How to use Gryffin for SEO & Digital Marketing Project Management

Every new campaign requires a lot of prep work. In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps we follow when starting a new campaign. We use various tools and collect all the data in Gryffin, which is what determines the projects, tasks, and timelines.

Gryffin SETUP

Invite Team Members:

Invite team members and/or clients: Go to Admin > Invite and add them to the email invite, or send them the link listed above. This will send them an email to join your Gryffin company.
Configure User Profile: When each user joins, they can customize their profile info, image, and add their contact information.
Add Users to Teams: Assign users to the specific teams they will be a part of. This will determine what information they can see or interact with.

CRM: Start by Setting up Clients and Campaigns

Go to CRM > Clients: click on +NEW. Add the name, email, website, phone number and address for your client.
Go to CRM > Campaigns: create a new campaign. Add all of the details that are required for the deliverable by month, quarter or order.
Go to CRM > Contacts: Here, you can add specific contact info for a client, users, potential employees, or any contacts that you’d like to track.

The Project Hub

Within the project hub, you can see all of the data relevant to a project, including details, tasks, chats, etc.

Managing Projects:

What are projects: In the project hub, you can add customizable fields, and attach all of the data about a specific project. Under “Tutorials > Projects” you can see tutorials about the Project Hub.
Details: A summary of all of the data specific to a project, such as project title, assigned to, due date, etc. These are customized based on the workspace template.
Tasks: A list of tasks associated with a project, including who they’re assigned to, due dates, and other details
Inbox: Gmail emails associated with a project, which can be added using the “Inbox” feature, or the Gryffin Gmail Chrome extension.
Files: Upload and instantly shareable files specific to a project.
Expenses: Expenses as well as time tracked allocated to a specific project.
Workflow: The workflow, or tasks stages, that need to be followed to take a project from conception to completion.
Stage: What stage of the workflow a project is at.
Chat: Chat with other team members on a project to see any specific comments related to a specific project.
Tags: Add tags to group projects together and track them by tags.
Calendar: A calendar of tasks and milestones required for a project to be completed.
Feed: Any changes made to a project by any user.
Associations: Connect projects with each other so you can easily navigate between related projects.
SEO: If you are doing SEO, you can assign a keyword and other SEO data using the SEO widget.
Milestones: If you are doing a project that has many tasks, you can set tasks as milestones to track when things should be assigned to reach completion within the target time period.

Managing Tasks

Within the task dashboard, users can see all of their pending tasks. It is categorized by overdue, today, tomorrow, later. Users can use the various filters and features to keep their task list fully up to date.

Task Dashboard:

Tracking and Assigning Tasks: Clicking on the “Task” icon on the top bar, you will see your list of tasks. You can create tasks, mark tasks done, change the due date, and filter to see tasks assigned to other users.
Project Tasks: If you create a task from within the project view, you will see all of the specific tasks for that project listed in the “Tasks” tab, as well as the task widget on the right hand side.

Managing Workspaces

A workspace is a template that every project will follow. Workspaces can have specific fields, widgets, workflows, and visibility configurations.

Set up your Workspaces:

Use the Template Library: Go to Admin > Template Library and select workspaces that are relevant to your needs. There are over 50 templates that you can install to your Gryffin company.
Edit Templates: Go to Admin > Workspaces and you’ll see a list of the templates installed in your company. You can click on the “edit” button, to access all the specific configurations for a workspace. Under Tutorials, go to Templates > How to Customize your Workspace.
Create your Own Templates: Go to Admin > Workspaces and click on +New. From here, you can create a template from scratch.

Visibility & Permissions:

Go to Admin > Company > Teams: Click on +NEW and add the different team members that will belong to this team.
Select a Team: Click on a Team, and click on the 2nd tab on the right, called Permissions
Set “Team Settings: Start by selecting the Team Settings. These are divided into “Can See”, “Can Create”, “Can Manage”. If you select “All”, individuals in this team will be able to see all of the projects, tasks, etc. If you select “Own”, they can only see projects, tasks, chats assigned to them. If you select “Team”, everyone belonging to that team will be able to see projects, tasks, chat, etc. If you select Client, and that user role is set to “client” they will be able to see the projects, tasks, and chat assigned to that specific client. And finally, if you select “None” they will not be able to see, edit etc.
Set Billing Permissions and Menu Settings: You can use the same logic to assign permissions and visibility for billing items, and what shows up in the left menu of a user account.
Workspace Permissions: When you create a workspace, there is a tab called “Permissions” where you can determine whether a user can see specific fields. They can be seen, hidden, read only, or editable. This permission is limited to the FIELDS belonging to each workspace.
Workspace Visibility: There are 3 settings to choose from: Public, Private, or Restricted. If you choose Public, this permission will overwrite other permissions, and everyone will be able to see the workspace. If you choose private, only you can see the workspace. Restricted allows you to share a workspace with a team or specific user.

Managing Workflows

Create workflows: Go to Admin > Workflows to see a list of the existing workflows installed in your company. If you installed templates from the template library, each template will have a default workflow that will be installed and that you can edit/customize.
Edit Workflows: Once you select a workflow, you’ll go into the edit workflow window and can add/delete stages, as well as add/delete the tasks belonging to each stage. To add a stage, click on the +New on the top right, and this will create a new stage. From there, you can make it an approval stage, and designate what happens after the task is marked done. You can also create new tasks using the +New on the right side of each stage.

Create Workflows from Scratch: Within each workspace, you can create a brand new workflow. Once you create the workflow, you can assign stages, and tasks to those stages.

Digital Marketing: Managing your Editorial Campaigns

Editorial Strategy SETUP

Go to Editorial Calendar > Manage: Select the client and make sure it shows up on the right column for “Selected Clients”
Go to Keywords > Manage: Select the client, and make sure it shows up on the right column.
Create Workflow: Go to the workspace where your content will be edited/reviewed. On the top-right menu, click on Configure Workflows. If there is a similar workflow that you can clone and use, you can do so from here. Otherwise, use + New to create the workflow from scratch.
Edit Workflow: If you cloned the workflow, you’ll want to go into the workflow and make sure that all of the stages and tasks are correct/relevant for this campaign.

Keyword Research:

We do most of the keyword research using these steps:

Grab Existing Keywords: Go to SEMrush > Organic Research and export all of the keywords that they’re currently ranking for. Export them as CSV semi-colon.
How to Select Keywords: Using SEMrush or another keyword tool, you need to identify keywords that have sufficient volume with low competition. The authority of your site will determine the competitive level of the keywords you choose to target. For example, if your site is relatively new and doesn’t have many links, you may not be able to rank for the word “Widgets” but you could rank for “Yellow Widgets for young children”. This is a long tail term that may have low volume, but also low competitive level, giving you a higher likelihood of ranking. By doing research amongst the SERP’s and your current competitors, you can determine the keywords that you want to target.
Add New Keywords to the List: Use the Keyword Magic Tool to add keywords to your Keyword Manager list. When done, update all the metrics in SEMrush and export these as a CSV.
Import your Keywords: Go to “Client” and open their keyword list. On the top right, where the wrench icon is, click on “Add Keywords”. Import your list of keywords.

Create the Editorial Strategy:

At this stage, you need to define the themes/personas/stages.

Configure your Calendar: On the top right, click on the menu for “Configure”.
- Select the default editor that will be in charge of reviewing the articles. If they need editor or client approval, you can select those from the checkboxes.
- Mapping: click on “Change Mapping” so you can select the workspace and workflow used when creating content for this campaign.
Add Keywords to your List:
- Click on the “Keywords” tab and select the most relevant keywords that you want to start with. You can sort by volume (high to low) to prioritize keywords with good volume. Then click on “Add to Keywords List”. These will now show up in the right column so you can drag and drop your keywords to your calendar.
Plan out your Editorial Cadence:
- Go to Editorial > Editorial Calendar from the left menu, and click on the name of the client. On the top right you’ll see a small box, click on it to “Expand Menu”.
- Under “Add Categories” click on the drop-down and select any of the categories that you believe you’ll want to use in your editorial strategy. I typically enable Personas, Buying Stages, Themes, and Ideas.

Start Creating Content Projects:
- Having finished your editorial setup, you can now start selecting keywords and content ideas to create concepts and content pieces.
- The easiest, fastest way to start is to use the “Wizard” that is linked at the top. From there, you can select the keywords you’ll be targeting, assign them to a “Scheduled to Publish” date, and use the “Create All” to take your concepts and turn them into projects.
- Once created, you can go to the content workspace to add the name of the writer, editor, project details, and to make sure the workflow is in the proper stage.
On-Page SEO Guidelines:
- Once you’ve selected a target primary keyword for each content piece, you can also select a handful of secondary long-tail keywords.
- Your primary keyword should be included in your URL, meta title, H1, meta description, 1-2 times in the first paragraph, a few more times in the article, and in the inbound and outbound anchor text.
- Here’s a reference guide for on-page SEO: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wiI9ERtTkgsXtMOQt3KzkmKSHiCOfI17aev7zObzQTk/edit#

Set up Site Analytics

Go to “Site Analytics” and click on the “Configure” icon, and click on “Manage”. Select the site from the list, and click on the “configure” icon.

From here you can match the website with the client, and assign the Google Search Console and Google Analytics API’s.

Once configured, you’ll be able to track pages, keywords and links for this website.

Metrics: This will pull data from GSC and GA so you can see, at a glance, your primary KPI’s, such as clicks, impressions, positions, CTR, etc. You can change the tab from “Page” to “Query” to see a listing based on the pages of your site, or how your keywords are performing.
Tracked Pages: Using data from the Metrics tab, you can select pages or keywords and use the selector to “Track Pages”. These will then show up in your Tracked Pages tab. In this tab, you can see how these specific pages are performing with specific KPI’s.
Keywords: This tab will show you your keyword database. If you select a keyword and click on it, you can track it or attach it to a project. Clicking on individual keywords will allow you to see the historical ranking data of each keyword.
Links: Here you will see a list of the links you’ve built using the link building module. They can be filtered and sorted by campaign, month, etc.
Experiments: If you see that a page is dropping in the rankings, or is rising, and you wish to make adjustments, you can track the date that the changes were made by creating an experiment. This will allow you to see the changes in traffic based on a specific date range.
Reports: You can use the main reporting system, and share reports with a client. These will show up in the Reports tab.
Tasks & Chat: Here you can see a filtered view for all of the tasks and chat specific to a website that you are tracking.

Blogger / PR Outreach and/or Link Building

With Gryffin, you can create an inventory of sites/editors/vendors that you are in conversation with. You can then use the system to assign projects to them for organic or paid outreach.

Setup your Link Building Campaign:

Basic Configuration: Go to Link Building > Manage and, in configuration, add your default editor, writer, link contact types, article lengths, etc.
Set up your Link Building Workflow: Go to Workflows and create a workflow with the steps that your team will follow. Here’s an example of a link building workflow:

Click on “Clients” and select the accounts that you’ll be using for link building. These will then appear in the menu under “link building”.

Start Link Building:

Upload Inventory: Go to Link Building > Inventory and click on “All Targets”. Click on +New. From here you can add individual sites to your inventory, or click on “Import” to bulk upload target sites that you’ve worked with. You’ll need to add the Domain, Contact Info, Categories, Original Price and Final Price (if applicable).
Create a Project: To be able to time-track the process, create a workspace for your Link Building projects, and create a project with the campaign details.
Set up the Campaign/Client in Link Building: Go to Link Building > Manage, and under Clients, select the client or campaign that you’ll be working on.
Identify Targets: Use Site Console to identify landing pages and anchor text that could be strengthened by sending them links. You can filter by keywords ranking in the top 20 or 50 to catch keywords or pages that represent low-hanging fruit. Conversely, you can go to Link Building > Clients, select the client, and under “Assign”, create the landing pages and anchor text URLs that you’d like to link builds for.
Associate Pages with Targets: Click on the landing pages you’d like to build links for and click on “Associate Targets”. This will allow you to identify potential sites from your inventory to use for this link-building campaign.
Write/Edit/Submit Content: If you’ve invited your contacts to Gryffin, they can approve the proposed placements. Once approved, based on the workflow, a task will be created for the writer. Once the article is submitted, the editor can review and approve, and so on and so forth based on the workflow.

Project Expenses

Configure User Billing: Go to Admin > Company, select a user, and click on the profile icon. Click on Admin > Billing to see a list of the potential categories for a user. You can set them up as a salaried employee, or by pay grade, hourly, project or by word count. You can enable various payment types, or simply select the default payment for a user.
Associate Expenses with Projects: From within the project hub, you can click on “Expenses”. From here, you can create an expense for a specific user, or create a floating expense. If you select a user, you can choose the payment type based on what was enabled in the user’s profile.
Track Time: If you are using the time tracking feature, you can see the total time that various users spent on the project. If they have been assigned an hourly or salary billing profile, this will be included in the time tracking cost.
Total Project Costs: If you click on costs, you’ll see a summary of the costs of a project based on expenses, time, and more.
Track Expenses by Campaign: If you are assigning campaigns to projects, you can see the total cost of a campaign in the CRM > Campaign list.

Time Tracking

Time Tracking by Projects: If you click on the timer in the lower right corner of the project screen, the system will track the time spent on that project by that specific user. Data from the time tracker will appear both in the “Expenses” tab, as well as in the “Timer” for that user.
Time Tracking by Task: You can be more granular and track time on a specific task. Click on the “timer” icon in the task widget, and this will associate the time with that specific task. This data will be included in your timer as well as the project expenses.
Checking the Timer: Using the User Profile icon on the top right, you can click on Timer to see a list of all of your time track entries.
Submitting Timesheets: Time tracks can be associated with a timesheet and submitted to be included in user invoices.

Invoicing

Expense Invoices: Your employees can go to Admin > Invoicing to submit an invoice. Users can submit an expense by clicking on “Expenses”. If you have approved their expenses, they will be listed under the +New button. From here, you can see a list of invoices submitted to you, and track the payment status and transaction ID.
Client Invoices: Go to Admin > Invoicing and click on “Invoices”. Click on +New and this will create an invoice for you to submit to your clients. You can track the status of payments from here.

Reporting

Create reports that include a list of projects, based on the parameters in the filters. These can be projects by client, campaign, user, time period, etc. You can run reports by projects, tasks, expenses, invoicing, time tracking and link building.
For each report type, you can customize what data shows up based on the filters. You can create custom reports depending on what data points you are looking for, such as a cost of a specific campaign or client, active projects for a specific client or campaign, and more.

Initial Onboarding of Clients/Campaigns

By now you’ve learned how to use the system and are ready to start onboarding new clients or campaigns.

To start, go to the template library and install a template called “Client Onboarding”. Once installed, you can add all of the client contact details, as well as relevant information such as campaign deliverables, due dates, invoicing, account reps, and more.

The workflow for Client Onboarding includes:

Prep for Kick-Off Meeting:
- Request brand guidelines and logo
- Request for them to add your email address to Google Analytics and Google Search Console
- If they run campaigns on Google Adwords or Bing, ask them to give up access to the account or share the data
- Set up SEMrush: Create a project in SEMrush and set up all of the different SEMrush tools, including:
  - Site Audit
  - Position Tracking
  - Backlink Audit
  - Brand Monitoring
  - Organic Traffic Insights
  - Content Analyzer
Run Site Audits: Run the site audit on other tools such as SEMrush, SiteBulb and Screaming Frog. In Gryffin, install the SEO Audit template. Then, use the “Audits” tab in Site Console to import all of the issues.

Kick-Off Meeting: Having gotten some of the preparatory work, set up the kick-off meeting with the client, where you review their goals, expectations, and any documents they’ve sent thus far. As part of this meeting, define KPI’s and reporting cadence.

Based on the deliverables and expectations, you can then start executing on the work based on your deliverables.

Conclusion

Gryffin is extremely versatile and can help with the execution of ALL of your digital marketing needs. From creating and running editorial calendars, to tracking and maintaining a database of bloggers, to managing your keyword list, to executing on all Technical SEO implementations…all of these can be done within Gryffin. We can’t help to see you experience the magic.

you’ll be amazed to see the amount of time spent on campaigns decrease, and your revenue dramatically grow as you hit deadlines and have the capability to expand your operations without increasing overhead.