Headers I Use

Let's take a quick look at the column names I picked and brainstorm a few others that might be useful in your campaigns.

'Keyword' - Of course, this is the keyword targeted by that particular post or page

'Article', 'Video', 'Picture' - I chose these so I could keep track of what I've done for my different keywords.

Since I do not do IM full time, I work on it sporadically throughout the day. This means I might write an article, or two, during the day but not have time to look up pictures or videos.Also, I don't necessarily write my articles in the order that I entered my keywords. Having these columns allows me to jump around and write articles for topics that I feel like at the time and keep track of my progress.

'Posted'- Pretty self-explanatory. As I mentioned, I get sidetracked and I want to make sure I actually publish what I write and it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.'G+/Digg' - This just lets me know I did something with them on a social network of some sort. If you are very active, you might split these into their own columns for more accurate tracking.

'Ezine' - Simply to remind me if I have posted to an article directory with this keyword yet. (I know I know, this SHOULD say StreetArticles) ;)

'Int Links' - I use this column for my internal linking strategy. I want to make sure that I spread out my internal linking and not miss any pages or link everything to the same page. Every time I make a new blog post or submit an article to a directory with a link to the page, I add 1 to this column.

'Outbound Link' - Obviously, this is where I put the outbound link for that particular post. I cheat a little and place each of my pages' URLs in this column so I can quickly make links to them without constantly loading the pages in a browser. For the rest of the keywords, I simply put the keyword that the outbound link is using.So those are the columns I use, let's look at others that might be appropriate for you to use.

Other Columns To Consider

  • PPC cost/Ad Cost
  • Product being promoted on post or page
  • Search volume metrics - see which should be targeted first
  • Additional social sites - as mentioned above, you might want to track social sites separately
  • Twittered - ?? Maybe copy the tweet's URL for reference.
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grit Premium
Excellent article series. I learned a lot. I think I'm going to implement this strategy. Thanks.
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gooph Premium
Great idea! Thanks for the tutorial. I'm sure it will keep me organized.
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tport144 Premium
For a second there I thought you describing one of my campaigns! This is a great idea for keeping things organized and a great tutorial! I plan to start using Excel to get organized immediately! I use Excel daily at my "day job" and it never occured to me to use it for my projects.
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jchilders Premium
Yeah, I typically think of 'numbers' when I hear Excel. But it's pretty useful for organizing any type of data. If you are better at Excel, I'm sure you can come up with some pretty snazzy forms. My template was pretty quick and dirty, but it gets the job done. :)
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Leatnel Premium
Jon, this sounds like the ideal way to keep your keywords organized! I'm just getting started, again (long story), but my niche has soooo many aspects and thus, many keywords. I already have two documents of keywords, and a bunch written in my notebook. What better time to start organizing them, but at the beginning. I have a little bit of Excel experience, and plan on setting up a template right away.
Thank you very much for this tutorial. It was very helpful.

Leata
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jchilders Premium
Yes, this could definitely help focus on different aspects. You could easily sort your keywords and group them together by 'sub-niche', then tie them all together back to you main niche.
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Deezdz Premium
Great tutorial on staying organized Jon! I have different files in different places for all different campaigns...I haven't found a system yet but this seem like a great template to organize everything.
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jchilders Premium
If you want to keep everything in one place, you could use different 'sheets' within a single Excel document. One for each campaign.

If you do use a single file for everything, I would definitely keep updated copies in different places though, just in case one gets 'lost'. (recently had a harddrive die without warning and lost a bunch of stuff)
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