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User-Centric SEO: How to Create Content For Users
46 Plays5 months ago
In this episode, Ashley Segura sits down with Shelly Fagin, Head of Growth Acquisition at DigitalOcean, to explore the evolution of SEO and content strategy. Shelly shares how her team shifted back to their roots of creating user-first content, the challenges of maintaining technical accuracy, and why failure can be a growth opportunity.
From balancing SEO priorities with user needs to leveraging customer feedback and building a thriving UGC (user-generated content) community, Shelly provides actionable insights for marketers, SEOs, and content creators alike.
She also reveals her secret sauce for integrating multiple marketing channels under one cohesive strategy.
Whether you're an SEO pro looking to refine your tactics or a marketer aiming to create impactful, user-centered content, this episode is packed with practical advice you can start implementing today.
Subscribe now for your regular dose of content strategy inspiration and the secrets to staying ahead in the SEO landscape!
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Transcript
Understanding Customer Needs
00:00:00
Speaker
One of my best ways of strategy strategizing for content is talking to our customer service reps. Underrated. Yeah. They're like a goldmine. What questions are you getting asked that people could not find the answer to? you That's probably our first clue where we need to invest our time.
Introduction to Shelly Fagan and In-House SEO
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome back to Content in the Kitchen, where we gather around the kitchen and chat about content marketing. Today, we're diving into the world of in-house SEO with Shelly Fagan, the head of growth acquisition at DigitalOcean. Shelly brings so much experience in managing inbound digital marketing channels, including SEO, SEM, CRO, and tons more. Her career has covered so many impressive roles from Credit Karma, Cocks on Motive, and formerly a brand ambassador at SEMrush.
00:00:54
Speaker
In this episode, Shelly shares her insights on crafting content strategies that actually drive growth. So grab your favorite cup and let's hear from an amazing in-house SEO who knows how to build content strategies that are focused on fueling growth.
00:01:14
Speaker
So our very first question that I get to ask everybody on the show is when you're not at your desk and you find yourself in the kitchen, what is your go-to dish to cook? French toast. French toast. Really? Okay.
00:01:32
Speaker
Are you putting like fruit and a bunch of toppings on it or? So it evolves and I do love peanut butter on French toast with maple syrup is really yummy.
00:01:47
Speaker
but area That's perfect though. I love it. I love it. Okay. So when you're not having French toast and you're an SEO, that's your primary year in in-house SEO.
Building a Brand with Educational Content
00:01:57
Speaker
So can you walk me through from your perspective and your experience as an in-house SEO, what role does content really play in your day-to-day work? Gosh, honestly, our world revolves around content. Honestly, I think it does at most companies. so ah Some just aren't as clued into it. I would say we've gone through this process where internally, so I'm a digital ocean. We are in the cloud computing space. We are like more niche compared to what you would consider like AWS or the hyperscalers. And we built our niche historically really was on creating very valuable
00:02:40
Speaker
content that was centered around being brand agnostic. So just in general, back and being helpful, no matter who someone was using to build on. And that is really how Digital Ocean built his brand. And then I think a lot of years it really was built with that whole educational aspect.
Transition to Community-Driven Content
00:03:03
Speaker
ah SEO really was never even in consideration. We are in this space where we are first to market with a lot of topics and so things just did well. And then what I think has happened with a lot of different brands, other companies have got included in the competition and the space has heatened up. It's also just in general, we're finding this bo backlog of content that now is no longer fully accurate.
00:03:32
Speaker
And so we had this spell that we went through where internally they're like, ah, is content all that important? We've produced a lot. We should be good. And they backed off and they stopped producing. And I think it's really now obvious and it became very clear that we stepped away from who we were as a company in a way of that way that we gave back.
00:04:00
Speaker
community to developers. And we have phenomenal leadership who have recognized how important that was. And we've transitioned back to that. So it's been very exciting times.
Team Formation and Process Revamp
00:04:12
Speaker
And now we're doing it obviously with the lens of, OK, are we positioning our content to also keep search engines in mind as well as our users? We've 100% always been users first. And I think That's why we are posed to do really well is SEO was an afterthought. I think for the most part, we've had some really strong engineers, some good people. There's been obviously like at any company, there's always those opportunities on the technical side. We're going full force in content. and so For me, I've been able to come in and stand up,
00:04:50
Speaker
a supportive team that works in collaboration with our content team.
Analyzing and Updating Content
00:04:55
Speaker
We are blessed to have a really strong group of content writers, but we, because of the pullback temporarily, we didn't have a lot of technical writers and we're a very technical company. yeah and So thankfully we started to bring back on a whole bunch more technical writers that are experts at what we build.
00:05:20
Speaker
And then now we've partnered together, creating completely new processes for how content. is produced working on a creative brief type of give guidance and then also going in and analyzing our performers what has decayed what is still relevant today where should we be investing our time where it makes sense coming up with a process to do that not just one and go but then on a reoccurring
00:05:51
Speaker
basis. So we've been making a lot of changes. I hope everyone appreciates me. It's a hurricane, but I think it's a good thing. We're seeing some of the fruits of that labor and we're really just getting started.
User-Centric Content Creation
00:06:07
Speaker
So it's very exciting.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, that that's a huge transition to start with content and be able to be like, okay, we're literally going to create content for our users. We have technical writers who, not a walk the talk, they're saying the right words. They also have the education behind it. I think it's really interesting, though, that you mentioned know that you always focus on user, gen or not user-generated, but user-focused content.
00:06:33
Speaker
over search engines. like Search engines, of course, it's supported. But I feel like a lot of brands, a lot of SEOs, a lot of content marketers, we all say that because we know that's what we're supposed to do. But what does that really look like for you guys right now, especially as you're like going into this rework of strategy and diving back into content? like How do you create content that's just directly focused to a user first? really trying to get away from the idea of creating based off of keywords and more developing content to solve a problem or provide a solution. I think that is the next kind of evolution because basically if I can go to chatgbt, ask it a question and answers, that's not the type of content that I really want to be producing. and So
00:07:24
Speaker
It's transitioning the mindset away from, I think, turn what we traditionally used to do. And not to say that was wrong because it worked. It was what worked. That's how we changed our habits. But I think I'm lucky in the sense that was definitely not the practice that occurred where I'm at. And so I'm not having to go back and clean it from that standpoint, but we are still dealing with versioned content that just becomes outdated. And so we're still going through this practice of maintenance and what that looks like. I forgot your...
00:08:06
Speaker
on how what creating content and a content strategy that's focused on users really looks like and is defined by because we know that's what we're supposed to do. Google says to do that. But then as a brand, like when we're actually in the works of doing it, what does that look like? And you you killed it with the keyword answer, like for sure. Okay, good. I was trying to remember if I was getting to another point and then I like that.
00:08:29
Speaker
My brain. Very, yep. My superpower, but also my current mind. Yes, it is a superpower. I love that. So positive.
Aligning Content with Company Objectives
00:08:40
Speaker
Okay, so when when you're moving forward on this journey of like totally switching around strategies and you're like, okay, let's be content focused again, not just from technical's perspective, but let's really hone into our content strategy. So how do you even begin to create a content strategy that's focused on driving growth for the company? So that's always the challenge there. I think one,
00:09:06
Speaker
It really starts at the top and understanding like what the company's objectives and goals are. millanana point There's not clarity there. and Having great connection to your data. I will say we had to disconnect for quite a while and being able to see like where certain actions that you pull or like levers that you would pull, where are they affect along the road, essentially the journey, the user's journey, understanding that,
00:09:42
Speaker
then clued in with where your leaders want to go. and If we have a certain goal, each company is a little different. Obviously, being in SAS, we looked at like monthly recurring revenue and or ARPU or things metrics like that. But if it's commerce, it might just be like sales, things like that. Understanding where we want to hit and we understand where the same thing even with marketers if we're running e-commerce where are our margins where do we want to invest in and where do we have a gap in information probably one of my best ways of strategy strategizing for content is talking to our customer service reps as underrated yeah
00:10:27
Speaker
They're like a goldmine.
Utilizing Customer Feedback
00:10:28
Speaker
What questions are you getting asked that people could not find the answer to? you That's probably our first clue where we need to invest our time. I think would be ah very easy when it usually typically always is for us to be able to mine that content, the information that comes in, the questions.
00:10:49
Speaker
First, before I'd even go to Google or SEMrush or any other, people also ask in tools, like look internally. The other part is you are going to have leaders that we have new products that are launching. We have to support. And so might just be going back and looking at, OK, topic coverage, what haven't we done? That's typically, we are in a space that we're launching going into the AIML side of things. And so there's a shortage of really useful content in that space because it's just new. So reeling people in too, I think. Yeah. Because they don't know where to start can get a little overwhelming. It is like a sea of opportunity because
00:11:35
Speaker
There's just not a lot of it out there, but how do you approach it from a way that makes sense? And I think that starts with your product and expands out from there.
Community-Generated Content
00:11:47
Speaker
I think key is really like your salespeople as well on top of customer support, especially ours. I think they they are a lot of times that first line of having conversations with companies and they understand their pain points. Also, depending on how your company works if you have off-boarding engineers, people who leave or go away, survey those people. If they stop buying or they haven't bought in a while, why? And understand that side of things. And that not only can help evolve like your products and solve for it, but maybe it's already been solved for, the information isn't out there and you need better documentation as well.
00:12:31
Speaker
oh Yeah, I think sometimes we're afraid to ask. We're afraid to ask those questions, especially if a client or a customer has left or has had a bad experience. We already know there's a really negative sentiment there. And so to dig into that and be like, what was it? Did you just simply not understand what you bought or you didn't like a part of what you bought or the experience of it or the customer service of it? Like, what really was that? So I feel like there's this very strong level of being able to be humble as a marketer and ask these questions and be prepared to get the answers back and then figure out how to create content from that and and like you're saying utilize that as part of your content strategy whether you're doing it to
00:13:18
Speaker
help with rankings left or right or because it's sales enablement material or it's to make sure that you don't lose a customer for that same reason again. And so we have to be able to take some bad feedback every once in a while and not take it personally, but take it from a marketing perspective of how can we create new content for it.
00:13:40
Speaker
I, you're dead on. And honestly, I always love to tell people on my team, we learn as much from our failures as we do our successes. And that's absolutely true. Definitely don't be afraid to ask. I'm not going to take it personally. and You can't, you really can't, whether it's your own business or your own brand, or you're a part of a team within a larger company. It's not something to be taken personally. It's the strong level of being able to humbly just take some feedback and create some new content to address it. And that could be all sorts of different kinds of content. But when you're building out these content strategies or solutions to things, how do you balance your
Balancing SEO and User-Centric Content
00:14:21
Speaker
SEO priorities? Because at the end of the day,
00:14:23
Speaker
you're an amazing SEO. So how do you balance SEO priorities while still creating content that supports growth or supports whatever the the goal is? like Where do you find that 50-50 split or what does that look like? Yeah, honestly. so That's where I have to sit back and think about like practicality standpoint, because anything that we invest in, I'm making sure everyone understands that we have to maintain it too. And if we're not willing to put
00:14:55
Speaker
up the time, effort, and resources to do, then maybe we need to take a different approach. And so I think that we always have to keep in mind, anything we're suggesting new, that there's that burden of maintenance, or at least to understand, go in, don't go in, assuming there's not. It's a one and done thing. Most of the time, it's just not today's world. The other side of thing, we also have UGC content. on our site, so we have a really great questions hub. it Similar, I would say to like stack overflow, except historically, it's much more specific.
00:15:33
Speaker
usually to like building on DigitalOcean. But at the same time, there's a lot of plenty agnostic questions that come in that aren't very specific to our brand. And so that's one of the things that I've really been trying to encourage. We get back to a place where that community is thriving again for a while. Again, it just dropped off.
00:15:59
Speaker
yeah and realize now how valuable experience and just hands-on people talking about what they see and especially I think troubleshooting and pain points definitely get that in a QGC question and QA page type scenario type format. And so we actually, I use that a lot to drive like some of our content strategy as well. What are the questions that are coming in? But I also have seen it like Google loves this content and for really good reason. But at the same time, it has to be really authentic and it
00:16:45
Speaker
doesn't do any grud to be creating, you have to encourage your audience to produce this content. and yeah to be I would say I've seen some instances where other companies have really tried to kickstart and you could tell things are written by AI. That is definitely not the case where we are. We have some phenomenal like customer support and IT people that chain-stickingly answer every single question. They're phenomenal and I appreciate them.
00:17:18
Speaker
they do God's work. I can only imagine how much time it takes to do that and do a while and so I think a lot of companies worry about the investment
Leveraging User-Generated Content for Engagement
00:17:29
Speaker
that's there but I think at the same time we can also encourage our community and we've been working to reward users who take the time to answer questions and do so accurately There's almost, I don't want to use the word gamification, but really, truly it is. best That reward system that due to the way things were set up internally, the incentive to contribute if you were
00:18:01
Speaker
a employee kind of went away. And so you definitely see how that makes a big difference. And so understanding the value, and I think that's been a lot of our transition in-house is understanding how important our community is.
00:18:16
Speaker
young and putting them first really derives content for ourselves as well. So it not only does that, but produces content that gets answered and indexed in Google and answers questions for other people running into the same things as well. So we have a balanced But if we're seeing a lot of issues coming across in questions, then that is our cue to send it over to our content team and maybe our tutorials aren't super clear here. Let's go back and revise and add clarification or, oh, we haven't addressed this topic. Let's do that. um Again, playing back to what are your customers and your audience saying?
00:18:58
Speaker
yeah Aside from when you get signals like that where it's like really clear, hey, we need to update the copy on this or the messaging on this, how often are you putting on the to-do list that we need to go back and and update content or we need to honestly do like a full rewrite? like How often are you doing that and how are you making those decisions?
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it really truly depends on the niche and the content time. Ours are a little easier, not all of them, but we have a lot of tutorials, for instance, that are about Ubuntu. And every two years, they update new versions. And so it just may it's very obvious that we have to go through and update certain elements. But we basically will go through and actually validate and verify that it's still accurate. We built into a system as well to allow users to report if something is no longer accurate. and That is very helpful if we see things come through. Sometimes it's just maybe the skill level and they don't know what they don't know and the story is accurate.
00:20:11
Speaker
But then we have someone who can comment and respond and give a little guidance or maybe just we need to clarify and write for multiple levels. And that's how our content has really evolved. And then it just happens naturally that it stays maintained and updated.
00:20:28
Speaker
Otherwise, if it's a strong performer, we know everything's accurate. We either don't touch it unless we know a new version has come out and it needs to be updated, or we watch how it's performing in search. And if we have that dip, then we're like, oh, someone needs to be hands-on. Make sure this is still accurate and verify it. And it might just be that there's just more like people producing content out there and that tends to happen. We get it all the time with Stack Overflow. They automatically set their questions, the updated date. If someone comments, it fully updates everything, even though it's a really old question and maybe not even relevant today. And so they'll pop back up above one of our questions and things like that.
00:21:19
Speaker
But we have very
Monitoring Content Relevance
00:21:20
Speaker
strict guidelines around the question side of things. We don't accept the answers. Technically, the user is needs to go back and flag if It's an accepted answer. That meets their standards. And so we're very like strict like that. But we also battle a lot of competing content, not to say anyone else that is not doing it that way. But it's just they're constantly fluctuating back and forth. And so it just really, truly depends. Every type of content is a little different. And so we create that maintenance kind of
00:21:55
Speaker
calendar for the different types and that's really the best that you can do and then set up the alerts for decaying traffic so at least someone gets an eye on it if it's at risk. It's a very big risk. Yeah but it's super manual but like literally every single answer this entire episode you have ah so focused the answer based on the user and the user journey or the user experience on something which is so not traditional SEO. I know that's the the holy grail of what we're supposed to do, but you're really doing it on a regular basis, which is so amazing. like You're not looking at, okay, what did we used to rank for and we aren't anymore and we need to go to that first. That's very foundational and there's nothing wrong with that. that is That's what we do for sure.
00:22:39
Speaker
But I love that all of the basis of your strategies, your pivots, your to-do lists for you and the team is based off of what are the users telling us? What are they not telling us? What are their journeys? How is that changing? ah You're literally walking that proper talk of what's going to make content successful moving into the future and actually sustainable in the long run. ah I didn't even realize that, but yes.
00:23:07
Speaker
It's fun too. A lot of us, what, four or five years ago really started to be glaringly obvious that we needed to start doing this change, but not really anyhow. I guess it just naturally evolves. We've grown up. Yes, yes. And way to do that and not just stay the same and just like rinse and repeat for forever and be like, yeah, I'm changing. No, you're actually implementing.
00:23:35
Speaker
Why go into SEO if you just want to be stuck in your ways? It's not the career path. I think that's why I've always been drawn to it is the constant change and evolution that's required to stay at the top of your game for sure. Yeah, really well said.
00:23:49
Speaker
eighty b brain
00:23:52
Speaker
Also important to have. As we wrap up, I'd love to hear what is your current secret sauce? Is there a strategy, a book, an article you just wrote, a tool that you love? What's something that's really changing the game for you within work or even productivity? What's your secret sauce?
Integrating Channels for Growth Strategy
00:24:09
Speaker
Okay, so this is weird. So now I am no longer just director of SEO, which is the role that I've held in house for the last several years and been very hyper focused. Now I'm head of growth acquisition, which includes multiple channels, including paid social, perch, paid media,
00:24:30
Speaker
CRO and web experimentation and affiliate stuff. And I honestly, coming from where I was previously, the channels were segmented and verticalized and there was no communication between a lot of the teams. Even I've seen it historically.
00:24:50
Speaker
paid search teams will live in their product and not even communicate with the other paid search teams. It's mind blowing how much shared data that we can use to leverage and understand what your customer and your audience is looking for. I think ah a lot of us have been on the journey to understand that and it's not always like a clear cut and we might take stabs at understanding um who we are trying to write for and who we're optimizing for and kind of learn that, oh, that's not working.
00:25:29
Speaker
um I think that really is not being afraid to try new things, fail. It's truly my secret sauce. Having the connection, understanding the data, having the ability to really interpret that and not be afraid to say, oh, that did not work. and But why?
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's the key is I love retros and really sitting back and not being able to frayed, especially I think in-house, it can be very scary or even going to a client.
00:26:03
Speaker
that thing I sold you or told you we needed to invest in did not work. I truly have been afraid of that in the past. And so you tend to avoid it, but I've learned in order to really have the best strategies and move forward. It's embracing that and working together. I honestly, having multiple channels underneath me, I now see Especially I think we have a lot of data attribution loss and today and we don't really fully understand the drivers. We don't understand all the touch points like we used to be able to. And so seeing how even just like our paid campaigns, we had a
00:26:49
Speaker
issue with our data and so seeing our direct and unknown go down and not understanding the correlation between the different channels and how they all work together I think really is a disservice to not really understand that and it's not always like super intuitive and clear and that's where testing and discussing what and then verifying and validating and doing it over again. I think and that's really where the magic happens.
Learning from Failures and Experimentation
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. You can't learn if you don't try.
00:27:28
Speaker
And so it you got to even regardless of if you have budget, regardless of if you have resources, like there's still levels that we can all try new things and new strategies. And you can either learn really quick if you have the budget and resources to do, or it may take a little while to have this learning curve. But as long as you can get even a little bit of data of did it hit any of the KPIs? Did we get close to anything that we were trying to aim for? And if so, can you tell the story of what really made it get there, why, and how you can repeat that process. Definitely got to be open to learning, which I've learned so much from you today. So thank you for being on the show. ah Thank you for inviting me. I always love chatting with you, but especially kicking out about stuff. Thank you so much for being on the show.