Is your SEO Workflow Optimized? Tips to Improve your Productivity

Keeping client happy by meeting deadlines is not easy in an industry that moves as fast as Search Marketing.  Beyond client relationships and getting things done, there are countless tasks that could be performed in the course of a campaign.  Being organized is key to combine a client’s business goals with the tasks involved in fulfilling deliverables.

There are four elements of a task workflow that is highly productive for SEO, or any other project management process. These include, task planning, daily check-ins, review and feedback sessions, and post task analysis to improve strategies.

1. Task Planning

This is the strategizing stage of a task and answers the what and how questions. For example, let’s say one SEO task, or sprint within a client project is to create six location based landing pages to capitalize on local search results.

Task planning would consist of reviewing the tasks needed to create these pages, like location specific keywords, addresses, phone numbers, and content, as well as design and coding of these pages.

It is important to keep task planning time efficient, since some tasks don’t need a lot of strategy to get started. In other words, don’t spend an hour strategizing the what and how when it comes to creating a single web page. Utilize your time efficiently.

2. Daily Check-Ins

This is a very important part of increasing productivity for SEO projects. Essentially, daily check-ins are quick 15 to 20 minute meetings where project managers, SEO managers, and team members update one another on tasks and the overall pace of the project.

For instance, if you were a project manager, you would huddle with your team and find out what each team member has completed from their task list, what they are currently working on, and any issues that need to be resolved. Then you can jot down notes, figure out priorities, and create project completion outlines.

Daily check-ins also give you a clear picture of the entire project in a very short amount of time. This helps keep team communication open, and also allows you to update the client on progress and hiccups moving forward.

3. Review and Feedback Sessions

By looking at all completed tasks, project managers can evaluate work done and examine it based on meeting client expectations.

If something seems out of place, the project manager can connect with the team and make tweaks on those completed tasks to ensure they are perfect before being closed out.

These review and feedback sessions are great for client updates too. You can show clients how the project is progressing and highlight the benefits of each task for the main business aim.

4. Post Task Analysis

Each SEO project is unique, even if you deal with a specific industry niche. This makes post task analysis vital to keeping your SEO workflow optimized on future projects. For example, you and your team may identify a task or sprint that could have been paired with another task for more efficient progress. These sessions generally happen bi-weekly or monthly.

The main questions to address during the post task analysis include:

  • What did we learn from the tasks?
  • What issues did we identify?
  • How did we solve the problems?
  • What areas could we make better?

After the meeting, the project manager and SEO manager can huddle and develop two potential new strategies that can be implemented next time around to increase productivity.

Wrapping Up . . .

Optimizing your agencies’ SEO workflow is essential to growing your client list, as well as retaining existing clients. Using a strategic planning model like the one outlined above can make this happen. Search engine optimization is complex and depending on the size of the project, can be downright overwhelming. What are your top SEO workflow optimization tips?