Remote SEO Consulting and Project Management

Companies are directing their employees to work from home due to the coronavirus’s fear and anxiety. The culture of “remote” or “working remotely” is becoming popular again.

As someone who has earned the last ten years of his life by doing remote SEO consultancy and project management, I wanted to guide people who wish to consult and manage their SEO projects by working from home.

Why Remote Work Is Becoming More Popular?

Remote or remote work is not a new concept. It is a phenomenon that has marked the last ten years, especially with the increasing number of technology and Internet companies. Many studies indicate that working remotely has a positive impact on both companies and employees. When we evaluate in terms of remote workers;

• They state that they feel much more productive;
• They think that the quality of communication has increased drastically and that their employers also benefit
• They feel lucky when it comes to establishing a work-life balance because they decide where and when they work.
• They feel happier as they can devote their time spent in traffic to work on their hobbies.

When we evaluate in terms of employers with remote personnel;

• They have the opportunity to work with more qualified professionals
• Employee productivity is increasing, which makes the company a more profitable business.
• Office costs are reduced

Of course, it is useful to look at the other side of the coin. “Working remotely” is a concept that almost every employee dreams of. It requires tremendous self-discipline and excellent time management. Professionals who have a long habit of working in a workplace need an adaptation period to adapt to this new and uncertain work order.

I have spent the last ten years working remotely with SEO consulting and project management. In other words, I have been trying to perfect my distance working habits for ten years.

It seems that we will have to work remotely for at least a few months because of the Corona threat. Perhaps from now on, remote project management will become a standard. On this occasion, I wanted to transfer my experiences related to remote SEO project management processes to small and big brands that have SEO consultancy and remote management of SEO processes.

First of all, you need to manage psychology at home very well and motivate yourself.

How to Manage Remote Work Psychology?

First of all, it is useful to point out the differences between “flexible work” and “remote” or “remote” work. There are severe differences between working remotely and working flexibly. You can decide partially when to use in flexible working order, but the concept of working remotely in most cases means working online or offline within working hours determined by your company.

The biggest challenge in the transition from compulsory home to remote working model after the corona outbreak seems to be motivated to work in the home environment during working hours. I want to give myself an example to those who experienced this experience for the first time.

First of all, you should know that; Working remotely and from home does not mean to enjoy grief. You must have a daily routine. Not being late at night and getting up early in the morning to focus on the work made me productive. If you get the experience of working remotely 5 minutes before the start of the working hours and go back to your computer, you will eventually notice that your efficiency has decreased.

I usually go to bed at 22:45; I get up at 5:45 in the morning. My morning ritual begins after a short meditation. I read some books; I do mind exercises on the Lumosity.com site. I think the day is full of possibilities. I note the important events of the day and the tasks that I should complete. I then wake my wife and son. We have our breakfast together.

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Thanks to the fact that I started the day early, I can finish the work first and spend the remaining time for myself and my family. Of course, getting up this early is not everyone’s fee. Everyone should find the most suitable formula. However, we are going through difficult times; even if we overcome the corona epidemic crisis, the economic crisis that will hit the country afterward can cause jobs to be disrupted and some of you to become unemployed. I will say that at such times, time is money and the early riser takes the lead. Each crisis comes with opportunities in itself, and it is necessary to manage time very well in such periods.

How To Manage Time When Working Remote?

When working from home, time can flow like water. While waiting for an increase in productivity with the thought of not going to waste time in traffic while traveling to and from the office, on the contrary, you may find yourself consuming the day without being able to focus on a single job.

I had the opportunity to experience many time management techniques while working from home. One of the methods that worked best for me was Pomodoro.

When applying the technique, you first focus on your work for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. One Pomodoro corresponds to this 30-minute process. When you make four pomodoros, you can take a half-hour break. Making Pomodoro between 6-12 a day is considered ideal. This corresponds to a period of 3-6 hours.

Twenty-five minutes seems to be a short time at first glance. However, the biggest problem of today’s human being is unable to focus on a single job at the same time. If you succeed in giving yourself to an available position for 25 minutes without doing any other work, you will miraculously gain productivity. If you want to try it, you can make a trial right now with an online Pomodoro counter.

Recently, I started to listen to non-verbal music that increased productivity while doing business. My favorite is the Focusatwill.com website. I suggest you give at least a chance.

Meanwhile, working from home means restricting movements. This can hurt both weight gain and health. At the end of each work hour, it is useful to do stretching and stretching exercises, get up, and walk around the house a little. I found the solution for this by wearing a Mi Fit wristband and tracking motion and steps with the mobile app. If you decide to use it, you can challenge me. Below is the record for the number of days I took 10,000 individual steps that I broke as of now.

How To Manage Time As A Team While Working Remotely?

Time management is also critical in teamwork. As the Stradiji team, we found the solution in Toggl.com online time tracking tool. With this tool, we can analyze who spent which work and how much time we spend each week, and how much money we earn in return.

I have to admit, it was complicated for us to record even the smallest work we worked on in the first weeks. However, it was a leap of consciousness to question how we manage the time at the end of the week and whether the time we allocate to our customers according to their budget is fair. Thanks to the tool, we now use our time much more efficiently and report to our customers how much time we spend on what work. I strongly recommend to remote teams.

Remote SEO Project Management

First of all, I must say that as of the point where SEO has come, it now requires a great deal of teamwork and that no SEO expert has a magic wand. Look, you guys are trying to market as if they know fundamental SEO formulas that nobody knows.

SEO has never been in such an uncertain period. Make sure all SEO professionals are trying to adapt to this dizzying speed and not lose customers. SEO professionals who do not have good customer communication and cannot include their client’s team and resources are doomed to fail.

The role of SEO professionals has become indistinguishable from an orchestra conductor as the backlink effect is gradually decreasing, user experience on the websites, content, and customer expectations are met. Yes, a top SEO consultant still manages an SEO project, but you need to include his client very well from the start and clearly show who will play which role.

Therefore, the first customer meeting and the things to be discussed are crucial for the project’s success. In this first meeting, you need to discuss the following issues very clearly:

• Your client’s expectations from the SEO project
• Your expectations from your SEO project

If these two expectations are not met, the project cannot be successful. For example, as Stradiji, we do not prefer to set out with a customer who comes with the expectation that “we have ten keywords in our minds, we want to go first in Google in all. Because at the end of hundreds of consultancy experience, we realized that it is possible to lose a customer who comes only with the expectation of ranking with the slightest loss of ranking. Moreover, all failures can fall on you.

Organic traffic growth may not be a stand-alone criterion. Google Analytics charts shared on statistics, and social media platforms are often deceptive. Even in its worst form, an SEO project can provide a relative increase in organic traffic than a site that has never worked in SEO. However, for this consultancy to be sustainable, this increase should also contribute to the transformation.

KPIs such as online sales and creating leads are much more important than the rankings for us, and we prefer to work with customers in this mindset.

Of course, it is useful to discuss this at the first meeting and express your perspective. If you make concessions from yourself just because you are worried about getting the job, you may have trouble collecting your bills because the customer expectations are not met.

Now that this first call is being held remotely, you have to do it through an online tool. There are dozens of tools you can use for this. We prefer the Streamyard.com service for several different reasons.

• It is possible to connect to your YouTube channel; it works very well while organizing webinars
• We have tried hundreds of times, no problem with our online conversations
• By sharing screens, we can record and download our online discussion with our customer, and then share them with our customers.

After agreeing with your client, who will play which role and expectations from the project, you can proceed to the project creation phase.

Online SEO Project Management – SEMrush – Trello Integration

We have experienced many online project management tools while doing SEO consultancy. We have been using the Trello online project management tool to integrate with SEMrush for the past two years. The process goes precisely like this:

1. After signing a privacy agreement, we request access to search console and google analytics from our client.
2. In our SEMrush account, we create a project for our client’s website and perform Site Audit – Site Scanning to detect existing SEO errors.
3. It is possible to integrate the SEMrush Site Audit module with Trello.

This means that we can share the findings we obtained after Site Audit through a Trello board. Even if our interlocutors do not use the paid SEMrush package, they can follow the on-site error from the Trello project, thanks to the read-only access we will give them. All they have to do is create a free SEMrush account, and we provide them with access to it.

While creating a board in Trello, we try to inform our customers as much as we can. There is a project management system as follows, which enables the small SEO project to be integrated with SEMrush.

We can summarize the advantages of using this type of project management system as follows:

• It is clear that who should follow what and at every stage. There is no need to receive and send dozens of mail. Trello sends reminders to you and your customer via mobile app and mail.
• The party that slows down the project turns out to be pumpkin. In most cases, we can be proactive, a few steps ahead of our customers.
• At the end of the month, we do not have bill payments problems because we can reveal our work very clearly.
• Using a tool like the Evernote Web Clipper, we can compile what we have identified at the initial stage of the site’s SEO performance in Trello. Thus, when there are substantial changes on the site, we can use this archive while making pre-post reporting.

While continuing the project through Trello and SEMrush, we continue to negotiate online periodically. Besides, we continue to inform our customers about the developments in KPI metrics by making weekly and monthly KPI reports with SEMrush.

SEMrush allows us to report in many different ways and periodically. The most important thing you should pay attention to is not to feel like sending an automatic report to your customers. You should report with a few sentences by adding your comments.

Let’s Create Your First Remote SEO Project Together

The world and our country are going through a very difficult period. In this period, which is full of uncertainties and forced to close home, the best thing we can do is to increase our experience and experience in remote work and to share information on this issue.

If you are trying to manage a remote SEO project as an individual entrepreneur, a small business owner or a marketing manager in a large company, we have an offer for you.

Let’s create your first remote SEO project together and share our experiences with you. All you need to do is click the button below and share your information with us. We will be very happy to share our experiences with you, provided that they are remote and online.