’re assigning to it and defining this is what will make it successful
it is easier to see black or white and tell the story from the data that yes this works we should duplicate this or it didn’t work now let’s start experimenting with it and see how we can hit those KPIs
Christine Skopec: yeah and I have an interesting story that like relates to this too so the first agency I worked for I’m not even sure an agency is the right word but it was effectively an agency
we worked specifically with higher education institutions and one of the schools this was it wasn’t a piece that I worked on but it was somebody else had written this piece I think they I don’t know how they stumbled upon yes we should do this but it was basically about easy ramen noodle recipes that like any college student could make something like that
and it for a while was driving a ton of traffic but it didn’t really drive any tangible business results so it was this double edged sword people pointed to it as Oh look how it’s getting great rankings it’s driving so much organic traffic but it’s You’re not even reaching the right people with this piece
so it yes it’s cool to be like look at this great ranking and all of these these wonderful high numbers but at the end of the day it just wasn’t impactful for the business and I think that was it was a good learning opportunity but yeah it all it ultimately was not very successful
Ashley Segura: and at least you were able to get new traffic and the process of it but being able to identify that yeah it wasn’t the right amount of traffic that was the keyword that you dropped there like that’s where we need to take the time and sure give yourself a pat on the back that you got some traffic but if it’s not moving the needle and whatever that KPI looks like whether it’s like
customers calls more sales calls lead gen email opt ins whatever that looks like then that content really isn’t serving you and that’s your indication like okay it’s time to experiment with a whole new strategy or a whole new idea
Christine Skopec: yeah can you imagine getting to the it’s funny to think about now too getting to the end of an article that’s now you’ve gone over all of these ramen recipes wanna enroll in college?
I feel like every user would be like absolutely not
Ashley Segura: no thank you though I wanna go make dinner yeah exactly I’m gonna go use this recipe right now as we wrap up I’m curious what your current secret sauce is when it comes to really creating impactful content that does move the needle and makes sense for users
Christine Skopec: I don’t know if I have a secret sauce I feel like this is going to sound so boring but I feel like really focusing on making sure that your content is quality but also high in quality but not in quantity not paralyzing yourself to the point where you feel like every piece needs to be perfect because again keep the door open for experimentation
that’s going to lead you down the right path ultimately and if you’re spending months and months I could personally work on one single piece for three months and still feel like it’s not perfect and that doesn’t really matter it doesn’t have to be quote unquote perfect
that’s subjective anyway I feel like this I don’t know if there is a secret sauce I think that we I think we all know ultimately it needs to be the highest quality content that you can put out while still moving forward and getting things done
Ashley Segura: yeah if you’re not publishing content then you have no data to identify how you should pivot your strategy what you should lean into or not do any more of but also kudos because I feel like that’s a big that’s the journalist in you who is this needs to be perfect
I need to rewrite this a thousand times cause how many times do I stare at an article? And want to redo it a million times before publish and it’s no then it’s never going to get published I’m never going to figure out if this was even the right direction to begin with now time and resources is skyrocketing for a single piece of content that we don’t even know if we’re going to have tons of eyes on and is going to matter or not
it’s more of you need to just put content out and test so I think that is a good secret sauce I got I think you got something there
Christine Skopec: I’m not sure it’s a secret sauce it might just be mayonnaise but that’s I love it thank you so much for being on the show today I really appreciate everything you shared
yeah thanks for inviting me this was really fun
Ashley Segura: awesome
