One of the toughest aspects of staying on top of your SEO campaigns is tracking the tasks that you do. From monitoring your link development to keeping track of how your content is posted, running an SEO campaign requires a lot more in the way of managerial skills than it does pure SEO knowledge.

 

Because of this, many SEOs spend just as much time tracking their actions as they do actually optimizing anything. This is especially true if you work with clients that like to see a note-by-note summary of their work before every deadline.

 

One of the best ways to track your SEO efforts is by keeping dynamic spreadsheets of what you’re doing. If you work with a team, a free solution like Google Docs can be enough – after all, it gives you a spreadsheet application and a word processor.

 

Every time you build a new link, create a new press release, or publish a new article on behalf of a client, log it in your SEO files. Be careful not to delay adding anything, as ‘waiting’ to add a link or citation can frequently result in you never adding it.

 

There’s a saying in business – ‘what gets measured, gets managed.’ By measuring all of your SEO efforts – the number of links built, the amount of PageRank that you’ve got pointed at your pages, and other key factors – you’ll always be on top of where your campaigns are, what needs to be done, and what your clients should know.

 

Many SEOs are rich in theory and practical SEO knowledge, but desperately short on practical managerial skills. Some simple note-taking, whether for your work or your staff’s work, can help you move beyond running small SEO campaigns for yourself and towards successfully managing high-value client accounts.