Considering Outsourcing SEO? 5 Things to Pay Attention to When Choosing an SEO Company
Scratching your head over SEO? The online sphere is always changing and staying up to date with SEO, conducting research, and creating content can be difficult. Outsourcing SEO can be the best solution to save you time, headache and help your website perform at its best.
What is SEO outsourcing?
Search engine optimisation is complicated and time-consuming and it requires the right decisions to yield good results. Let’s be honest: not all business owners are aware of this simple truth.
There are many things you should consider in terms of SEO to make sure your business is visible to online users. While some business owners prefer to act as they know exactly what to do, others opt to outsource SEO to experts, which is always a better idea if you want to avoid silly mistakes and wasting time.
Outsourcing SEO means delegating certain services and business activities related to SEO to a third-party professional or agency specialising in this area.
Why should you outsource SEO?
Outsourcing SEO can be a decision made based on many reasons, but the most important ones are mentioned below:
Financially efficient
Although SEO experts’ services will cost you some money, it will definitely help you avoid mistakes in your SEO strategy. Believe it or not: a poorly designed or executed SEO strategy can have major negative impacts your business.
More effective management
By outsourcing SEO to an expert, you can be sure that your website will be properly managed and maintained from an SEO perspective. As well as ensuring that business activities are effective in positively contributing to SEO.
Reduced workload
All SEO-related tasks will be managed by a team of professionals, giving you an opportunity to focus more on core business activities.
5 things to consider when choosing an SEO company
Sounds like the dream? Well, the bad news is that SEO outsourcing is not as easy as it might seem. You can’t just hire the first agency that provides SEO link building or blogger outreach services and walk away.
Before you hire one, you need to take the following 5 things into serious consideration.
1. The cost of their SEO services
You can’t just outsource SEO without thinking about how much these marketing services are going to cost you. Of course, this action will require additional financial resources dedicated to creating systems tailored to your specific business needs.
You should remember, however, that not all SEO agencies are equally good. As a rule of thumb, the more high-quality SEO services an agency offers, the more money it will cost you to hire it.
While it can be daunting to purchase the cheapest SEO services, you should think twice before making your decision. There is no guarantee that cheap services can produce expected results.
2. Scope of the service
SEO outsourcing costs are tightly linked with the scope of your needs for outsourcing. For example, if you need all available SEO services to develop a comprehensive SEO strategy from scratch. Hiring an SEO agency is probably the best idea, especially if your knowledge and expertise in this area are not great.
Alternatively, you could hire someone with the needed skills to perform some SEO elements for your business. Such as writing SEO-optimised content or providing a link building service.
3. Strategic impact
Another important question to give close consideration to is how SEO affects your marketing strategy and business objectives. Some companies rely heavily on search engine optimisation, whereas others can live without it.
That is why before making your SEO outsourcing decision, you need to understand your SEO needs and its role in your marketing strategy.
A good starting point would be to learn all you can about SEO, so you could identify what exact SEO services you require. The Outreach Lab blog can certainly help with this. Using this knowledge, you can easily decide on how to execute your SEO strategy and whether to outsource it or do it in-house.
The odds that you will clearly understand all technical SEO issues, however, are not great. If your business needs sophisticated SEO to become visible to consumers, then outsourcing SEO is probably the best option you can think of.
4. Brand identity
One important thing to remember when outsourcing SEO is that an agency or group of experts you are most likely unfamiliar with your company. Many SEO agencies may not care much about your brand identity, making the process of selecting a suitable company a challenge.
Brand identity is what your business stands for and how consumers perceive it. Messing it up is not the price you want to pay for high-quality SEO services.
You should be very careful when asking a third-party organisation to take care of your SEO services. Before making your final decision, take the time to make sure the agency you select is on-board with the goals and vision of your company, as well as its values and ideas.
This would help you ensure that the chosen SEO agency fully understands your brand identity and treats it right when providing their services.
5. Communication needs
Sometimes things can go wrong with your business activities, posing a threat to their effectiveness. SEO is not the exception to the rule. In this case, you need to be able to effectively communicate with the SEO agency, should any problem occur.
Most SEO agencies are online-based companies, so their communication channels will likely include video meetings, emails, or conference calls. What is more important is how fast the agency gets in touch with you when an emergency occurs.
If a prospective company responds within a day or two after the problem has occurred, you should probably reconsider your choice. Instead, you want a service that will be responsive and knowledgeable to solve any problems.
Will you be outsourcing SEO?
SEO outsourcing can bring great benefits to your business and its visibility. However, you should remember that selecting a suitable SEO agency to take care of your SEO marketing services is not easy.
We recommend evaluating your business needs to find a suitable agency and package for your buisness. As well as deeply discussing your business’s goals, targets and priorities. Ensuring the company hads your best interest at the forefront of their stratgey.
Although outsourcing SEO can help save time and business resources, it might be for every business and can be costly. This is why it is so important to consider all the factors and benefits before deciding on a final company.
Read about Outreach Lab’s services and how we can help your business’s SEO strategy today!