SEO Project Management Software to See Where Every Client Stands
For SEO agency owners who run monthly retainers with a team.
Lumea Direct is SEO project management software built inside a working SEO agency. It shows where every client stands this month. You'll see who's on pace, who's behind, who has nothing done, and who owns each item.
It's September 15, and a client emails to ask how the month is going. Their work sits across four people and three tools. Now you're messaging your team to find out, while the client waits on a reply. In Lumea, the client's row already shows 4 of 12 items done. Every open item shows its owner, or a flag if nobody has it.
Where Does Every SEO Client Stand This Month?
Lumea's Dashboard opens on 3 numbers for the whole agency: items done this month, unassigned items, and Net. On the Deliverables page, every client has a row. Each row shows a percent done, a pace line against the working days, and the owner of every item. Before your Monday meeting, you'll know who's behind and who has nothing done.
Every figure on the Dashboard uses the same math as the reports behind it, so the screens never disagree. Net means income minus client costs, team pay, and agency expenses. The rest of the business side lives in our software to run your whole SEO agency. An unassigned item is planned work with no owner yet. Clear those first each morning.
Example data from the Northline Digital demo agency.
What Changes for Your Agency in the First Month?
In your first month on Lumea, you stop chasing your team for status updates. Planning takes about 10 minutes per client. By mid-month, the pace line flags any client falling behind, counting working days so weekends never skew it. At month end, you know who finished what.
Your team feels the change too. Each person opens Lumea and sees their own work for the month, so the Monday check-in gets shorter and calmer. New hires see the same categories as everyone else from their first login.
Your clients notice next. Each monthly report lists the month's finished work with live links. Fewer emails ask how things are going. And you get your evenings back, since planning 10 clients drops from about 6 hours to under 2.
Example data from the Northline Digital demo agency.
What Goes Into a Client's SEO Month?
A client's SEO month in Lumea holds every category on their package, and content is one part of it. In the Northline demo agency, one client's October carries 18 categories. The page header counts them, starting at 0 of 18 complete on the 1st.
- Google Business ProfileOptimization, Google posts, images and video, and category pages
- On-site pagesOptimized silo pages, supporting articles, blog articles, a geo stacks hub page, areas served, and schema
- Off-site workLocal citations and backlinks, press releases and guest blogs, and community Q and A
- Video and socialYouTube videos and social media posts
- ReportingThe monthly report, plus local grid rankings every quarter
- Other or ad hocThe fixes nobody planned on the 1st
You build your own categories, and each package picks the ones it includes. A category can repeat monthly or quarterly, so quarterly work like local grid rankings never slips through. When a category has nothing planned yet, it stands out on the page. You fix the gap on the 1st, not after the report goes out.
Example data from the Northline Digital demo agency.
How Does a Client's Package Build the Month?
A client's package (service tier) decides which categories show up each month, so nobody rebuilds a board from scratch. Click Plan month, and Lumea takes you through each client one at a time. Planning a client's month takes about 10 minutes, down from 30 to 40 by hand.
Every client starts the month with the same structure, no matter who on your team plans it. A new hire sees the same categories you do on day one. Nothing on the package gets forgotten because someone copied last month's board wrong.
To plan one client's month, walking through every category on the package.
Per client, copying last month's board and checking what's missing.
Who Owns Each Piece of SEO Work?
Every item in Lumea gets its own owner, from a GBP post to a citation to the monthly report. You can give a whole row to one person or split it across 3. Then each team member opens the Deliverables page and sees their own work for the month.
What does your team see?
Each person sees their own work for the month, across every client they touch, and nothing else. A writer sees articles, and a VA sees GBP posts and citations. Nobody has to ask you what's next.
What do you see as the owner?
You see everyone's work, grouped by person or by client. One view shows who's overloaded this month, and the other shows which client's month looks thin. Agency to-dos live on their own Tasks page, and small client to-dos sit in each client's Tasks panel.
Example data from the Northline Digital demo agency.
How Does a Topical Map Fill the Content Rows?
A topical map fills the content rows of a client's month: silo pages, blog articles, and supporting articles. You import the map from a spreadsheet in about 5 minutes. Then you push the next pages into the month, and each lands in its content category.
Your map and your monthly work live in one place, so they never drift apart. When a page goes live, its item holds the live URL. The client's Content tab shows the publish date and index status. Everything else in the month, from citations to press releases, gets planned right beside it.
Example data from the Northline Digital demo agency.
How Do You Show Who Finished What This Month?
Lumea shows who finished what on the Delivery report, under Reports, then the Delivery tab. Its pace bar counts working days, not calendar days. Each finished item counts for its owner, even when a row is split across 2 or 3 people.
- A pace bar for the month, counted in working days
- Progress by client, so you see which accounts are behind
- Finished items by person, credited to whoever owns each item
Bring it to your team meeting. If one person carries most of the finished items, you'll see the imbalance before it turns into a missed deadline. And when a client asks what got done, the list is already sorted by name.
Example data from the Northline Digital demo agency.
Why Don't Generic Project Management Tools Fit SEO Retainers?
Generic tools like ClickUp, Asana, monday.com, and Teamwork are built for projects with an end date. SEO retainers repeat every month. One client in the Northline example carries 18 categories, and the table shows 7 jobs where the difference shows up.
| Job | A generic project management tool | Lumea |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring monthly work | Copy a template or set up automations | The package builds the month |
| GBP, citations, and schema | Lists you design and maintain | Your own categories on every package |
| Quarterly work | A separate repeating task | Due at the end of the quarter |
| Topical map pages | A separate spreadsheet | Pushed into the month and sorted |
| Pace | A due date on each task | Working days gone by, per client |
| Who finished what | Task history | The Delivery report, by person |
| Team pricing | Usually per seat | Unlimited seats on every plan |
In Lumea, each month comes built from the client's package, so there's no board to set up or copy. Every plan includes unlimited team seats, so adding a writer or a VA never raises your bill. You can plan your first client's month on day one of the trial.
What Does Monthly Planning Cost in Project Manager Hours?
Planning 10 clients by hand at 30 to 40 minutes each takes about 5 to 6.7 hours a month. At the national median pay for project management specialists, $49.19 an hour, those hours cost about $246 to $328. In Lumea, 10 minutes per client brings it to 1.7 hours, or about $82.
Skip the hire, and the hours stay. They land on you, often on the first two nights of the month, after the client work is done. At Lumea's timing, you get back 3.3 to 5 hours every month for 10 clients.
The worked example uses median pay before benefits and payroll taxes, so the full cost runs higher. Your number depends on who plans and what you pay them. Run it with your real rate before you decide what planning is worth to you.
Who Is Lumea's SEO Project Management For?
Lumea's SEO project management fits anyone running SEO work every month, from a one-person shop to a full agency team. Agencies run client retainers on it, from 1 client to 9 or more. In-house teams use the Solo plan. Solo covers one business doing its own SEO, with the same features as Starter and unlimited seats.
Doing its own SEO
Unlimited seats
Priority support
No client cap
Pick your plan by how many clients you run. Starter covers up to 3 clients, Growth covers 4 to 8, and Unlimited has no cap. Every plan includes unlimited team seats and a 14-day free trial. Compare them on the Lumea Direct pricing page.
Know Who's Behind Before the Client Asks
Michael Gleed built Lumea Direct inside his own SEO agency. His agency runs on it every day, from planning each client's month to checking pace in the middle of it. You get the same screens on day one of your trial.
The payoff is a month you can see. You'll know who's behind while there's still time to fix it, and your team will know what's theirs without asking. Clients get a clear answer the day they ask how the month is going.
Start your 14-day free trial with no card and no sales call. Plan one client's month on day one, and watch the pace line fill in as your team works. Not ready yet? Run your top 3 clients through the free Client Profit Calculator first.
Questions About Managing SEO Projects
What is SEO in project management?
SEO project management is the planning, assigning, and tracking of search work for each client every month. The Project Management Institute describes project management as applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet project requirements. For an SEO agency, those requirements repeat on a monthly cycle. The work covers pages, GBP posts, citations, links, and reports.
Does SEO project management software track rankings?
Lumea doesn't track rankings, and it isn't a crawler. Rankings live in your research tool or in Google's own data. The Search Console Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position for a site. Lumea's monthly client report pulls Search Console numbers next to the month's finished work.
How long does SEO work take to show results?
Google says some changes take effect in a few hours, while others take several months. Its SEO Starter Guide suggests waiting a few weeks before you judge whether a change worked at all. So clients often judge the month by what got done. A list of finished items with live links gives them a clear answer every month.
Do I need to hire an SEO project manager?
Not always. O*NET lists planning, scheduling, and coordinating work to meet deadlines among the core tasks of a project management specialist. In a small SEO agency, the owner usually does this work on top of client work. Software can handle the counting and the tracking, so a person only handles the decisions.
What should an SEO agency track every month?
Track 4 things for every client: work finished, work behind pace, work with no owner, and profit. The SBA's guide to managing your business suggests looking at each part of a business on its own. For an agency, each client is its own part. A client can look fine on the calendar and still lose you money.
