The Importance of Project Management in SEO Success

Several business owners are trying, and succeeding in the process of implementing SEO, rising through the ranks and attaining higher brand visibility and following.

Need for Project Management

To implement and get full results out of SEO, your business doesn't need just an SEO team. The team will need to collaborate and work in tandem with a number of departments starting from IT and web development, right up to design and content writing. This seamless integration is vital to the entire process, and this calls for good project management to get the job done expediently and efficiently.

There are a number of projects involved in the process, from initial optimization, content management and link building to rank improvement, conversion rate boosting and site traffic boosting. These steps are highlighted clearly in any professional SEO course content. To get each of these projects completed within the specified time period and financial constraints, effective and perfect project management is absolutely necessary.

Some Issues You May Face Down the Line

Communication: Any team, especially an SEO team must communicate seamlessly, speedily and efficiently to get the desired results. One action needs to be followed by another in quick succession as any delay in implementation will grossly change the output of the project, and will be detrimental to team goals. The team needs to stay updated about the situation, and must work consistently towards achieving its goals.

Since SEO deals with such a huge amount of data, most of the communication is usually done via email. What this leads to is a lot of frustration as each team member scours tens and hundreds of email threads, weeding out the important points. The search results are wildly inaccurate, and sometimes may even leave out vital information. This leads to unwarranted delays which need to be eliminated with immediate effect, as they could potentially destroy everything the team stands for.

Time Management: Time has to be allotted very smartly, as a business may drop several thousand ranks in a matter of moments due to an error. Fixing this and getting that reputation back is a tough job. Projects need to be timed properly so that each member is able to tune his work-rate depending on his personal deadlines, and also to generate a fair and accurate billing for the customer in the future. While time management boosts productivity and is vital to the successful functioning of the team, manually tracking and documenting time is a very cumbersome process, which in turn eats into the time which could have been allocated to working on the task itself.

Performance Evaluation: Another issue faced by most project managers is evaluating performance of individuals and the team as a whole and then motivating them to proceed in the right direction. To achieve this, most managers have to keep asking for status updates from team members and conduct meetings, formulate reports and benchmarks. Unfortunately, each of these activities consumes time and energy, and pushes you away from your original purpose, which is making managerial discussions, motivating the team and communicating with clients.

Dismiss these Issues Efficiently

A lot of the time-consuming manual aspects of project management can be weeded out and replaced by an effective, automated, cloud-based project management tool like Podio, Trello, Proofhub, Asana, Aceproject and so many other tools available today. This allows for rapid collaboration, documentation and communication throughout the entire team, and also keeps updates and reports stored in a contiguous location. Tracking tasks has never been easier, and you can access charts and graphs to understand how much progress has been made.

These tools maximize productivity and make the job a lot smoother.

Happy SEO'n!