SEO strategies consist of a lot of moving parts, including keyword research, content creation, link-building, on-page SEO, technical SEO, and local SEO. It can be hard to keep track of all of these different components, especially if you are a digital marketer who is managing SEO strategies for multiple websites or clients.
The key to successfully planning, implementing, and monitoring your strategies from concept to completion is effective SEO project management. What does SEO project management consist of? How can your team benefit from it? Here’s what you need to know about taking a project management approach to your SEO work:
What is SEO Project Management?
Project management is the planning, organizing, and managing of individual tasks involved in a specific project. A project manager’s goal is to manage the project to completion by ensuring that each task is done correctly and promptly.
SEO project management refers to the practice of planning, organizing, and managing the tasks involved in SEO work. It involves effectively managing team members, workflows, and resources in order to complete SEO projects and reach SEO goals.
For example, say you are overseeing an SEO content creation project. This project might involve a number of different tasks, including:
- Researching relevant keywords
- Generating topics
- Writing the content
- Editing the content
- Adding images to the content
- Publishing the content
- Measuring how the content impacted the client’s SEO
Your role as an SEO project manager is to organize and manage these tasks to completion, which may mean completing them yourself or assigning them to others. You may handle the keyword research and topic generation on your own, for instance, but assign the writing and editing to other members of your team.
In this case, you will need to assign these tasks to the appropriate parties, provide clear instructions on what needs to be done, set deadlines, answer questions as they arise, check the quality of the work, and monitor the progress of each task until the project is complete.
Many people use the terms SEO project management and SEO account management interchangeably, but they are two distinct processes. The latter refers to managing the relationship with a specific account or client, whereas the former refers to managing specific tasks in an effort to successfully implement SEO projects or strategies.
What Are the Benefits of Effective SEO Project Management?
There are many benefits to adopting a project management approach to SEO work, including:
- Meet tight deadlines: Planning and organizing SEO tasks in advance can help each member of the team better manage their workload so they are able to meet tight deadlines.
- Improve the quality of SEO work: Project managers oversee every task involved in the completion of a project, so they can make sure that the work meets certain quality standards. They can also ensure that the right people are working on the right tasks. For instance, complex tasks should go to the strongest members of the team.
- Automate repetitive tasks: Project managers can automate certain tasks involved in an SEO workflow to eliminate manual work and speed up the time it takes to complete tasks.
- Improve the client’s visibility into SEO efforts: You can show your clients all of the tasks that are involved in each project so they understand what needs to be done to reach their SEO goals. This way, they will know what you are working on and when they should expect results.
- Make efficient use of resources: Part of planning and organizing the tasks involved in a specific project involves making good use out of your available resources. You can prioritize tasks to decide what’s needed and when in order to meet a specific goal.
- Keep track of SEO tasks: Using a project management approach will make it easier to monitor the progress of every task involved in a project so nothing will fall through the cracks.
- Scale your business: Effective project management makes it easier to take on more clients, so you can continue to grow your business without overloading your team with work.
To put it simply, properly managing your SEO efforts can improve your team’s productivity, strengthen your relationship with your clients, achieve better SEO results, and help you take your business to new levels of success.
What Skills Are Needed For SEO Project Management?
Not everyone is cut out for the world of SEO project management. A successful SEO project manager must possess certain skills, including:
- Leadership skills: A project manager serves as the leader of a specific project, so they must have leadership skills to fulfill their duties.
- Organizational skills: Keeping track of various SEO tasks is one of the main components of SEO project management, which is why organizational skills are so important. These skills come in handy with creating timelines, assigning tasks, and managing resources.
- Communication skills: A project manager typically acts as a liaison between various team members or departments. This is why they must be able to clearly communicate instructions, expectations, and deadlines to everyone involved in a project.
- Analytical skills: The best project managers will know how to read and interpret data to understand what’s working and what’s not. They should be able to analyze the data to think of ways to improve upon existing SEO strategies. Furthermore, they should be able to clearly present their findings to team members and clients.
- Technical skills: SEO project managers are responsible for planning and implementing SEO strategies, which is why they must be well-versed in SEO. Project managers rely on these skills to develop SEO strategies, break down projects into smaller tasks, and ensure that team members are producing high quality work.
- Flexibility: It’s always ideal to stick to the original plan and timeline, but that’s not always possible. Project managers must be flexible enough to adjust their plan if there is a change in circumstances.
These are some of the crucial skills that an SEO project manager must have to be successful.
Tips For Mastering SEO Project Management
Even if you are a skilled project manager, it’s not always easy to effectively manage your SEO efforts. Follow these tips to master the art of SEO project management:
- Schedule kickoff calls. You should make an effort to meet with the client before beginning a new project. Discuss goals, expectations, and timelines during this meeting. Then, pass this information along to everyone who is involved in the project.
- Set a clear goal for each project. Everyone on the team should know the goal of the project so they understand what they are working toward. The goal should be S.M.A.R.T., or specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
- Catch up with your team on a regular basis. Schedule time to meet with your team weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Use this time to check on the status of projects, discuss challenges that the team is facing, and solicit feedback from your team.
- Define workflows. Take the time to map out workflows for each type of SEO project. A workflow should show the tasks involved in a specific project, the order in which they must be completed, and the party responsible for completing them. Mapping out your workflows helps everyone understand the role they play in completing a specific project.
- Know your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Identifying what everyone on your team excels at–and what they struggle with–will help when it comes to delegating work.
- Encourage knowledge sharing. Make sure your team feels comfortable sharing lessons they have learned and mistakes they have made with one another. This is a great way for everyone to become better at performing their job duties.
- Give everyone access to relevant information. Every party that is working on a specific project must have access to relevant documentation and other information. This ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding what needs to be done for a specific project.
- Monitor SEO results regularly. SEO is constantly evolving, which is why you should always keep an eye on your SEO results so you can respond to changes. For example, if a client’s ranking starts to suddenly fall, it’s important to immediately put a plan in place to address this issue.
- Use the right tools. You need to use every tool at your disposal to effectively manage your SEO efforts. This includes using SEO and project management tools that streamline your SEO efforts and meet your team’s unique needs.
What is the Best SEO Project Management Tool?
Manage every aspect of your SEO strategies with Gryffin, the best SEO project management tool for digital marketers . Gryffin is an all-in-one project management tool that SEO professionals can use to create editorial calendars, assign and monitor tasks, measure SEO results, pull reporting, and communicate with team members and clients.
Gryffin can provide structure to your SEO efforts, making it easier for project managers to oversee their tasks, projects, and deadlines. You won’t need to switch back and forth between multiple programs to find what you’re looking for–use Gryffin to manage every SEO project from concept to completion.
Take the first step toward efficiently planning, automating, implementing, and managing your SEO efforts by starting your free 14-day trial today.