About Caitlin (Proctor) Huston, founder of Edit Ever After

Hi, I’m Caitlin, the voice and owner of Edit Ever After. I’m an experienced user-focused content strategist with six years in search engine optimization. You can view my professional experience on my LinkedIn profile, check out my portfolio for samples of my work, or you can stay on this page for why I launched Edit Ever After.

How did you get into writing and SEO?

I’ve been writing for websites since 2018. What started as a few freelance blog article contributions blossomed into a career in content marketing and search engine optimization.

While I’ve always enjoyed writing, I love the data that comes with content strategy. In college, I was part of the newspaper staff, which was still printed and distributed across campus. We had some data about how many newspapers were printed and how many were still left two weeks later, but I had no insight into what articles people were actually reading, or who was picking up the newest edition. Students? Professors? Off-campus hamster owners?

One BA degree in communications and nearly 10 years of professional experience later, I have access to an astounding amount of useful data. With tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and Semrush, there is incredible insight into reader behavior.

From a bird’s eye view, I can see what search terms people use to find a website, which posts they click on, which pages they stay engaged with, and if they leave the site or read another article. Now, I can use that data to plan future articles or improve existing ones. That’s the difference between being a college newspaper content editor and being a professional content marketer: when you add in data, planning becomes strategy.

I’ve found this intersection of data analysis and written content useful throughout my professional career. As a campaign manager at a nonprofit, it helped me increase email marketing open rates and response rates. As a resume writer, it helped me ask the right questions of my clients to quantify their impact for future employers. As a marketing manager for a resume writing startup, data analysis and writing turned into a holistic content marketing plan that informed new blog posts and updates to existing blog posts. That strategy–along with plenty of experimentation–resulted in a 25% YoY increase in organic traffic and more than 2M organic site visits in 2021.

Wait, aren’t you a resume writer?

I used to be! You may have seen me quoted as a Certified Professional Resume Writer and career advisor on Fortune, Forbes, Business Insider, or The Muse. I’m published on several career-oriented websites covering topics like executive resume writing, remote work, and how to include keywords on a resume. My writing portfolio includes before-and-after revision projects and screenshots of my favorite articles. I’ve also written dozens (perhaps hundreds) of resumes, but of course, those have someone else’s name attached to them!

Turns out, planning content about resume writing is way more fun than writing resumes. Who knew?

I’ve since pivoted from resume advisor to SEO advisor, which has a closer job function overlap than you might think. For example:

• Offer the most important, relevant, valuable point above the fold
• Keyword research
• Write for a reader first, then optimize for parsing or crawling
• Tailor to your audience and goal
• User-friendly page design still wins
• Bullet points are great for lists
• Facts and figures stand out from text 99% of the time
• Get the message across quickly without buzzwords or experimental trends

These days, I partner with small business owners and early-stage startups. I offer multiple services to fit your needs, from SEO-informed content strategy plans based on audience research and keyword targeting to on-page SEO editing to update your existing blog posts or landing pages.

Why did you start Edit Ever After?

There are plenty of SEO consultants, content agencies, and proofreading services already. This company is all of those things and none of those things. I started Edit Ever After to be a content editing service with a focus on SEO strategy. I’ve built up my credentials–first as a resume writer, then as a professional SEO. I believe content marketing works best when the article is written by a true expert.

I can find you the topics to cover, the keywords to incorporate, the page structure to utilize, the questions to answer, and the pain points you must address, but the best articles out there are written by you: the professional. Not necessarily a professional writer. Not an SEO. I can edit for grammar and branding, but I can’t edit in that kind of authenticity.

I didn’t see the kind of service out there already, so I started it myself: a strategically planned, data-informed editing service with SEO baked in at every step. This is quite similar to what I did in-house for three years as a content manager: research, outline, assign, edit, and optimize. Many small businesses don’t have the time or budget to hire a content manager, so I aim to fill that gap as an SEO editor.

Great! Can I hire you?

You sure can. My availability is limited, so I take clients on a case-by-case basis only. Learn more about Edit Ever After’s services. Or, go ahead and contact me directly for a custom quote.

Thanks for reading this far!

In kindness,

Caitlin (Proctor) Huston