Hello everybody. It's our pleasure to be here.

Thank you for being here today, listen to a little bit of SEO project management

that maybe is not the most popular topic, but I will make sure that

after this session you will start loving it a little bit more.

So in order to do this I want to share with you a story.

It's a story of an SEO consultant like you, like me.

Who was fired?

Sometimes these things happen unfortunately. Yes.

It's not my fault though he says.

Hm. Yeah. Excuse us.

You know resources weren't good enough, and he was not Superman.

Developers failed. They underperformed.

Schedule wasn't followed.

Recommendations were not implemented.

Goals were missed.

The client was upset. I will be like really afraid there.

The SEO project finally failed.

Hm. I'm a good SEO, but these type of things also happens with projects he says.

How many of you have faced these type of problems before? Raise your hand please.

Okay. Quite a few.

Whiners. You're such a whiner. You should stop complaining.

This is not normal really. You should know how to handle SEO projects.

Then Yoda comes, of course, giving the positive feedback and saying that

we can learn from our experience, and let's see how have been the experience of this

SEO consultant that we can learn from.

So first episode: The SEO client who always complains.

My first problem. The client was always complaining.

He always expected something different from the process.

Even if he had achieved five times more organic traffic than the year before,

client is still complaining. Those were not his results.

He wanted links, he wanted rankings, he wanted something else,

but maybe—no, he was not happy at all. So what to do?

Qualification and communication here is the key to avoid these type of problems.

Yoda says. Let's see how to assess the SEO process from the start.

This is something very, very important.

Don't leave salespeople handling the sales process by themselves.

Be there, qualify the process, verify, validate, explain,

and provide like realistic expectations to the client.

This is very, very important. Something so simple, but you need to be there.

Otherwise the client, of course—salespeople will like to sell more. Not good.

Another thing meet all of the SEO-related people, the stakeholders from the start.

That doesn't mean that you need to go to the company and meet everybody else

because that's impossible and not realistic.

But at least the head of each one of the departments

that will give you support afterwards.

It's fundamental that you really meet these people, know who they are,

what are their problems, their pains.

How you can solve these problems afterwards with your SEO process.

Like this you will know what you will need to talk to them to win them over

and gain their support and also provide reports that realistically targets

their expectation and need requirements and solve something for them internally.

This is very fundamental and not only in-house or as an agency,

but it can be a little bit more challenging, but it pays off really.

Agree on the necessary resources from the start

not only about budget, timings, everything.

Sometimes we don't really want to say that it will take so long

because maybe the clients can say hm, maybe I shouldn't do SEO

but pay-per-click or something quicker or easier,

but we really need to be able to say to the client that it will take a certain amount of time

that will depend also on the implementation of the recommendations that we give afterwards,

that the strategies that we recommend are really implemented.

So the client knows that there's going to be a support from the part,

a word from the part. This is fundamental.

Value the possible risks also from the start.

If you see that there are restrictions, not only technically but also from

the business perspective of the company, you need to be sure that

you take them into consideration and commend them with the client

and make sure that you target this in a realistic way in the process.

Establish smarter goals. I have written a post about it already so you can read it

on my blog. It's how to specify specific, measurable, attainable, time-based goals

that are relevant for the client and that are like easy to refer to

and really attainable and good calls for your SEO project that are like reasonable goals,

relevant goals that you can refer to.

It's fundamental that you agree with this, and all of the involved parties validate this.

It's not only your objectives or your goals.

It's also the clients, of course, goals and objectives.

They need to validate this, and it's very important that they are well specified.

Define communication channels and workflow from the start. That is very important.

Some clients think that after signing the contract that we'll forget about you.

They will only receive reports after the end of each month.

It shouldn't be like that, and you should tell them from the beginning

that they will be hearing from you again frequently,

and they will need to allocate some time for you so you can meet with them

and share with them the problems that you are having, the issues,

how the process is going good or bad, what you can have from their site

to improve the process so this is something very, very important.

Communicate and provide feedback constantly,

not only bad feedback, good feedback.

I know it's true that most of the time you just want to kick someone in the balls.

That's it, but don't do it. Count to ten, eleven or 100 or 1 million. Don't do it.

Just also provide good feedback.

It's much easier to say you have done a crappy job.

Don't do it like this. This other way.

No. The work that you have done haven't really met expectations.

You can improve it by doing this and this.

You need to provide feedback, not only bad one but good one.

When things are going well also you need to communicate the things

and share the things.

The first tip to enhance all of this and to put into action all of this

is to develop qualification list that you can fulfill at the start of the process.

I have also shared some questions here. I have created a post some time ago.

These are questions that will help you to establish the strategy

and to really have a vision of the client from the objective, the unique seller proposition,

or the risk, the competition, the previous work that has been done or developed before,

the present status of the project or SEO status of the site.

So it's very important that you do this at the beginning and save it.

Save it always. All off the comments that you love

you need to save them of course.

Second, wait to accept the SEO process until the client's really ready.

That is something very important because sometimes we push too much.

We want to start as soon as possible, and the client's not ready.

The client doesn't have the flexibility to add the time or the resources to support

that he needs to provide to you in order to do an effective work.

At the end it will be your fault, and at the end you won't be able to really reach your goals.

So it's very important that the client is ready. Don't push too hard.

Talk in the same language that not only the client but the other person

that you are talking with. Be aware of cultural differences.

If you are talking to a business person, talk in business language.

If you're talking to a technical person, talk in a technical one.

That is why it was very important to identify the pains and the problems and issues

of each one of the stakeholders because when you speak with them

you need to focus on this and speak on the things that these people really care about

and not what you care on your side.

Also if you have the opportunity is go to spend like an afternoon or a morning

every week or every two weeks at the client's office

and see a little bit what is happening there.

You can identify many opportunities like this

and see the type of interactions, type of issues they have.

They feel that you are there, that you really care about the project,

that they are not just one more client.

So if you can do it don't lose the opportunity.

An example here.

I had this client that he wasn't very sure to start the SEO project.

He, of course, yesterday I think that they said that there's this data people,

a lot of—the decision makers come from the financial or the sales part,

and they want to always make decisions based on data

that show that this is going to work.

Sometimes it's very hard, and sometimes it's also something about

be reasonable, but, for example, I solved this case by doing an SEO pilot.

I implemented the recommendations only in a small set of sections

or pages on the site because the client was afraid that he will lose

a lot of his clients that were paying to appear there

if we implemented these changes that I was proposing at the time.

So we implemented the changes.

Of course it is very important that when you start the SEO pilot

you establish the reach of the pilot, the timings, the expected outcomes.

That's very important from the beginning.

In my case I say we will need to spend six months to verify that

we don't only gain organic traffic and conversions

as it was original to happen after enhanced the SEO aspect of this part of the site,

but also that this will not hurt the client's business.

After two months I showed of course traffic went up, really up.

My client saw that his clients were not complaining, that were really happy even.

He say you can start. Let's not wait for six months. Just start after two months.

So we started after two months, and it was far easier to implement

because we had already implemented on this area of the site,

so we just extrapolated those technical implementations.

It's a great way to show. It's a great way to demonstrate and make a case like this.

These are the guidelines I have shared before,

the different steps that we can take into consideration.

With them, following this road map, we can be sure that the expectations

of the clients are more easily met and that we can be sure that at the end of the day

the client doesn't feel that we are not targeting his goals.

Remember qualification and communication.

This is what Yoda says, so we need to pay attention here.

So our SEO consultant here.

He's very thankful of course for all of the recommendations,

but he has more issues.

Of course many episodes have happened.

Episode two: The developers who made mistakes.

How many of you are developers?

Not many. Okay. Good. Good. Okay.

You will see that it's not only your fault.

I mean this has a good outcome at the end—very positive for you too.

So the second problem the developers didn't get anything right

the SEO consultant says.

They always included and published the SEO recommendations with errors.

Who has added this canonical in all of the pages pointing to the home?

No one has. Okay.

So education and validation is essential to avoid these types of problems.

The first thing is to give responsibility and identify the responsibility

of each one of the team members.

That is essential that they feel that they are really involved in the project,

and they have some responsibility of the project from the start.

Also educate all of the team, not only technical team, building, social,

content, everybody.

You need to develop this personalized training for each one of them.

I have even given this training online using Enovia that is like WebEx

for online traingings in a closed environment.

We recorded those trainings, so each time a new member of the team comes

you don't need to do it again everything.

You can play the video and say hey, look. SEO. Really good. Learn.

It saves a lot of time, and you know that each one of the team members

and everybody involved in the SEO process really know the importance

of SEO and how their work can improve SEO and why we want to do SEO.

It's not only really operated stuff but really a strategic vision

of the main goal of the project that we are doing.

Share, checklist, and Q&As and also cheat sheets for everybody in the team.

I do this typical checklist for developers so every time they launch something,

not only the ones that I really implemented their recommendations

but any type of new development on the site is validated through the checklist.

Simple things like the euros are friendly, titles follow this partner,

or the group on the latest code is included. Very simple stuff.

But at the end you will know that when you start doing something with

this other part of the site, they already will have this good structure

that will follow the pattern, that is consistent with the work

that you already implemented or that you have already in place.

Create short, straight-to-the-point recommendations.

Yesterday it was said that we don't read.

Instead of creating this 100-page recommendations that nobody will read,

do a small capsule of recommendations targeted really to the team

or to the role that is going to read it, that is going to implement it.

Then you can short everything into one repository of information on the Internet,

for example, or a place that is focused on the client

that the client can always reach.

Ask for early tests.

That's something very important.

Early tests for a small set of the changes that you want.

For example, it's usual that you say hey, can you please do this, this, this?

You understand? Yes, I do.

Two weeks after you check what has been launched. It's not what you wanted really.

It has a lot of errors, so to avoid this it's good that when you provide the first

recommendations you ask the developer or the writer

to do it only one page or a small set of pages.

Then you verify them and see that your recommendations have been

well understood, and then they can implement everything on the rest of the site.

Of course before launching these changes,

you need to check them in a close environment.

So really the workflow is this.

It's early SEO validation of a sample, then you validate, they implement on all of the site,

and then you verify again everything before launching in an open environment of course.

But before you need to verify it in a closed environment.

Otherwise things can get easily messy, and it's much more easy

to commit mistakes like this.

Some tips to enhance the performance of developers.

First is to gamify the implementation process. This is really quick.

You just need to start challenges like the developer

who knows more about SEO, the developer who implements the fastest,

or more efficiently all of the SEO changes that you have changed.

So gamify a little bit the process.

Also SEO objectives should be also their objective.

They are all SEOs. They should be all SEOs.

It cannot be that the SEO tasks are something added to the typical task,

and of course they will never take our SEO activities

with a number one priority if they are not part of their objectives.

SEO tasks, implementation need to be taken as part of the main objectives.

Also provide good feedback continuously,

not only feedback about good things that they have been doing technically,

but also the goals that you gained from their work.

This is something very important that after six months or one year

of achieving your SEO results, you don't go only to the decision maker or the client

who hired you and say look what I have done.

This is great, we are great, we are there.

No, go to the development team or the writer teams and share with them.

Hey, look guys what we have done. Thank you very much for your support.

These are things that usually are not done and need to be done

really to get everybody's involvement and support.

Also with writers it has happened that they usually don't know what works or not.

They write a lot.

You provide keywords, but not many times we provide fluent flow of feedback saying

look, this article worked really well.

Continue writing these types of articles because our audience liked it.

So that's something very important that we provide good feedback,

meaningful feedback that makes them feel as part of the team.

We should use tools.

The thing is many people think that SEO project management or project management

in general is about the tools but not really.

Tools should help us to facilitate our work.

If any tool adds more work to our everyday activities,

it's not a good tool. It should help us instead of being a challenge to use.

It's not a rule of thumb. There are not good tools or bad tools.

It all depends on your situation, on your organization,

and the type of client that you are working with.

In my situation, really because I worked remotely, I really like web-based tools.

I have tried some—Sanofi, for example, Trello,

Redmine for more complex environments, even Google Docs if you are doing

a project by yourself or another person.

It should depend, and it should help you to achieve your activities more easily.

Also create easy-to-follow reports with tasks and status

where you can see all of the activities of the team.

Everybody can see the sheet that you are continuously updating,

and everybody knows what everybody is doing, and this, of course,

this set of tasks need to have actuation and a logic to follow to attain your SEO goals.

So these are the guidelines that I have shared before

that we need to keep into consideration, and like this

we are going to improve developer's performance.

That's the idea, and if Yoda says it I believe it.

So remember education and validation is essential in this case.

It seems that it's not the last problem that our SEO consultant has had.

Let's see another one.

Episode three: The SEO process with no control. My third problem.

Changes were implemented at the same time in a hurry,

and nobody knew what has worked or not at the end of the day.

Sometimes we see this negative trend, but because we have launched

so many changes, so many things the week before we don't know

what has happened here.

We need to go and do a little bit like Sherlock and start doing analytic again

and really investing much more of our time resolving these issues

to avoid this. What we can do?

Documentation and agilization.

Define short incremental iterations for the work,

and this has a lot to do of what Jonathan commented the first day—agile process.

So I really like to do bi-week iterations.

Every two weeks I know that I'm going to launch something new.

Of course these launches I always like to target a specific aspect

of SEO enhancement. I don't touch titles and URLs and canonical text at the same time.

Aspect by aspect. So I really can isolate afterwards much better

the problems that happen.

Also all of these documents and all of these activities need to be documented.

You need to have this very reliable system, consistent system, logic system

that you can always refer to, and it's easier to access for all of the team members.

When you provide a recommendation, it's essential that you always

are very clear, and for this screenshot and mockups are excellent.

Don't say just add this code on this line of the code.

No, a screenshot with that big red line here you must add the code

like very, very, very simple and direct and like this.

There's no way that they wouldn't understand and an error will be done.

Also after a while it can happen that they say oh, we never had this problem.

This never happened here. We have always solved this issue in this way.

You can go there and grab that screenshot and show. Look. No.

We had it in this other way, and we have solved it really.

If something goes back and for some reason an error is done,

you can always show it has been done before.

It's much easier to really isolate when the problem has happened

because at that time you had it in this way.

So screenshots and also mockups.

There are many services out there for mockups.

Balsamiq is one of them.

Mockingbird is another. Use them.

Have a backup plan. That is what we commented before.

It's not only to identify the risk but actually have a plan for each important risk

that you identify, not all of them because you can become crazy of course.

But all of the most important risks that you identify need to have

an option of what if? What if with this is not properly implemented or if this backlash?

You have an option always.

Develop an SEO reporting system that is consistent and is easy to read.

I really like to use colors and also instead of giving absolute numbers,

for example, our traffic has grown to 2 million visits this month.

No, that's what? I don't know if it is too low or too high or it's good or bad.

No, it's 30% of the total of the traffic of the site or it's 50%.

You can refer to what you had the month before or the year before at that same time.

So it's very important that you make your reports meaningful,

that they are short, that they really provide information to make decisions.

That should be their main goals.

Also I put there add monthly because if you don't say that it is monthly,

sometimes your clients even want to have them every day.

I don't know why they want to have really reports every day or every week

because at the end of the day they should be providing meaningful information

to make decisions.

Fortunately they are not going to make decisions every day about an SEO process

that is long-term.

So you really need to make your point and say no,

I will provide this type of report that will be meaningful for you.

You will be able to make decisions.

I will provide my recommendations for those reports, and we are going to share

this report together and see how we can enhance the process

according to the results that we have gotten up to now.

The first tip is automate the SEO reporting and tracking.

For example, for keyword rankings I really like web-based tools

that provide me a ton of keywords,

and I use, for example, Authority Labs or SEO Scout.

This can change again of what you really like,

and sometimes—also something important to do this—

we underestimate the tools that we already have,

and we go out there looking for tools, valuing tools, assessing tools,

when we already have sometimes even Google Analytics.

I am going to show you afterwards some tips about Google Analytics

and how you can make the most out of them in this case.

Also group iterations according to the SEO goals

that you want to achieve.

These iterations and the tasks should not only be for homepage SEO,

but you should "agilize" and do the iterations with everything,

with link building, content writing, optimizing, everything.

So you really align all of your SEO activities, and you make the most out of them.

You are sure that you can achieve your goals by aligning all together.

They have a logic altogether.

This is the first tip with Google Analytics.

I don't think that we use this as we should,

and we can do custom SEO reports and configure them

to be sent as frequent as we want.

For example, daily, weekly, monthly, for specific segment

that we set for a specific landing pages or keywords if site not provided

or for all of the organic traffic towards an area or a section of our site.

You name it, you can do it easily.

You can set to be sent to your email so you don't have to enter it again.

Another is SEO alert.

Also if you go to the profile, to your analytics profile,

you can also set alerts, and for example, if your organic traffic goes down by 20%

or 30% from the week before or the month before or the year before,

an email will be sent to you. Also for good news.

If your organic traffic or conversions go up X amount of what you set

they will be sent to your email,

so you will be always updated of what is happening on your site.

So these are the guidelines to follow in order to improve these types of problems.

If we follow them, we know that we'll be able to track better times

and be consistent with our work.

We always know what has worked or not. That is the main goal of this.

Documentation and agilization.

Our friend consultant here is already feeling the seoPM force.

Can you feel it too? I hope so really.

[applause and cheering] Wake up!

Remember you keep these guidelines into consideration,

you have much better chances to have a better SEO project.

Nonetheless, I don't know if you have seen which is the most important aspect

of any SEO project is the people.

The people are the key really.

You can see the decision makers, the director, the analysts, everybody involved.

The user, the client, even you. You are a person too.

So are you paying enough attention to the people?

Go and connect with the people. Talk with the people.

Interact with them. Really in a good way, not only to kick their asses.

So you can say oh, these are good things, but they take too much time, whatever.

The thing is that if you continue doing what you are doing right now,

the results are not likely to change so you need to improve what you're doing,

and these are good guidelines, and I am not telling you. It's Yoda. Okay?

So our friend consultant here asked me to stop.

He knows that he can do it, and he knows that you can do it too.

This moment is the moment that we can all start doing good SEO projects

by implementing the seoPM good practices.

The next chapter that I expect is not in a long time that I look to share here soon

is a chapter about seoPM hope with you featured in the episode of course.

Thank you very much.

[applause]

[Female] I can't underestimate the importance of that stuff having been in-house

that I have gone through all of that, and what you set up there was like

just word—it was word for me. [laughs]

So any of you guys who are in-house or are working with in-house teams

that stuff is just incredibly helpful to make you look good especially.

[Female] Hi. Thank you so much. That was great.

So my question is I work in an agency, and we're mid-size,

and our company size doesn't really justify using a big enterprise-size tools

for management unfortunately. I know they should.

Can you recommend any specific scheduling tools for project management,

especially with Gantt charts that are relatively user friendly

for small teams and that aren't thousands and thousands of dollars?

[Aleyda Solis] Yeah. For example, when I worked at a small agency,

the best tool that I could find at the moment was Basecamp

when you were interacting with clients—really easy to use,

and if the client, for example, is not technical but from management side,

it's really easy to use.

You can really personalize the reports and share reports that are really meaningful

and easy to access and understand from their side.

[Male] This is very some great information.

Coming from an agency, I think the challenges that a lot of face number one,

how have you handled clients that have not implemented any recommendations.

Number two, there's a lot of third parties that we work with in the agency that

when we say that okay, we want you to change your URL structure,

we want you to do something else, they come back with an absorbent cost for the client.

The client can't absorb that.

So I just wanted to know from your experience how have you dealt with those issues?

[Aleyda Solis] That is why you saw one of the first recommendations

is that to give realistic expectation and that from the start the client knows

that you are expecting more from their side,

and if the recommendations are not implemented

all of the work that you have really established and the goals that you have set,

they are not worth—it's part of their job.

They cannot assume that you as a specialist, as a consultant,

can get anything going without their interaction and their help.

That is the first thing, and that is why it is so, so, so important that

at the beginning of the process you don't let only salespeople handle it.

The salesperson. You need to go there and verify and do the pre-sales validation

and give the expectations, the real expectations to the client

and communicate clearly that you will need to wait until certain amount of time

to see the first results, and these results are going to be attainable only if

he implements the recommendations and do the work that you recommend of course.

To the other about the restrictions. Yeah.

Sometimes clients have restrictions—are not flexible enough to implement

recommendations sometimes because of CMS issues or platform issues.

There are upcycles.

That is why I always say that for each one of the opportunities that you identify,

you also need to identify the risks that can be involved sometimes.

They say at the beginning yes, it's not a problem to implement this

because they are not really aware what it is behind this change,

but when they go and implement it they see that it's not possible.

So you need to have an alternative plan in those cases.

For example, if in the worse case scenario, if they cannot improve their platforms,

they cannot do simple things like really rewrite their URL so they are friendly.

I mean this has a greater impact than only SEO,

and I am pretty sure that these types of restrictions are only one side

of many others that are causing their business to not advance as it should.

So the important thing here is that make them see that they will need to do

a much greater investment but not only for SEO but for their business in general.

Yes, it's impossible to do something if they don't support

or there are too many restrictions.

There are restrictions technically or from a business perspective.

You just need to be flexible, and that is why also I commented that

the client needs to be ready.

It should be a client that should be aware of the work that will come afterwards.

Otherwise you will end up fighting the client in six months,

and we don't want that.

You want that instead of fighting clients you only take clients

that are going to be good for you.

[Female] Hi. Yes. Great presentation.

We actually work in-house for a pretty big company.

What we struggle with SEO has sort of a bad reputation and all of that,

and really communicating that to other departments,

especially ones that deal with brand and traditional marketing and brand voice,

and then really explaining that we're not keyword stepping, we're not doing this.

We actually have a strategy and producing content but really communicating that

in such a big company.

[Aleyda Solis] Yes, I understand you totally.

You know I have been even told from an align marketer,

but more from, of course, the paid side of the business,

that SEO was illegal. Yes. Yes.

So I had to really breathe a lot. Don't touch my email.

My email after two or three hours was like really harsh.

Education. You need to educate.

That is why I talk about trainings.

Even trainings for marketers. They always say that they know about SEO.

Yes, SEO that like fishy eating building like that kind of stuffing.

No, it's not that.

That's why it's important also that the trainings are really focused

on each type of profile so SEO for marketers will be a different training

than SEO for developers.

For example, that is much more technical about how to implement things correctly,

but the SEO for marketers is how to really involve all of the strategies

that are already in place, how you make the most out of each one,

what is and what is not SEO of course.

In this case you can also share examples, not only bad because unfortunately

only the bad stories are really famous after a while on the Internet

and are shared virally but not the good ones.

So it's a good practice too to have good references of SEO,

and even I have done this before.

You know the SEO Starter Guide from Google? The guide that they did.

If Google is doing a guide for this, this cannot be illegal.

Like that.

Okay. Thank you very much.

[applause] [Female] Thank you so much. That was fantastic. Very good.