Search engine optimization may be one of the biggest demands in the marketing industry right now. With more than 3 billion internet users in the world, online marketing is the perfect avenue for brands to reach out to more potential customers. And with the growing number of businesses looking for SEO specialists, it’s high time that you streamline and calibrate your methods to be able to keep up with your clients’ demands. This is where the Kanban methodology can come in very handy.

What is Kanban?

Kanban is a workflow management method that is designed to help users visualize work, maximize efficiency and reduce idle time in a production process. From the Japanese words, “Kan” meaning “visual” and “ban” meaning “card,” Kanban literally translates to visual cards. This method makes use of a Kanban board wherein task cards are added to represent work items which are then moved along columns to represent each stage of your production process, such as “backlog,” “to-do,” “doing,” and “done.”

Benefits of Using Kanban

Kanban has become a very popular tool for various organizational functions in businesses from different industries. Nowadays, it has become an integral tool in enabling companies to manage teams and tasks more efficiently. By using a Kanban board for your SEO business, you can reap a variety of benefits when it comes to accomplishing your SEO tasks, measuring your team’s efficiency and maintaining productivity. Here are some of the benefits you can expect when you decide to scale your business using a Kanban board.

1. Improved Flexibility

The concept of Kanban is universally applicable, making it an ideal project management tool for different businesses in various industries. Because of its versatility, it can be used by different departments within an organization. This makes it easy for team members to move projects from one step to another, even across departments or functions. For your SEO business, you can easily work with researchers, SEO professionals and online writers, making sure that your projects are smoothly moving across each function, from research to application.

2. Better Visibility

With better visibility of tasks between team members and departments, you can easily empower your SEO team to be self-organizing. This way, you won’t have to keep asking for updates on tasks and be able to focus on other key functions in your business. This makes it possible for small businesses to operate more efficiently, without the need of hiring an additional team member to take on the project management role.

3. Increased Efficiency

With better visibility of pending tasks, teams can experience better efficiency while performing work. With the proper use of a Kanban board, tasks can flow better and production will run continuously. A Kanban board makes for a more transparent workflow, making it easier for your team members to engage and communicate with one another to accomplish their assigned tasks.

4. Boosted Productivity

By improving your team’s work visibility and efficiency, your online business will experience an enhanced productivity. The Kanban methodology encourages teams to set limits on the amount of work that they currently have in progress. This concept, known as work-in-progress (WIP) Limits, helps you complete a specific task faster so that it will move towards the end of the production line, thus helping your team progress and improve its productivity. Implementing WIP limits help reduce distractions that can be brought about by trying to accomplish multiple tasks at once.

5. Reduced Waste

Through the Kanban methodology, you can efficiently streamline the use of your resources for your online business. Kanban can help you have better control of the flow of materials within your business as it makes it easy for you or for anyone in your team to keep track of projects and their progress. Keeping track of your processes can help you improve your workflow. One of the overall goals of Kanban is a continuous improvement or “kaizen”, and this is always associated with “muda”, which is the Japanese word for waste. With Kanban, you can aim for continuous improvement in your business processes, thus helping you reduce wasted resources in your business.

6. Enhanced Focus

As a lean thinking method, Kanban is designed to improve work management, discipline and focus in your business. With proper implementation, Kanban can help boost your team members’ focus through visuals. With better clarity and transparency of expectations and tasks, your team members can eliminate distractions and maintain focus towards accomplishing their task.

7. Continuous delivery

Another much-needed benefit that online businesses can reap from using a Kanban board is the ease of delivering outputs continuously. With the help of Kanban, your team can improve the way you handle multiple tasks from creation to completion. Since tasks are visible and easily monitored by everyone in the team, it’s easy to make sure that each task is accomplished on time and tasks are completed continuously based on priority.

8. Minimized errors

We can’t always guarantee an error-free process, but with a visual project management board such as Kanban, you can easily eliminate errors. Since the Kanban method highlights agile responsiveness and Kaizen, team members are encouraged to complete their tasks with minimal to no errors. This project management method can help improve quality control efforts in your business and help your business produce more accurate results.

Final Thoughts

Every business owner knows and understands the difficulties of having to scale a business. And if you want to rise above your competitors, it is a challenge that you should welcome with open arms. The good thing is, with the right business tools and strategies, you can overcome the many obstacles you might have to face to grow your business. Among other methods available for an online entrepreneur, the growing popularity of virtual Kanban boards is proof that this project management tool can greatly impact your team’s efficiency and enable you to achieve greater heights as an online business owner. With proper use and implementation, the Kanban methodology can dramatically increase your business’ overall productivity and help you achieve the success that you have always wanted to achieve.

Author bio:

Christine Joy Leal is an experienced freelance writer and content manager, wife and mother-of-two. She loves keeping things in order and enjoys using the Kanban and Agile methodologies to manage all her writing projects, daily tasks, and other personal matters that require efficient organization. Apart from managing her busy content writing career, she also enjoys books, movies, TV series, online games, music, and crocheting. She also writes blogs for Kanban Zone and for her personal website.