15 Best SEO Agency Management Software

Managing an SEO agency can be overwhelming. Between keeping up with ever-changing search engine algorithms, tracking the progress of your many ongoing campaigns, and creating reports to keep your clients in the loop, there’s a lot to juggle. Add an underwhelming team of SEO specialists who lack the motivation and resources to perform at their best, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

SEO agency management software helps business owners streamline operations, improve team performance, and deliver better client results. This guide will explore the best agency management software for SEO agencies, focusing on what features to look for and how to choose the right solution for your business. 
 
Orchestra's solution, grow your productized service, is a valuable tool to help SEO agencies achieve their objectives, such as an all-in-one toolkit for developing services. This software allows agencies to organize and automate their operations to boost team morale, improve performance, and enhance service delivery.

Importance of Management Software for SEO Agency

SEO management is vital for any business looking to succeed online. It refers to managing and improving an SEO strategy over time.  As SEO is constantly changing, this process requires a lot of organization and communication to get it right. SEO management can refer to your company or your agency’s management of your SEO strategy.

As a part of SEO management, your team or agency develops, leads, and modifies your plan to maximize your results and achieve your marketing, sales, and business goals. If you partner with an agency, your business may sign with a specialized agency, like a local SEO company or full-service digital marketing agency.

As many internal marketing departments handle multiple responsibilities and don’t have a background in SEO, it’s common for businesses to invest in professional SEO management services. With SEO management, your team or agency develops, leads, and modifies your strategy to maximize your results and achieve your marketing, sales, and business goals. Whether your business partners with an agency or manages your strategy in-house, it’s essential to understand what SEO management includes. That way, you can build a foundation for a competitive strategy that drives revenue for your company.

How Can Agency Management Software Help Your SEO Agency?

Management software is crucial for an SEO agency because it streamlines operations, enhances efficiency, and delivers better results. Here’s why:

1. Task Organization and Workflow Automation  

SEO involves keyword research, content optimization, link building, and analytics. Management software centralizes task tracking and automates workflows, ensuring deadlines are met. Examples of Tools are Asana and Trello.

2. Improved Client Collaboration  

SEO agencies must communicate strategies, progress, and results. Management software enables transparent reporting and efficient collaboration with clients. Examples of Tools are Monday.com and Basecamp.

3. Data Integration and Analysis  

Integrating tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Ahrefs provides actionable insights, helping agencies make data-driven decisions faster. Examples of Tools AgencyAnalytics BrightEdge.

4. Resource and Team Management  

Proper allocation of team resources ensures balanced workloads and prevents delays in deliverables. Examples of Tools ClickUp Zoho Projects.

5. Reporting and Scalability  

Automating reports reduces manual effort and provides professional, real-time updates to clients. As the agency grows, software ensures processes remain efficient. Examples of Tools are DashThis and ReportGarden.

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15 Best SEO Agency Management Software

1. Orchestra

Orchestra is an all-in-one growth toolkit designed for creatives ready to scale. It helps agencies launch productized services effortlessly with a branded, white-labeled client portal, task management, real-time analytics, and no coding needed—just your Stripe account.

2. Monday.com

Monday.com is an excellent agency management system that helps streamline workflows and task visualizations. Some of the biggest companies in the world, like Hulu and NBC, use Monday.com, and there’s no reason why your agency shouldn’t give it a whirl, either. You can create boards or visual tables to sync items and updates in real-time. Status buttons and other presentable options include Gantt charts, maps, forms, Timeline, Calendar, Kanban, and more.

Pros

• Forever free plan available for up to two seats

• Modern, intuitive, and visual dashboard

• Highly customizable with 200-plus templates for creating boards and automations

Cons

• Confusing pricing plans because of per-seat (user) pricing

• Minimum team size of three for paid plans

• The free trial is only 14 days, whereas most project management platforms give 30

3. Harvest

Harvest is an easy tool for tracking time and expenses. It provides clear reports on time spent on a project and the agency’s billable hours. Harvest’s integration capabilities make it easy to integrate with your current workflow and tech stack.

Pros

• Clean interface and easy navigation

• Option to generate invoices and share them with clients through email

• Comprehensive integrations (50+)

Cons

• Per-user pricing can be costly for larger teams

• Customization and reporting capabilities are limited

• The software seems too basic for larger enterprises or those with complex project management needs

4. Salesforce

Salesforce Cloud CRM is a fantastic piece of software for agency management. Although, as a CRM, it has a wide range of functionality, including a huge number of integrations, one of the areas where it truly shines is managing your communications with existing clients. Regarding contact management, Salesforce provides a clear overview of your clients, including activity history, key contacts, customer communications, and internal account discussions. It’s easy to access critical customer data, such as their communication history, to gain a complete picture of every client.

Pros

• Total sales pipeline management.

• A high number of integrations are available.

• Advanced reporting and customizable dashboards.

Cons

• Expensive in comparison to competitors.

• Limited customer support.

5. Notion

Notion is a robust agency management software program used by giants like Verizon, McDonald’s, Pixar, and The Wall Street Journal. It is the ultimate workspace organization app designed to empower your teams and give them unprecedented collaborative control when working on different projects. From creating product roadmaps to codifying processes and building CRMs, Notion has it all. You can use it to create content calendars, prepare notes and documentation, decide on participants, send out meeting invites, and integrate with other apps.

Pros

• Great note-taking capabilities

• Very easy to use and customize

• Affordable pricing

Cons

• Lacks advanced project management features

• Keeping multiple projects can get tedious

• Poor security features

6. Productive

Productive is a well-rounded agency management software with powerful functionality that gives you the tools and data to keep an agency running smoothly. The tool was built by a team with a decade of experience in founding, managing, and scaling a software development shop, so it's especially well-suited to digital agencies.

Pros

• Customizable Dashboards: Enhanced customization allows users to tailor their workspace to their needs, providing a more personalized and efficient management experience.

• Integrated Financial Management: This feature integrates financial tracking with project management, offering a seamless experience for budget and expense oversight.

• Client Portal: Including a client portal sets Productive.io apart, enhancing client engagement and transparency.

Cons

• Learning Curve: New users may find the platform slightly complex, requiring time to fully understand and utilize all its features.

• Customization Constraints: While customizable, some users might need more customization options for their specific needs.

7. Scoro

Scoro project management offers a range of features to help you manage your projects and resources. It’s a good option for service-providing businesses looking for a single platform to manage their day-to-day operations, but it can be difficult to onboard. Users like Scoro because it’s good business management software with many features to help teams collaborate and manage tasks. Since it focuses on project management, time tracking, and invoicing, it can be a good choice for businesses looking to automate daily processes.

Pros

• Data-focused and detailed, perfect for project managers

• Offers a continuous and logical flow, from quote to project to invoice to final project delivery, suitable for many different business processes

• Provides a good onboarding experience

Cons

• It is a lot to take in, quite overwhelming at the beginning

• Moving to Scoro will take quite a bit of time due to the amount of data we will have to transfer, and the time it’ll take to introduce our team to Scoro

• The UI, although modern, could use some improvements to package the amount of data it presents or requires better, like in the many numbers we can enter when working on our quotes

8. Teamwork

Teamwork is a project management platform built to help agencies manage the entire lifecycle of their client work in one place. It provides all the features you’d expect, including integrated time tracking, financial management, robust reporting, and free client access, to ensure your projects are delivered on time and within budget.

Pros

• Free forever plan and low-cost paid plans starting at $5.99 per month

• Deep level of customization

• Easy-to-use automations

Cons

• A minimum of three users for the low-priced paid plan

• Slower run time once more work gets added

• Most features are only unlocked with the Deliver plan or above

9. Zapier

Zapier isn’t a regular AMS but is excellent for automating tasks between apps. It connects software for you, so you don't need coding skills. For example, you can create a “Zap” to add new leads to your CRM from your website or get a Slack alert when an invoice gets paid.

Pros

• Free forever plan and low-cost paid plans starting at $5.99 per month

• Deep level of customization

• Easy-to-use automations

Cons

• A minimum of three users for the low-priced paid plan

• Slower run time once more work gets added

• Most features are only unlocked with the Deliver plan or above

10. Freshworks CRM

Freshworks CRM makes it easier for teams to track leads, automate marketing campaigns, segment customers into different categories, manage customer data in one place, and quickly build customer relationships. Features like contact management, lead scoring, customer segmentation, task automation, and customer insights allow businesses to increase revenue and better understand their customers.

Pros

• Pipeline management to visualize the entire sales process organized by stage

• Sales Goals to set and track goals based on revenue or the number of deals

• Filter, sort, and search functionality on the mobile app

Cons

• Project management features are only available on expensive plans

• Limited reporting capabilities to customize key metrics

11. Creatio

Sales Creatio has undergone several name changes but remains a top CRM choice. Its specialty is larger sales organizations, and it does a good job catering to their needs. Creatio also offers tools for business process management (BPM), marketing automation, and help desks, enabling customers to address multiple business objectives in a unified way.

Pros

• Multifaceted and highly customizable unified business solution

• Rooted in solid CRM functionality

• Creatio CRM helps SMBs streamline processes from lead management to closing

Cons

• Relatively short trial period

• Hefty feature set

• Customization can be daunting at the outset

12. Screendragon

Screendragon is agency management software designed to manage projects, people, processes, and profitability in one place. It is easy to use and offers powerful customization. The world’s top agency groups, such as Omnicom, WPP, and IPG, rely on Screendragon to power their agency operations.

Pros

• Screendragon offers flexibility to deliver a solution fully aligned with the organization’s needs. Brands can create and edit their terminology, templates, forms, workflow rules, notifications, reports, and rates.

• It provides an enterprise-class hosting environment and service levels. Moreover, its sophisticated permission controls ensure that only the right people see the correct data at the right time.

Cons

• Some users encounter occasional system slowness.

13. Workable

Workable is excellent for recruitment agencies. It makes hiring easier with job postings, candidate tracking, and team collaboration. Plus, it uses AI to help you find suitable candidates faster.

Pros

• Comprehensive candidate evaluations: Workable provides all the necessary data for reporting, visualizations, and understanding the basics of hiring strategy and recruiting metrics, enabling a more thorough assessment of candidates

• Swift and straightforward onboarding: The onboarding process with Workable is quick and easy, making it less time-consuming for new users to get started

• User-friendly interface: Workable, intuitive, and easy to use, reducing the need for extensive training for new employees

Cons

• Incompatibility with virtual conferencing services: Workable does not integrate with Zoom or other virtual conferencing services, making it difficult to schedule interviews

• Email syncing issues: Emails from users' inboxes do not automatically sync or appear immediately on Workable, causing delays in communication

14. Kantata

Kantata is an agency management system that can manage everything from client relationships to workflows and project tracking. This highly customizable tool allows agencies of all sizes to streamline operations and increase profits. This article will explain how to use Kantata for successful agency management.

Pros

• Intuitive Task Management: Kantata simplifies work organization by allowing easy assignment and tracking tasks and subtasks.

• Real-time Collaboration: It supports immediate communication and file-sharing among team members, ensuring everyone stays updated.

• Robust Reporting: Kantata offers comprehensive reporting features that aid in making informed decisions and tracking project progress effectively.

Cons:

• Limited Integrations: Kantata doesn’t support many third-party integrations, which may limit its flexibility and usability.

• Learning Curve: Some users might find Kantata challenging to navigate initially, requiring time to grasp its functionalities fully.

15. ClickUp

ClickUp can be a good solution for agencies looking for an intuitive project management tool with many features to help teams collaborate, manage tasks, and track progress. Its flexibility and ease of use make it a popular choice for businesses of all sizes; however, some users noted that this can be a downside.

Pros

• 11+ ways to view project progress and data

• Helpful "Chat" view for collaboration

• Team view for organizing tasks by team member

Cons

• Customizability can be overwhelming to new users

• Not great at compiling project feedback

3 Tips On How to Handle SEO Agency

1. Streamline Your Agency with Orchestra

Orchestra offers a comprehensive growth toolkit that helps agencies launch and manage productized services. This all-in-one platform provides a white-labeled client portal, task management, and real-time analytics to help you organize and collaborate with clients. You can customize your setup with integrations like Slack and webhooks to enhance your service and deliver a branded experience.

2. Clearly Define Your Project Workflows

Clearly defining your project workflows is essential for effective SEO project management. This involves breaking down the step-by-step processes for completing an SEO project and establishing clear roles for team members.

3. Set Your Team Up for Success

Even the best-designed workflows are only as good as the team executing them. That’s why effective SEO project management also requires strong team management skills. We think about team roles in the following terms: Doers, reviewers, and communicators.

Benefits of Using Management Software for SEO Agency

1. Enhanced Team Communication and Collaboration  

Team communication and collaboration significantly improve when all project data is stored in a single location. SEO project management software enables you to delegate tasks, tag team members in comments, and share files in one place. Real-time updates allow you to keep everyone up-to-date about even the most minor project plans and details. SEO project management tools also prevent conversations from getting lost in what otherwise would have been email threads or instant messaging chats.

This may sound trivial, but context switching is a natural productivity killer, potentially costing you up to 40% of your daily productivity. Therefore, this software is especially advantageous for teams using the Agile methodology, where keeping information centralized is critical when things are less structured and moving more fluidly. Communication and teamwork are especially crucial when a project team comprises members from different departments or in an organization using remote or hybrid work.

2. Better Resource Management for SEO Projects  

Resource management is vital to any project team, whether you’re part of an agency, a freelance contractor, a marketing resource manager, or providing professional product services. Each member of your team plays a pivotal role in your success. And together, they are more than the sum of their parts. Resource management planning can help project managers identify and allocate resources across a project or portfolio, use multiple views to compare and edit data, and generate reports, diagrams, charts, and more.

Therefore, regardless of your life, you must track and allocate resources like Skilled and unskilled labor, Staff schedules, Billable and non-billable clocked time, Project and facility budgets, Building resources (rooms, equipment, etc.) This will help you to identify if you are facing resource bottlenecks and proactively address them. Project management software can help you manage time using features to build work calendars, make gantt charts, create resource calendars, schedule staff, track time spent on tasks, reserve equipment and spaces, and analyze where resources are going (and when).

Leveraging employee skills and strengths, Many project management tools incorporate skills mapping into their resource management functionality. This is super helpful because not only can you better assign work based on people’s skill sets, but you also give employees a chance to self-identify their strengths; according to Gallup, Simply learning their strengths makes employees 7.8% more productive, and teams that focus on strengths every day have 12.5% greater productivity.

3. Organized and Centralized Project Data  

With project management software, you can safely centralize project data no matter what kind of project you’re working on. For example, a project timeline or a Kanban board can display your milestones, dependencies, assignees, and other helpful information. This results in an organized system of information that promotes transparency. With a single source of truth, every team member can work on the proper documents, make real-time updates, and know when other team members have made changes.

There are various types of project management software, each designed to cater to different needs and preferences, such as marketing project management software, cloud-based project management software, and enterprise project management software. Improving data access and making project data accessible to all team members is crucial for effective project management. Say goodbye to time wasted digging through email threads and looking inside every folder for missing information while trying to juggle your tasks.

And this time does add respondents to a McKinsey study reported that 30% of total enterprise time [is] spent on non-value-added tasks because of poor data quality and availability. However, not all of us work at an enterprise level. Employees have 40 hours logged on their weekly timesheet after time tracking. They have spent 10 minutes daily looking around for the information they need. That totals up to 50 minutes a week, or 43+ hours a year, trying to find what they need.

4. Simplified Project Reporting and Analytics  

Project management software not only houses your data but also gives you insights into many aspects of your processes and projects. Most project management software will come with customizable dashboards for reporting at a glance (upcoming deadlines, task completion rates) and in-depth business intelligence solutions that vary in power across solutions. Some project management tools, like monday.com or Wrike, focus on ease of use first and foremost. Pre-built report templates and other user-friendly tools can be used to track your project's success.

These types of project management software can be more challenging to use. You may prefer one type over the other or a combination of both. Moreover, many reporting features will let you change the level of detail to best communicate with a specific stakeholder group, whether that’s leadership, the board of directors, or members of a different department. Improve your current processes to reduce time and budget waste and communicate information clearly to stakeholders across various stages of the project lifecycle, becoming more data-driven.

Simplified reporting and analytics also make data more accessible to every team member. This can create a more data-driven culture and improve data literacy among those not specializing in data analytics. This is important because, according to Forrester and Tableau, 82% of leaders expect all employees to have basic data literacy. Still, just 47% of employees say their organization has offered them data training.

5. Improved Remote Work  

Now that most of your data can be found and understood in the project management tool, your whole team can track project progress, refer to due dates, get onboarded to a new project, or work from anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection. Most project management tools are delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS); you pay a monthly fee and can log into your tool anywhere, anytime, using an iOS or Android app, your web browser, or all of the above. Most project management software solutions include communication features (commenting, @-ing assignees, email integration) and time-tracking tools.

Both make managing remote teams more accessible and transparent for everyone involved. Benefits for Hybrid and In-Office Teams Whether you’re a remote-first organization or not, facilitating virtual teamwork synchronously and asynchronously will improve your team’s productivity. Not only does it reduce the need to schedule meetings or arrange working sessions, but it also keeps things well-documented.

If a team member is out sick, on vacation, or otherwise unavailable, they’ll still be able to catch up on everything they missed—and they won’t have to rely on debriefs from others. Moreover, it is easy for people to have different recollections and varying critical takeaways from the same conversation. Documented collaboration keeps things consistent and clear.

6. Better Budget Management  

Staying within budget and saving time are always top priorities, and with a project management tool, you can see your data, your resources, how they’re being used, planned vs actual usage, and much more. The best project management software will include budget forecasting, which sifts through data from past projects and spits out accurate estimates for current and upcoming projects.

Most project management tools can be customized to trigger alerts and notifications if you stray from the intended budget. Project management software can also digest complex budgeting data and portray it in readable reports that can be distributed to investors and stakeholders. As a PM, it’s your job to organize and communicate this information regularly; project management tools can help you quickly, offering multiple formats for transmitting data while reducing manual input errors.

Better budget management is particularly relevant as businesses prepare for continued economic uncertainty through 2024. Small and large companies are taking a ‘do more with less’ approach to project and portfolio management, talent development and recruitment efforts, and more.

7. Risk Identification and Mitigation  

Project management tools can show you the bigger picture of how your bits of information piece together. With reports, insights, and various ways to view your data, it’s easier for you to spot issues and opportunities and take action on them as needed. Risk management is multifaceted, so you’ll want to track “opportunities” and “threats.” Risks can provide just as many boons as disadvantages; your job as a project manager is to assess the stakeholders' risk appetite, present accurate risk assessments (qualitative and quantitative risk analysis), and build contingency plans for worst-case scenarios.

Project management software can help you chart and visualize your SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) and digest the whole picture to all stakeholders, clients, customers, partners, and your internal team. The Rise of the Risk Continued technology advancements call for better risk management processes, particularly when it comes to cybersecurity.

Whether your company offers a digital product, an e-commerce experience, or simply has a website, this matters because 2023 research from ISACA showed that over half of the cyber security professionals surveyed (52%) say they are experiencing more cyber attacks than one year ago. Find more information about the security of project management software here.

8. Increased Process Standardization and Automation  

As your team grows, your processes will become more sophisticated, and anyone who wasn’t there when things developed may have difficulty juggling tasks and catching up. Project management software offers different document and information management systems, meaning your team can build, store, and search a database of workflow standards and processes.

These often take the form of process management wikis. Project management software can also help identify recurring tasks. A recurring task is usually ripe for process improvement, and depending on the nature of the activity, the software may even allow you to set up an automation for it (e.g., status reporting, meeting agendas, meeting notes).

Many process workflow automations can also be triggered when a particular action is performed (requesting a job or task, marking an item as complete, etc.). One of the main benefits of workflow automations is that it ensures proper task management, whether pinging a particular team member, updating dependent task deadlines, or requesting more information about a task.

9. Reduced Risk of Scope Creep  

Scope creep is the tendency for projects to get off track. There are many reasons why scope creep can occur: weak leadership, undefined goals, vague ideas, the natural evolution of the project, unforeseen obstacles, and poor team involvement. As mentioned earlier, project management software offers better scheduling capabilities, ensuring the entire team is up-to-date with what’s planned and how long the work will take. Team members can be assigned tasks as they arise and immediately receive notifications for new assignments.

By utilizing project scheduling software, getting a centralized list of project activities, responsible parties, and associated timelines becomes much easier than using a spreadsheet. Most project management software also includes an option to track financial expenditures. Maintaining a centralized ledger promotes stakeholder awareness of how you’re tracking (and forecasting) against budget. You can restrict permissions to “view only” or to select stakeholders if you’re concerned about sharing potentially sensitive information.

10. Reduced Training

Project management software can help new team members learn who does what, communicate more efficiently, see their assigned tasks, look at what’s already been done, and ultimately get to work faster. Project management solutions include built-in file management, file-sharing capabilities, and link trees to other data sources.

(You can even create a separate “project” for onboarding new hires to your organization if they are brand new to the company and the project!) Building an information repository frees team members from playing the trainer role and giving up some of their precious time. With this summary above, you can now channel the benefits that matter most to you into your ultimate project management software requirements checklist.

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Try Orchestra for Free to Grow Your Productized Service Today

Orchestra is a robust tool that helps you manage your productized services. With Orchestra, you can create a client-facing portal for your productized service that you can brand and customize to your liking. You can also organize your productized service's deliverables (tasks), visualize the project's progress, and communicate with clients from the Orchestra platform.

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