14 replies to this topic

[sunnymonkey]

Hey all!

How many of you keep a detailed log of the changes / seo work that you do on clients / your own websites? Am really interested to know

- How much detail do you go in to
- How do you record it all? Time systems? Excel Files? Text document?
- Have you found too much or too little detail to be good / bad?

We are looking at doing something like an SVN to record changes made to tags, content etc so that we can easily see what change have been made to a clients website so would love to get feedback from anyone here that has had to do similar and who may have advice on what things helped or what pit falls to watch out for.

Thanks all!
Sunny

[EGOL]

I keep track of mine on paper, in a notebook. I don't log every change, just the ones that I am unsure of what the results will be or the ones where I am going to try LOTS of different options (such as adsense placment, etc.)

My log includes SEO, adsense changes, changes for improved user engagement, etc.

I make a quick sketch of the page (just skeleton) and mark in red what was changed/moved/added. I also include the date, the reason why change was made and the hoped-for result. I reserve an entire page for each change that I document because sometimes several changes are made and then compared.

I then upload and check it later. On high traffic pages I can tell if something is bombing or working in under an hour. On low traffic pages it might take days to have enough visitor data. So I schedule the evaluation on my calendar. Anything that I write down is checked and the results assessed.

I then decide if more changes might yield even better results (if it worked). Those are then sketched, done and evaluated.

I have some pages that have been through 10-20 different adsense placements to arrive at an optimum balance between content presentation and income. For single high traffic pages or where you have lots of pages built in a similar format, this level of experimentation can pay back big time.

I might spend 20% of my time reworking old pages. Lots of this is changing opening image, first paragraph of content (looking for the "hook"), etc.

[Respree]

I thinking developing an understanding of relationships between cause and effect is important.

You'd be hard pressed to answer the question, "Hey you did a fantastic SEO job on my site. What did you do?" if you didn't keep a record of what you did to get them there.

[Black_Knight]

At Fresh Egg we have a special online site where we note all the tasks of our SEO work for each client, in areas sorted by campaign/client, and which our clients can log into to see the SEO notes and status at any time. Then at the end of each month, this tool can collect all the notes from the month together, and with a covering summary, this forms the SEO activity report for each month, emailed directly to each client.

Naturally, we can use the same tool to check the entire history of SEO activity, by date, for any client in moments, referring back to any point we wish/need.

[bwelford]

Good to see you, Ammon. Is that your own software or is it something that's generally available, e.g. a Wiki?

[Black_Knight]

It's a custom built database application, Barry, but not the hardest thing for a developer to create.

If one wants to be clever, one can make it import some data from other SEO tools, thus really making monthly reporting very easy, slick, and consistent too, while automatically maintaining a full record. It only takes a few moments to type in an activity summary and time taken each time you perform some actions for the campaign. Very worthwhile.

[A.N.Onym]

That sounds exactly like the custom-built project management software (built on Lotus) that we are using and I am already writing TSRs that log the project activity. Pretty slick, indeed.

Overall, though, I prefer to keep the minor details in my head. Keeps my memory sharp and allows me to access and use it at any time, even in sleep This approach works for a single, long-term project, not for client work, though.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 15 May 2008 - 10:07 PM.

[Joshua Sciarrino]

Just wanted to say, I'm glad we got another monkey around here. That's no code word or nothing, just commenting on the s/n. Lol

P.S. I enjoyed the information shared.

Edited by Flying Monkeys, 28 May 2008 - 07:01 AM.

[crm911]

When I worked for an agency we zipped up a copy of files before we touched them. We also documented before and after snippets of code we changed. However, there was no central knowledgebase of learnings other than a Best practices folder where we kept nuggets of information when someone remembered to document it.

[cybersavvy]

I looked into all sorts of programs to track SEO activities for clients (no in-house coder to create exactly what we needed) and ended with Easy Time Tracking Pro.

There is a small timer window that shows in the bottom right of everyone's screen, you just press start when you begin any task, choose who is doing the work, which client, which task etc and all clients are listed in a central db so you can see who did what, when, for whom, how long for etc. You can put descripts in for the job being done, and then work actually done at the end.

End of month, create a report, and we have also added our rates in for different tasks so it also creates a summary or detailed invoice. Email the lot as PDFs to clients at the end of the month and job done.

Not 100% perfect but at $50 and after hammering it through the 30 day free trial, on the whole it does what we need to do. After 10 years doing it manually, I recommend finding time management software and can't believe we didn't do it earlier! Sadly, it doesn't also write the reports for client recommendations, future strategies etc but hey, we'd be out of work if it did

[phaithful]

I've always found a combination of Excel and MS Project work great for performance tracking.

Primarily our team has a spreadsheet where we track all scheduled changes and improvements, sort of a large "to do list". The spreadsheet has several columns (website, product, change type (e.g. bug fix, a/b test, new content, etc.), description, milestone date, launch date, and action items).

The description is typically 2-3 sentences describing what the changes are and the expected improvements (e.g. revenue gains, CTR improvements, traffic projects, etc.); and the Action Items work section is where much of the details are managed. Each week we update the Action Items and list what has been completed, what are potential roadblocks, etc.

When things are launched, we move the completed items from one sheet to a "launched" items sheet, along with the ticket number (e.g. bugzilla / other ticketing systems) and the csv build.

All along the way this data is inputed into MS Project to build a nice visible timeline of when things were launched and for which products. Since the ticket and csv build number is attached to each entry, we can then go back to the ticket or run a diff against the code to see what specific additions / changes were made.

Things like Rank, CTR, conversion rate, etc. are all tracked through Excel reports and then are married up with the MS Project data.

So at any given time you should be able to see what content was launched and how that effected your overall business objectives. It's also helpful to add outages, and known bugs into the MS Project timeline so when you run revenue reporting over a duration of time, you can notice if there are unusual peaks and valleys due to those anomalies.

note: This really works best when you have to work with many different engineering teams, properties, and have project management resources available. Also, I don't have much agency type experience so I've never had to worry about reporting to clients like Ammon, but this worked with managing several large in-house web properties.

[jendy]

I have just started using Tortoise SVN in my agency for our web development projects (team of three developers) and its working out great.

I'd definitely reccommend checking it out.

Still to crack documenting our SEO activity for clients though...

[Pittbug]

There's 2 ways I keep track. First of all I use a ticketing system to note the specific modifications which includes as much detail as possible (URLs, HTML snippets, external examples, etc.)

If the change is significant enough I may keep track of various statistics (usually in a spreadsheet, but sometimes in a database) in conjunction with the ticketing system. This helps me plot changes over time, which then helps me justify further changes, reversing them or making alterations.

[wyliet]

Track everything.

Now.

Do it.

Don't just stand there, do it.

I've found that it is very difficult to track the past. Some might say impossible.

Even if a month down the line something you've tracked is worthless, then better to find out having tracked it for a month than to find out it is an amazing source of information and have lost all that valuable data.

So track like Benton Fraser.

;-)

[loki]

i've been using outlook tasks, excel and notepad for ever and it's worked reasonably well. it does have the advantage of being very flexible but i'm interested in a all singing/all dancing piece of kit that will save me time and help with planning.

i've been recommended maximizer but as yet haven't had time to take a look at it (typical).