SEO Learning Center >> Campaign Management

What is SEO Campaign Management?

What does it mean to manage an SEO campaign? What types of activities are involved? Is SEO campaign management easy, or should it be left to the professionals?

These are some of the questions we will address in this lesson on search engine optimization success.

The way I see it, properly managing an SEO campaign requires three actions and three character traits. The primary actions are research, publishing and networking. The three character traits are patience, persistence and progressive learning. Let's look at each of these SEO campaign management elements individually.

Research - Before you can do anything else with your SEO campaign, you need to do the proper research. This includes researching your audience, key phrases, the competition and more. When I take on a new client, I spend the first few days doing nothing but research. It's well worth the effort, because it allows me to create a road map to success and paves the way for proper SEO campaign management.

Publishing - If you can begin to think like an Internet publisher, you will have a big advantage over your competition in terms of online visibility. It doesn't matter what industry you are in -- real estate, software, landscaping, high tech -- any business can benefit from an online publishing program. Thus, SEO campaign management should include a regular process of publishing (web content, articles, press releases, blogging, etc.).

Networking - Search engines favor websites that have many inbound links (links from other websites). When a lot of other websites link to yours, the resulting "link popularity" will boost your search engine rankings. Networking is a great way to obtain links from relevant websites, so it should be a primary part of your SEO campaign management.

Patience - It's a common misconception that a website should appear in search engine results immediately after its creation. This couldn't be further from reality. It can take weeks to be ranked well in MSN, and months for Yahoo and Google. And that's assuming you are doing everything right from an SEO standpoint. Patience is an important character trait for anyone managing an SEO campaign.

Persistence - Search engine optimization is a campaign, not a battle. It therefore requires an ongoing, persistent effort. But that doesn't mean you should abandon hope. On the contrary, earning first-page position in the search engines can change your entire business model for the better! It's a worthy venture, so you must persist.

Progressive Learning - If you are serious about SEO campaign management, you need to become a student of all things Internet-related. Learn everything you can about Internet publishing techniques, how search engines work, what technologies are out there to simplify your tasks. Commit yourself to perpetual progress, and you'll commit yourself to success.

Obviously, these are not the only elements of SEO campaign management. But if you have these six things, you have an instant edge over your online competitors. Good luck!