How to Use Gantt Charts For Your Next SEO Campaign

Every SEO campaign requires a certain level of preparation and planning. Oftentimes, it includes keyword selection, writing strong page titles and meta tags, developing, implementing a link building programme and what not. The entire process of devising a kickass strategy could be both challenging and arduous without proper planning and tracking. 

Hubspot explains a good SEO strategy as the process of organizing a website’s content by topic, which helps search engines like Google understand a user’s intent when searching. 

These days many teams have started using Gantt chart software to plan, run, and control their SEO strategies. To all those, who don’t know much about Gantt charts, we have a brief overview for you. 

What is a Gantt Chart? 

A Gantt chart is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed against time. You get to see a list of activities on the left side of the chart and time scale along the top of it. 

Each activity is represented by a bar where the position and length of the bar reflect the start date, duration and end date of the activity. Gantt charts are named after Henry Gantt, an engineer, and innovator in the field of scientific management.  

At a glance, you can see:

• The start and finish date of a campaign
• List of SEO tasks
• Who is working on which task
• Start and finish date of tasks
• Where activities will overlap and by how much
  

How to Use Gantt Charts for SEO Campaigns?

Before we jump to discuss the use of Gantt charts in campaigns, it’s essential to know how a general SEO campaign looks like and consists of. Even though every campaign is different, successful campaigns have the following things in common:  

• SEO Audit
• Keyword research and selection
• On-page optimization
• Content marketing
• Link building
• Constant re-optimization
  

If we look closely, each of the above-mentioned points needs meticulous planning and execution. This is where online Gantt chart software comes into the picture.  

Let’s see how Gantt charts could help you make a winning SEO strategy:

#1. Establish the Initial Schedule of a Campaign

Gantt charts are the best way to visualize things in the simplest way. These planning tools have got everything you need to plan things like a pro. Create schedules of your SEO campaigns, track progress made in tasks, set dependencies, and plan campaigns effortlessly with Gantt chart software.

#2. Allocate Resources

There are n number of things to take care of in an SEO campaign. It is important that resources are allocated to fulfill the requirements of your SEO strategy in the best manner. That’s when Gantt charts come to your rescue. Gantt charts help you break down big projects into small chunks so that tasks can be delegated and responsibilities shared.

#3. Monitor and Report Progress

One of the biggest strengths of Gantt charts is that small-sized chunks (tasks) help people working on a campaign to get a better visual picture of the timeline. This helps them understand how their tasks are dependent on other tasks and how any change is going to impact the overall progress. 

#4. Control and Communicate the Schedule

As you get to see who is working on which task, so if tasks are lagging behind their respective deadlines, you can see that clearly on your Gantt chart software. According to Forbes, Gantt charts are one of the most helpful, comprehensive choices for time-sensitive projects that benefit from establishing a timetable.

#5. Display Milestones

Every SEO campaign has some important points – audit, on-page optimization, content creation. These important points can be considered as milestones in your SEO campaign. Milestones are helpful for others to quickly view big important dates and check it off when they are completed. 

#6. Increased Accountability

It’s lovely how Gantt charts make team members accountable for their work. As Gantt charts display the percentage completion of each and every task, team members know how to schedule their plan and what to prioritize on. Both managers and team members can use them to track progress and highlight major failures and successes. High performing team members can leverage this documentation to get a large bonus to testify accountability and hard work and get large bonuses. 

#7. Measure and Track Your SEO Success

SEO can take a lot of your time and effort and what’s harder is not being able to measure and track the overall progress of your campaign. But one of the biggest advantages of Gantt charts is that you get to see things with a lot more clarity. To see if keywords are researched or not, the audit is done or not, content is being produced or any other metric, track your SEO plan daily, weekly, or monthly basis and keep it on track!

#8. Enhanced Productivity

One of the biggest advantages of Gantt charts is how effortlessly it could help you manage deadlines and enhance overall efficiency. Individuals can stay on top of their tasks as you get to see task assignment and campaign progress displayed in a visual format. For example, if only 60 percent of progress is made and the deadline is approaching near, team members can make changes in the strategy or take corrective measures such as reducing workload or adding a few more people for faster completion. 

What to Look for in Your Gantt Chart Software?

While no two Gantt chart software could be the same, but every ‘good’ Gantt chart tool needs to have certain features in place. 

Let’s talk about them briefly:

• You must be able to create milestones to identify key tasks in a campaign
• Set dependencies between different tasks to reflect how a change in their scheduling is going to impact the overall progress
• File-sharing features to collaborate easily and effectively
• Ability to export them as PDF or other handy ways
  

What are you Waiting for?

By now, you must have been convinced about the worthiness of online Gantt chart software, especially in the SEO world. Take a look at the available options and choose the one which is tailor-made as per your requirements.

Good luck!

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Vartika Kashyap

Vartika Kashyap is the Marketing Manager at ProofHub and has been one of the LinkedIn Top Voices in 2017. Her articles are inspired by office situations and work-related events. She likes to write about productivity, team building, work culture, leadership, entrepreneurship among others and contributing to a better workplace is what makes her click.

Latest posts by Vartika Kashyap (see all)

• How To Use Project Management Tools For Content Marketing - September 20, 2019
• How to Use Gantt Charts For Your Next SEO Campaign - September 5, 2018