SEO Project Management with Basecamp

May 5th 2011 // by Steve // SEO Tools,SEO Videos

Home > SEO Tools > SEO Project Management with Basecamp

Well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag on a few of the projects I’m working on to replace Client Services as a business model. One of the projects is a kick-butt pet travel website called Pet Hotels of America (did you catch the link there? Yah, well I earned it, you’ll see in a moment). The business models are subscription and affiliate marketing and things are starting to come together.

As my clients well know, I manage all of my projects through an awesome online project management tool by 37Signals called Basecamp. I’ve used many other systems and am a fan of various PM software, but there’s just something about Basecamp that really does it for me. Let me give you a virtual walk-through of the different tabs and features from the eyes of an internet marketer.

Overview Tab

Since I’m deep into most of the project work, I don’t really use the Overview tab much. However, if you are a project manager, director, production coordinator, or operations manager, you might use this tab to get a high level view of what’s been accomplished recently, what milestones are coming up (or are late – yikes), and how active your team is with a project. Here is a screenshot below:

Hierarchy of Basecamp PM Software

You’ll want to pay attention to this because it’s the backbone of what makes this project management system so great. There are only a few production tabs in Basecamp, but each has an important purpose and each should tie into one another easily. Here we go….

1. Create Milestones first; mine are typically “On-Page SEO Work Completed”, “SMM Benchmark Hit”, etc
2. Create a To-Do List (or several) associated with each milestone; I have “On-Page SEO To-Dos” and one might be “replace duplicate content”
3. Create a collaborate Writeboard to discuss core topics with version-tracking enable to see who changed or update the Writeboard
4. Create Messages from Basecamp or right from your mobile device that other can see, add attachments to and interact with from a mobile device; I used messages to share ideas before they become a Writeboard
5. The Files tab allow you to upload gigabytes of files; use “Upload a New Version” to archive a copy of the original
6. Time is the perfect way to capture billable hours on a project so you don’t become the victim of vendor abuse.

To-Dos – Paste SEO Task List Here

Under Settings in Basecamp, I typically select the To-Dos tab as my start page so I can quickly see a list of everything assigned to me. If you’re a manager or above, you may be fine with viewing the latest activity on the Overview tab.

If you were to look at my Best Boilerplate SEO Strategy post on Quora, you’d be fairly close to where I start with a new client. Each heading in that strategy would be a milestone and each bullet would be a task. Take a look at the screenshot of Pet Hotels of America’s To-Dos below:

There’s no affiliate program here guys and I don’t work for 37Signals. I do, however, use Basecamp for every single project I’m working on in addition to allowing many of clients into the system so that can upload files and such.

Do You Like Basecamp?

If you’re a fan of Basecamp or any other project management software, please share your experience below. Thanks for reading!