Animalz Saves 3 Hours per Article with Clearscope

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SEO is a long and painstaking process. It takes hours to do keyword research, develop a strategy, and create great content. Not to mention ongoing optimization. To simplify this process, content marketing agency Animalz turned to Clearscope. The tool helped the agency improve the performance of its customers’ search content. As well as deliver high-quality content at scale.

But Clearscope has also become much more than just an SEO tool for Animalz. It has become an embedded part of its entire internal operations workflow. It has also increased alignment between team members and improved client relationships.

Read on to learn how a tool like Clearscope will improve your agency’s content. We promise the benefits go far beyond SEO.

Content grading scale improves client expectations of SEO

SEO is a broad topic that covers a lot of ground. As a result, it’s difficult to explain SEO to customers in a way that doesn’t make it seem like a foreign language.

Clearscope reports provide an easy-to-interpret letter grade based on content relevance and comprehensiveness. The insights from the report are accessible in Clearscope (plus integrations for Google Docs and WordPress). This grading system helps writers understand what Google expects a page to include. It also helps simplify the writing process with real-time feedback.

This grading system gives the Animalz team a stronger vocabulary around content performance. It’s also made it easier to deliver content reports and meet customer expectations.

“We can say to our customers: you don’t have to just trust our judgment. Trust the data. There’s a very good chance that this article will outperform the competition because it’s got an A+ score,” explains Ryan Law, VP of Content at Animalz. “And ultimately, as an agency, you can charge more for your content. That’s because there’s more certainty about the performance of content. You’re also more likely to have longer-term relationships with customers.”

The grading system has also enabled Animalz to offer services like content maintenance and refreshes more efficiently and profitably. “We’re able to convince our customers that content creation is an ongoing process that should be revisited and improved,” adds Law. “We can say to clients: we can help you improve your articles and help them have a bigger impact by bumping up their score from a C- to an A+.”

A shared text editor brings greater alignment between team members

In many content marketing agencies, friction occurs when the different roles deal with individual parts of the SEO workflow. And that prevents the agency from producing content at scale.

But with all the SEO information together in one place, Clearscope becomes the content team’s shared environment. Now they have a clear understanding of what they are working toward: search performance. Team members in different roles, such as strategists, team leads, writers, editors, and customer success, can focus on the same content goals.

That’s not an easy task with so many teams involved in the content creation process.

For example, a writer might include specific terms in an article to help it rank. But an editor might end up removing words because they don’t fit the flow or structure of the article. Clearscope solves this problem by putting everyone on the same page about the terms.

Clearscope’s Reports include a list of critical SEO terms. This puts everyone on the same page so that the final deliverable matches the initial intent. As Law explains, Clearscope “desiloes” a lot of the SEO work. “The editor translates SEO into something a writer and an editor can understand. By pulling everyone into Clearscope, they can see the impact of how changing the words in a document improves an article’s performance and increases its score.”

The end result is that the content performs better — in one case, the client’s traffic increased by 515%. Siloes are broken down. And team members have a better understanding of how their role fits into the overall SEO strategy.

Streamlined processes help unlock higher-margin services

Content marketing often comes with unpredictable, ad hoc, and inefficient work and processes. Teams spend a lot of time and energy doing and undoing the same work. This slows down processes, hinders progress, and leads to lower profit margins.

Clearscope solves this problem by providing processes that make SEO content creation more predictable. For example, writers can draft outlines based on the tool’s relevant terms list. This simplifies the research and outline process for writers. Instead of starting an article from scratch, writers can use the terms based on content that’s already ranking for a chosen keyword. So, there’s less guesswork involved.

Overall, this has resulted in greater efficiency and better margins for Animalz. “Across the board, we’re easily seeing a time-saving of 1.5-3 hours per article,” explains Law. “If an average article takes 15 hours of cumulative team time, that’s a 10-20% reduction. When agency margins are traditionally pretty lean, that makes a huge difference.”

Additionally, agency relationships are often characterized by limited engagements with customers. An agency is hired to create something. When the project ends, the relationship ends. That’s a recipe for a short customer lifetime.

Clearscope provides the necessary infrastructure to make content marketing an ongoing service through ongoing content optimization and maintenance. This has made it easier for Animalz to work with customers on an ongoing basis and has also led to longer customer lifetimes and higher Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).

Improve your agency processes with Clearscope

SEO is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to creating great content. You also need a streamlined workflow and process to help you consistently deliver high-quality content.

Clearscope takes the guesswork out of your content creation. Our user-friendly and effective platform is built using artificial intelligence.

Want to scale creating high-quality content?

If so, Clearscope may be for you. Uncover valuable keyword opportunities, write SEO-optimized content, and track content health with Clearscope.

We’re happy to show you around and answer your questions.

You can create an account today or request a personalized demo to learn more about Clearscope and how you can leverage our platform in your SEO strategies.