The pandemic has dramatically changed how and where we work. A huge number of employees have switched to remote work,. However, the trend for remote work began long before the pandemic, and COVID-19 only accelerated the process.
According to Global Workplace Analytics, in 2019, remote employees were 22% happier than office workers. 91% of the surveyed employees said that switching to remote work helped them restore the balance between work and personal life, and 78% of employees said that remote work reduced their stress levels.
Compared to office colleagues, remote employees are more satisfied with their work in the company; they are 13% more likely to not leave their current job in the next 5 years. And most job seekers and full-time employees are more loyal to those companies that offer the opportunity to work from home.
Digital marketing is one of the areas where specialists can quite successfully work remotely. These specialists include SEOs. Below we will discuss the main benefits of remote work f. Perhaps that will give you an impetus to switch to remote work or transfer your SEO employees to such a mode, especially since the pandemic is still ongoing.
1. Work at your own pace
Most remote workers are free to schedule their own time and work at a pace that suits them. SEO specialists work a lot with numbers, graphs, and charts, not to mention communicating with many colleagues from other departments. It can be exhausting and stressful. While working remotely, they can easily take a short break, go on a walk or spend some time with their families, and then get back to work.
Many SEO specialists divide their workday into two stages – morning and evening. This gives them the opportunity to take care of their health, do their daily chores, and still remain productive.
2. Less time spent on non work-related issues and less micromanagement
When working from the office, some time is inevitably spent chatting with colleagues, morning coffee rituals, discussing the latest news, going to lunch, and so on. It results in just a few hours of productive time left per day when you can focus directly on your work tasks.
While working from home, your productivity depends only on you, and if your workflow is set up correctly, you can often get work done even faster. You can use a time tracker or a productivity tool to manage your work schedule.
In addition, many of you are familiar with the challenges of micromanagement when the boss desires to be aware of your every move k. Micromanagement remains a serious issue with remote work as well and can slow you down if workflows are not set up. Therefore, it is very important to properly organize work and timely reporting.
If your boss knows that they will receive timely and complete SEO reports with your comments, they will be less interfering with the process. For example, if you are using the SE Ranking platform for your SEO work, you can generate reports automatically with the help of its Report Builder tool.
3. Less costs for both the employee and the company
Have you ever wondered how much money you spend to work from the office? Commuting to work (taxi, public transport, fuel for your car) can take up to 10% of your monthly salary. Add food to that as many prefer to order pizza with teammates than to take a snack from home.
If you spend about two hours a day commuting to work (not to mention preparing for it), it will be 44 hours per month and will run up to no less than 528 hours or 22 days per year!
When you work from home, you don't waste time and money on getting to work, you just get out of bed (or not) and open your laptop. You are less tempted to order pizza if you have regular and healthy food at home.
From an employer's perspective, remote work also helps to save on medical leaves. If an employee is a little sick but generally feels good, they usually continue to work, albeit a little more slowly. In any case, they usually stay in touch, do not completely drop out of the work process, and take sick leaves less often.
4. The ability to travel more and live in a place where the cost of living is lower
While this may not seem like such an obvious benefit during the pandemic, you can still travel more when working remotely. An SEO specialist needs only a laptop and a good Internet connection to complete all tasks.
Slack, Zoom, and Skype help you keep in touch with teammates and stay connected from any place in the world.
In addition, when working remotely, you do not have to live in a large city and spend much on housing, rent and utility bills. When global companies began to switch to remote work due to COVID-19, many of their employees left Silicon Valley, which is famous for exorbitant housing prices. In fact, according to a recent Upwork study, from 14 to 23 million US workers are going to move as they have more work-from-home flexibility.
You can live closer to your friends or parents, finally, go to the ocean, or enjoy a quiet little town with friendly neighbors and scenery. Remote work gives you the opportunity to listen more to your own desires and live where and how you want!
5. Ability to work on several projects at the same time
Working remotely with no boss over your shoulder allows you to get more done and work on multiple projects at once. When basic technical SEO is done and the site is optimized, the main tasks of an SEO specialist are:
- Monitoring of site rankings and its specific pages;
- Searching for new keywords, making technical assignments for copywriters, developers, and designers;
- Verification of ready texts from copywriters;
- Website audits to identify problems in website promotion;
- Agreements with other webmasters on the placement of external links.
If working from home is effective for you, you can complete the tasks above in a few hours, especially since they are largely automated thanks to modern services.
For example, SE Ranking, which we’ve mentioned above, has a powerful website audit tool. Grammarly and Copywritely help to check text content. To select donors for getting backlinks or to examine your link profile, you can use the Moz Link Explorer tool.
Thus, time is freed up to work on several projects. This means more development for you as a specialist and more monthly income. Just don't overdo it and remember about the work-life balance! Usually, an experienced SEO specialist can handle about 3-4 large clients per month.
Summary
Working remotely, you can devote more time to yourself, work on more projects at the same time, develop, and not be tied to a specific place of residence. To ensure that both you and your employer or client are satisfied with this work format, regularly report on the work done and ask for feedback. To keep in touch with colleagues, use instant messengers and video calls but do not turn your workday into one continuous call. If you follow these simple rules, every day will be more productive, and you will feel calmer and happier working remotely.
