{"id":108399,"date":"2014-06-13T10:29:47","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T02:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/?p=8399"},"modified":"2022-10-04T09:29:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T01:29:39","slug":"time-tracking-software-for-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/time-tracking-software-for-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"How Time Tracking Helped our SEO Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Time<\/a><\/p>\n

If you didn’t know, I’ve always loved the idea of a home-office. I lived in the SEO Hacker headquarters for 8 months before getting married. It was one of the most awesome management times of my life. To see my team <\/a>immediately after opening the doors of my bedroom gives an amazing feeling of comfort and efficiency.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I got married just last February<\/a>. Things changed after that. I had to move north – an hour and a half away from my home-office. These days, I go to the SEO Hacker headquarters just every Monday. The rest of the week is spent on meetings and working from home to keep my efficiency on legwork the way it is.<\/p>\n

It’s an arrangement that most managers will not be comfortable in. As (I believe) the best management style in a growing company<\/a> is still through a face-to-face exchange of ideas. Days went by and our numbers as a team, were dwindling. I was left concerned on how to get the team back on its feet again.<\/p>\n

So I asked around and one of my mentors relayed to me how he was doing it to his remote team.<\/p>\n

“Skype and Hubstaff.”<\/p>\n

I asked some volunteers from my team – who were willing to test this route. There were a small few who were willing to do so. The results of the test were positive for me and some of my teammates so we decided to implement it.<\/p>\n

Everyone in the team became more aware of the way we spend our time – especially since Hubstaff takes random screenshots of our screens. I personally opted take screenshots of mine too so as to be transparent to my team of my activities on my computer.<\/p>\n

The result? Less stress for me to manage remotely, and naturally, more productivity and efficiency from each of us. I immediately begin to see the people in my team who are not producing as much as they should, as well as appreciate the ones who go the extra mile. Great team players will appreciate the fact that their work is being seen – because they do great work. It’s only the players who have something to hide who will naturally not appreciate a tool such as Hubstaff.<\/p>\n

\"DaveI shot Dave Nevogt (co-founder and CMO of Hubstaff) a message, thanking him of this awesome tool and asked him if he could do a guest post here in SEO Hacker.<\/p>\n

So without further ado, please give a round of applause to the man behind Hubstaff – Mr. Dave Nevogt!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit it\u2026 time tracking could be one of the most un-sexy topics on the planet. \u00a0Before I started my company, Hubstaff.com<\/a>, I had an SEO business with several very high-end clients with annual budgets well into six figures. \u00a0I also started a multi-million dollar golf instructional business fully online by the time I was 25. \u00a0To the average person, those would seem like exciting businesses, but it always seemed to me like something was missing.<\/p>\n

\"Time<\/p>\n

In building those previous businesses, I learned that it was entrepreneurship itself that was my passion. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t golf or SEO (even though I started those businesses to follow my passions), it was the process of competing on the open market and seeing something that was at some point just an idea, turned into a source of value for clients and revenue for my business.<\/p>\n

It was like my form of a video game.<\/p>\n

I also found out that running a team of people was extremely stressful<\/a>\u2026 like “heart attack waiting to happen” stressful for me. \u00a0I started searching for a solution that would help me manage my virtual team in the SEO business<\/a> but failed to find anything of value. I wanted to understand how much time my employees were spending on the projects that I had assigned them, if that time was productive, and how much I could bill out to clients.<\/p>\n

Now\u2026 I\u2019m a business-person, so of course I was thinking about the possibility of filling that market gap. \u00a0To make a long story short, four years and several hundred thousand in capital later, Hubstaff started taking clients in late 2013. In the next few paragraphs I\u2019m going to give you three ideas on how I use time tracking every day to make my own business more profitable and how you can do the same.<\/p>\n

Here it goes:<\/p>\n

1. Client Transparency<\/b><\/p>\n

If you want more clients (especially in SEO), one option is to become very transparent. One of the hardest parts about SEO is that clients almost always equate success to rankings. \u00a0SEO professionals don\u2019t get credit for the foundational-level work<\/a> that is a prerequisite to the rankings. \u00a0Much of the reason for this is that the client doesn\u2019t actually \u201csee\u201d the work. \u00a0To them, it\u2019s like nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

The solution to this is to create a living documentation trail of your work and letting them see over your shoulder in real time.<\/p>\n

Hubstaff takes screenshots, and by using a time tracking software<\/a> with screenshots and project tracking you are creating that documentation trail. \u00a0You can send them reports with a few clicks or even provide them view only access to your Hubstaff dashboard.<\/p>\n

\"Hubstaff<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at some of the things that may happen by creating this type of transparent client relationship.<\/p>\n