Following the Yellow Task Road of an SEO Project Management System

When you’re working in SEO, it can be really difficult to keep track of everything you need to do. 

There are three foundational parts of a good SEO campaign:

  • Create new content and optimize existing content
  • Grow your links and citations
  • Improve the technical optimization of your site

Each of these three categories contains a myriad of specific projects, and each project can have dozens of tasks assigned to several different people. At the end of the day, if you’re working on a single site for your own company, or whether you’re a part of an agency, and you’re working with multiple clients, the list of projects and tasks can be endless and very difficult to track.

Developing Deliverables

It’s really important when you’re developing SEO strategies that you have fixed, set deliverables that follow a digital marketing plan. For example, you can determine that you’re going to produce X amount of articles this month with the goal of uploading 10,000 words to your website. Or you can set the goal of gaining five new links or 10 citations every month.

SEO Project Management System

Organizing your Deliverables

Each deliverable should have its own project so it can be tracked, and every project type can have a set workflow that will specifically take you through the steps for each project.

If you’re producing content, the workflow may include several stages, such as:

  • Research content idea
  • Assign article to writer
  • Edit the article
  • On-Page SEO Enhancements
  • Add images and Calls to Action
  • Publish

To publish an article on your site, you’ll need to go through these stages, again and again.

This is just an example of a content workflow to produce new content. Let’s say, your goal is to produce 10 articles a month. Then you have to go through all those stages 10 times and there might be some back and forth in each of those stages.

As you can see, it can quickly become pretty difficult to keep track of dozens of tasks belonging to dozens of projects.

Breaking Down Deliverables into Tasks

Once you know what tasks need to be achieved to complete a project, that makes every project repeatable and trackable.

All of a sudden, you move out of the realm of chaos and uncertainty, and into a realm of structure and order. Every campaign can be organized into projects with specific workflows, each with its own task workflows that are created as the project advances through the stages.

You move from the concept of complex deliverables to very structured, definitive tasks that need to be completed.

Then, all you need to do is follow the yellow task road to keep your SEO projects organized and on track.

SEO Project Management System

Removing Complexity and Chaos

When all of the tasks belonging to a campaign are systematized into your workflow, this eliminates the mental weight of having to keep track of it all.

All you have to do is log into your task management system and check what tasks have been assigned to you for that day. Other team members will do the same, and as everyone performs tasks and marks them done, new tasks are created by the workflow to keep projects moving forward.

This structure creates mental space. You will no longer have to worry about having to do a million things. All of your deliverables will be broken down into projects and tasks and will appear right in front of you in the form of tasks, with priorities and deadlines.

Creating Mental Space

Breaking down everything you have to do into micro-tasks allows you to free up mental capacity.  You will no longer need to carry all that information in your head, which can be very stressful and mentally and emotionally taxing.

You will then find yourself with mental and emotional space, creativity and innovation. Instead, you can focus your time and energy on coming up with innovative strategies that set you apart from the competition, and really focusing on growth instead of the minutiae of day-to-day survival.