Managing a successful SEO campaign without the use of any tools or external resources is like trying to buy 50 bags of groceries without a shopping cart – it won’t be long before you’re overloaded with more than you can handle.
As in every other advanced profession, the art and science of SEO requires certain equipment, often in the form of software, advanced data management methods, and in some cases, services that assist with the completion of tedious tasks.
One of the most essential tools in every SEO Agency’s arsenal is Microsoft Excel, which lets you utilize spreadsheets and formulas to facilitate powerful analysis and planning.
If you’re not convinced that you need Excel to achieve optimal SEO results, consider the following:
1. Saving Time By Centralizing and Organizing Analytics
When you’re using multiple analytics tools to gather data, switching between interfaces can be confusing and time-consuming. This is why most tools (i.e. – Google Analytics, OpenSiteExplorer, etc.) let you export data into .CSV, .TSV, and other Excel compatible formats. Once the data is exported you can open it up in Excel, and with the use of Pivot Tables and VLOOKUP you can combine data from multiple sources into a single spreadsheet that can be rearranged and sorted to suit your analytical needs.
2. Helping You Understand the Most Important Attributes and Statistics
By using Excel to bring all of your important SEO analysis under one roof, you’ll be able to better familiarize yourself with the attributes and statistics that matter most in each campaign. To gain a full understanding of how Excel can be used to master SEO, it would be wise to read up about using Excel for SEO. This will help you not only help you improve the rankings of your own sites and the sites of your current clients more quickly, it will also give you an essential skill set that is listed as a requirement in most SEO job descriptions – proficiency with Excel.
3. Simplifying Strategy Development
Excel spreadsheets make it easy to compile and sort lists of keywords, titles, topic ideas, inbound links, Page URLs and anything else that you might want to work on to build your rankings. Instead of jotting primitive notes down in a text document or on a piece of paper, consider the advantages brainstorming with Excel.
Every SEO Specialist Should Know How to Use Excel
If you’ve ever read job descriptions in the field of SEO, you’ve probably noticed that most of the positions require you to have at least a basic understanding of Excel. There’s a reason for this – along with Google Docs, Microsoft Excel is the industry standard for formula and spreadsheet-based data analysis. If you really want to be able to say you’re a master in SEO and have the skills to back up this claim, there’s no way around it, you’re going to need to learn how to use Excel.