SEO Process Management
Search engine optimization (SEO) is growing bigger day by day with a massive speed. More organizations are investing in SEO Like never before and hence SEO jobs are increasing 6 times more rapidly in the U.S Job market as compared to 2018. Everybody wants to rank higher in the search engine results. But, securing that coveted spot not only requires skill and strategy but also someone who can prioritize and oversee SEO projects and priorities and that is where SEO project management comes into play.
One of the most common challenges in SEO is how to manage multiple SEO projects efficiently. When few digital agencies who are leaders in the SEO industry were asked by us to share their knowledge and expertise on how they organize SEO projects internally. They said that managing an SEO project involves juggling many moving parts. For agencies, this job is made all the more difficult because this is being done across several clients at varying stages and levels of complexity.
As the number of client projects increases, so does the number of resources involved. Things can become disorganized very quickly. This calls for establishing a robust and strong SEO Framework so that the entire process is systematic. To induct new team members or interchange team members easily without a large training burden or need for upskilling a well-documented system is very necessary as it makes the scale easy.
In SEO agencies, with different members of a team working on various aspects of SEO, along with high interdependence SEO project management has become extremely important and crucial. The SEO projects become more complicated and difficult to manage when it comes to SEO agencies, where all the projects use ‘shared’ resources. SEO project management is the intelligent use of time, human resources, and technical tools to deliver an SEO-related project using a predefined working methodology.
In SEO project management, one needs to supervise and guide team members through project goals, resources, and workflows, to deliver required results on time. SEO process is more like management which involves multiple combinations of functions like planning, executing, monitoring, and controlling the activities of an SEO team and pushing towards a common organizational goal.
A logical SEO project management exercise can help your agency in maintaining seamless communication within the team as well as with the client , experience effective project prioritization with defined objectives and goals, set roles, responsibilities, dependencies, and requirements for each project and identify and determine risks and roadblocks as well as measure progress with successful project delivery and take remedial measures more quickly.
Any given SEO project may contain up to eight moving parts or many more i.e., On-page SEO Site Audit, Fixing on-page SEO issues (e.g. site speed, broken links, etc), Keyword Research, Ongoing, outreach for link building, Backlink analysis, Content production, Blogger or PR outreach. Existing content optimization of the most important part of SEO process management is a continuous improvement that every marketing agency should strive for. SEO is a facilitator because it helps improve productivity and eliminates wasted time, manual efforts, human error etc and push towards profits seamlessly.
The principles behind effective SEO Project Management are the same as general project management. The first one is to utilize a formal project structure. Secondly to define the project scope, objective and goals and Set rules, responsibilities and expectations. Thirdly to identify risks and roadblocks and maintain ongoing communication as well as measure progress.
To structure your team for effective SEO project management there are several ways. As you take on more client projects, workflows become more complicated as the moving parts mentioned above become three-dimensional and multiple for every project. The size and structure of your team should reflect the expertise you need for the number of projects you have.
The most important thing when conducting a SEO process for your digital success is to hire the right people or partner with the right agencies who know what they do. At this point , one must not get attracted to low hanging fruits since SEO knowledge is of utmost importance when it comes to digital success.
One can also choose to operate with the help of advanced SEO Process management tools. These tools are cost-saving, eliminate the human effort and fasten up the digital success process if done effectively. Some of the most popular tools for SEO project management is Asana, Trello, Workzone, Linkio and spreadsheet.
Trello is the most popularized SEO project management tool where tasks are represented on cards. Cards represent stages of project management and they can be set up as you want as they are very flexible. Trello has become popular due to its simplicity and flexibility. It offers an entire ecosystem for effective project management.
The next one is the most popular full-featured project management tool used by digital agencies is Asana. Its low price point has helped them succeed in capturing a decent slice of the SEO project management market. Like Trello, Asana also has a Kanban view (or ‘board layout’) which helps you visualize our inputs including traditional Gantt charts.
Workzone is also an SEO project management tool which is a full project management suite with many of the same features however its focus is on team-wide adoption. For large agencies, this is the best tool for SEO project management with lots of staff who need to collaborate together.
For effective project management for SEO agencies project inception is the first phase where interaction with the client begins so as a project manager, you should discuss an exhaustive list of topics with the client. Out of the discussion, you should formulate a clear set of deliverables on a weekly, fortnightly, or monthly basis. This communication will help you in understanding the client’s requirements in a better way and prepare your team in being in an ideal state to deliver results.
Next, you must have a well-defined plan. Creating an SEO strategy can be overly complicated and might require a great level of expertise. That is why to achieve the desired results, one needs to have a clear action plan. With 70% of the world’s companies having failed in delivering at least one project in the last 12 months, having a documented SEO plan must be a top priority.
Lastly, create an appropriate timeline for the progress and completion of all tasks because an appropriate timeline is the foundation of any project. It contains specific tasks assigned to a team member and a deadline when the task needs to be completed. An organized timeline ensures fast delivery, reduced risk, improved productivity, and progress tracking. With this method, we try our best to ensure that the delay caused by a particular task does not hamper the overall project.
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