There are dozens of different types of tasks that go into optimizing your website, which is what makes managing SEO efforts so difficult. There are always a lot of balls in the air when it comes to SEO campaigns, so it’s easy to lose track of a project, let a task fall through the cracks, or give up on certain strategies due to time constraints.
The key to successfully juggling all of these tasks and implementing an effective SEO campaign is using the right SEO management software. But all SEO management software is not created equal, which is why it’s crucial to take the time to figure out which one is right for your business.
What Are the Different Components of SEO Management?
It’s important to find SEO software that helps you manage every aspect of your SEO campaigns. Every SEO campaign is unique, but in general, the components of SEO management are:
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is one type of on-page SEO, which means it addresses issues on your website that are affecting the site’s ranking.
The first step in improving technical SEO is conducting a SEO audit of your website. Performing a manual audit is time-consuming, so most marketers rely on SEO audit tools such as Screaming Frog, SEMRush, and Google Search Console.
An auditing tool will crawl your website and search for potential SEO issues with technical elements such as:
- Meta descriptions
- Meta titles
- Headers
- Image optimization
- Broken links
- Redirects
- Page speed
- Duplicate content
- Keyword optimization
- Structured data
An auditing tool will not fix the issues that it discovers when crawling your website. Instead, the tool will simply present you with a summary of the issues it discovered once the audit is complete.
It is up to you to address the list of errors discovered during your SEO audit. For example, say the audit discovers broken links on your website. Visit these pages and replace the broken links with active links. The audit could also discover missing meta descriptions or page titles. In this case, create optimized meta descriptions and page titles for these pages to address this issue.
Addressing every issue discovered during the audit can drastically improve your technical SEO. It’s all too easy to have dozens of spreadsheets with your technical SEO issues, making the implementation of the fixes difficult to track. Using an SEO management system can help by allowing you to create tasks for all the different types of issues, assign them to the correct teams or individuals, and track them until they reach completion.
After conducting this initial audit, you should continue to perform audits on a regular basis to ensure no other issues arise that could negatively affect your website’s ranking.
Content Marketing
Perhaps the most important component of SEO management is content marketing. In fact, an effective content marketing strategy can drive 7.8 times more traffic to your website than traditional marketing efforts.
You need to produce and publish high-quality, relevant, optimized pieces of content for your website on a regular basis. Search engines rank websites with fresh content higher than websites without it.
However, this does not mean that search engines value quantity over quality. If you post low-quality content every day, this could actually hurt your site’s ranking. Because of this, it’s important to figure out how many high-quality content pieces you can produce per week. Stick with this number when implementing your content marketing strategy.
Producing new, optimized content is crucial to content marketing. But a successful content marketing strategy also involves improving existing content on your website.
Sometimes, this means identifying and removing duplicate content on your website. The content can remain on one page, but it must be edited on the other to ensure it is unique.
You should also identify and fix low-quality content on your website as part of your content marketing strategy. If a page is not performing well, consider revamping it by optimizing it for different keywords. You can also add more content to pages that aren’t performing well. Longer posts tend to perform better in the search results, so it’s best to aim for at least 1,500 words per page.
Making these changes—in addition to publishing fresh content—are the keys to an effective content marketing strategy. Using workflows that allow you to assign the different content marketing optimization strategies to new or existing content pieces is essential. Again, ideation is fantastic, but implementing your content marketing strategy and continuously tracking and improving your content is key.
Outreach
The third component of SEO management is outreach. This component plays a major role in link-building, one of the most important aspects of SEO.
To continuously acquire new links, you must engage in outreach. Sometimes, this means simply taking the time to identify and reach out to high-quality websites in order to ask them to add your link to their site.
But in most cases, you will need to offer the website something in return to convince them to add a link to your website.
For example, you can offer to write a guest post on their website. If they agree to this offer, you can include a link to your website within the guest post. Both parties benefit from this exchange. The website gets free content and you get to build a link to your website.
You can also build links by pitching your website, product, or services to different bloggers or journalists. If these bloggers or journalists decide to write about you, they will definitely include a link to your website in their write-up. This gives you an opportunity to promote your brand and build links to your website.
Outreach is one of the most time-consuming components of SEO management. Popular, high-quality websites may receive hundreds of link requests a week, so tracking and following up with your requests is essential.
Creating a list of potential targets is easy…what’s hard is TRACKING all of your outreach efforts. You may end up with dozens of conversations, each one at a completely different stage. For example, you may have a few conversations where you are pitching a story idea, others that are waiting for you to submit content pieces, and yet others who have accepted to publish your content and you’re just waiting to make sure they publish. Keeping up with all of these conversations can be very difficult and time consuming, and if you drop the ball, you may burn the contacts you’ve worked so hard to establish.
A good SEO management software should help you in tracking all these conversations and making sure you can keep each and every conversation moving forward to the goal — new links.
Operations
The final component of SEO management is operations. Part of managing SEO operations is generating reports on the success of each SEO effort. These reports can help you track how each targeted keyword is performing, changes in click-through rates, and the effect of your SEO efforts on your website’s ranking.
Another aspect of SEO operations is communicating with the client on a regular basis. It’s best to meet with the client early on to discuss your overall SEO strategy. Then, schedule frequent check-ins so you can update the client on the status of their SEO campaign.
During these meetings, discuss what steps have been completed, when the remaining steps will be completed, and when the client will start to see results from your efforts. You can also share your reports with the client during these meetings. This way, the client can see evidence that the strategies you are implementing are working.
The operations component of SEO management also involves tracking expenses and billing. You may need to work with multiple freelance writers, graphic designers, or SEO experts in order to implement your SEO strategies. These freelancers may charge hourly rates or a flat rate per task. Either way, you will need to keep track of these expenses so you can bill your client accordingly.
Some SEO software is only designed to manage one or two of these components of SEO management. If you choose this type of software, you will need to invest in other tools to manage the other aspects of your SEO campaigns. This means you will still have to use multiple tools for SEO management.
To avoid this problem, it’s best to look for software that is designed to help you manage every component of your SEO campaigns.
What is the Best SEO Management Software?
SEO management is complicated and constantly evolving. But there is one tool that is designed specifically to manage the needs of SEO professionals and digital marketers: Gryffin.
Gryffin was built by digital marketers, for digital marketers. This tool helps SEO professionals manage every aspect of their SEO campaign, including technical SEO, content marketing, outreach, and operations.
Gryffin also makes content marketing management easier than ever before. Use this tool to create and manage editorial calendars, assign writing and editing tasks, communicate with freelancers, and meet tight publishing deadlines. This tool gives agencies the power to quickly and easily scale their projects.
The Gryffin tool provides you with easy-to-follow templates for SEO audits. You can also use the Gryffin tool to keep track of the issues discovered in an audit that need to be addressed. You can ensure every issue that was identified is fixed in a timely manner without letting anything fall through the cracks.
This tool is also designed with an inbox system that is ideal for outreach campaigns. Use this feature to reach out to bloggers and media figures, send follow-ups, keep track of each request, and ensure everyone is on the same page regarding your link-building strategy.
You can also manage all of your SEO operations—from tracking costs to invoicing—within the Gryffin tool.
With Gryffin, you will only need one tool to manage everything from the start to the finish of your SEO campaign. Request an invite or schedule a free demo of Gryffin today.