SHE Partner of the Week: Justine Schwartz of SheFinds

With the SHE Media Partner Network growing in record numbers, we’ve decided it’s time to showcase some of then here on the blog! I’ve had the pleasure of working with Justine Schwartz, of SheFinds.com since 2016. Our main goal over the past few years has been to increase organic traffic to SheFinds but in 2019, we’re excited to expand our partnership even further.

Hi Justine! First, tell us a little about yourself.

I’m the editorial lead at SheFinds, which means I run pitch meetings, set our quarterly traffic goals and generally guide the growth strategy and content. But our team is small so I also write posts on the daily. I’m also a mom of two and a “Real Housewives” fanatic. Actually, make that all things Bravo fanatic.

Tell us about SheFinds.com.

SheFinds is the brainchild of Michelle Madhok, an online shopping expert from back when online shopping was just starting to become a thing. Her vision was to create a website that provided a service to busy women and a company where they’d want to work. I think she’s accomplished both. To this day (15 years later) we still write about things that women can buy or do or try to improve their lives in some way. This can be anything from finding that pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing on sale, to learning how to (finally) contour your makeup.

What audience are you reaching and how are they finding you?

Our audience is mostly women, aged 25-44. Our top referral sources of traffic vary between discovery-driven social channels like Pinterest, news readers like Flipboard and good old-fashioned Google.

What are some of your publisher goals in 2019?

We want to put more skin in the game of commerce-driven content, and we want them to come via organic search. We want our timely stories to appear on even more news readers and apps. We want to diversify our traffic sources so that we can maintain growth no matter who changes their algorithm and when.

What editorial challenges have you experiences in the past year?

Chasing the news apps like Flipboard and Smart News is challenging because you start from scratch each day. In an ideal world, you would be able to focus on those big surges, while also maintaining a steady flow from sources like search.

Describe your experience working with SHE Media.

We have worked closely with She Media’s audience development lead Lindsay Valdez to develop our SEO strategy, through monthly and sometimes weekly calls. Lindsay has helped us learn new tools for keyword research, helped us determine which analytics tool to purchase (SEMRush) and how to track keywords.

Describe what you’ve learned since working with our SEO team.

I’ve learned about addictive SEO tools like Answer The Public. I’ve learned about going after second page terms, and having more patience with your strategy. And I’ve learned about that wonderful thing called refreshing content. It doesn’t always have to be a new story (thank God!).