Josh Centers

SEO & Editorial Strategy Across a Three-Site Media Portfolio

As Editor-in-Chief overseeing three high-traffic enthusiast publications under VerticalScope, I managed both editorial direction and SEO strategy for sites collectively drawing millions of monthly visitors. The challenge: three separate editorial teams, overlapping keyword targets, and years of accumulated content debt.

I conducted a comprehensive audit using Ahrefs to identify keyword cannibalization across the portfolio, then implemented a domain-level content strategy that gave each site clear topical lanes. I built standardized SEO workflows for non-technical editors (title tag formulas, heading structure templates, internal linking checklists) and established weekly reporting to track ranking movement and content performance.

I also managed The Firearm Blog's X account (@firearmblog), the flagship property in the portfolio, growing it to 2.74M impressions and 5,000+ net followers over 12 months with 128K total engagements (Mar 2025 to Mar 2026). Peak single-day performance: 332K impressions.

Beyond process, I drove results at the individual content level: researching keywords, planning content briefs, sourcing specialist writers, and writing high-impact pieces myself. Select results across the portfolio over the past 12 months:

Scaling Organic Growth for a Productivity SaaS Platform

As Content Marketing Manager for TextExpander, I inherited a blog that was publishing consistently but not strategically. I rebuilt the content program around keyword research, search intent mapping, and a topical authority model focused on productivity, automation, and workplace efficiency, managing execution across a distributed team.

I developed an editorial calendar driven by Ahrefs keyword data, rewrote and consolidated underperforming legacy content, and established an internal linking architecture that reinforced our core topic clusters. I also identified medical conferences as an untapped content vertical, then planned and wrote articles targeting specialty-specific search terms across cardiology, pediatrics, psychology, and nephrology. In 2025 alone, top-performing articles I wrote, revised, or restructured pulled over 54,000 organic views.

Building a Publishing Imprint from Zero

Co-founding Chapter House, a classical education publishing imprint, has been an exercise in building every layer of a content brand from scratch: positioning, audience development, content strategy, and go-to-market planning.

I developed a two-channel audience strategy: a Substack newsletter (Virtue and Wonder) for long-form thought leadership and an X account (@ChHouseBooks) for community engagement. The newsletter hit 259 subscribers in its first 14 days with 11.2K views. On X, a strategic engagement approach built around reply-threading and timely content drove 4,289 new followers in under a month, with a single peak day generating 132K impressions. Total reach exceeded 352K impressions in the first 28 days.

Evergreen Tech Content Still Performing Years Later

As Managing Editor and writer at TidBITS, a long-running Apple technology publication, I managed freelancers and content production while producing practical how-to and product content optimized for search. I departed in late 2022, but the content keeps working. In 2025 alone, articles I wrote between 2016 and 2022 pulled over 31,500 combined views.