Many businesses do not have the time or the skills required to implement a powerful SEO strategy. The only viable option left to them is to outsource SEO to an agency or a firm specializing in these services.
Outsourcing your SEO projects means hiring a third party to manage the SEO for your brand. They may handle some of your SEO work, or all of it, as per your requirements.
An important benefit of outsourcing SEO work is that it reduces the recruiting and training costs you would otherwise incur when working with an in-house team. It would also grant you access to more expertise and the ability to scale efficiently.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing an SEO agency to outsource your work to.
Let’s explore further the benefits of outsourcing SEO, how to outsource the work, and the mistakes to avoid when outsourcing.
Why Should You Outsource SEO Projects?
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More Expertise
To produce the best results, SEO requires expertise. This is because SEO is a lot more than just starting a blog or adding some keywords in the right places.
The outsourced agency should know how to go beyond search traffic and organic rankings to increase your revenue and customers.
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Need to Scale Efficiently
You may want to do all the SEO work yourself, but that might slow down the potential results. Due to the amount of work involved, you can scale your SEO efficiently when you outsource SEO.
How to Outsource SEO
1. What Are Your SEO Goals?
First and foremost, you should know your main goals. What do you hope to achieve for your business with SEO?
Being vague will not help you here. You need to set a specific goal that you can measure within a certain time. At the same time, the goal should not be something that is beyond your power to attain.
For example, you may want to increase your website’s traffic, but what type of traffic do you want? Within how many months do you want to achieve this goal?
Do you wish to overtake your competitors? If so, in which aspect - traffic, leads, or sales?
Are you trying to grow your sales through your ecommerce website? Do you want more customers and leads?
Are you prioritizing a certain stage in the buyer’s journey, or are you focusing on the entire journey altogether?
On answering these and more questions, you can get a general idea of the types of SEO services you’ll need to outsource.
2. What SEO Services Do You Need?
Once you outline your SEO goals, it gets easier to determine the SEO outsourcing services you will need.
Do you need local or international SEO services, keyword research, content creation, reputation management, or link building? Or do you need a combination of all these services and more?
With comprehensive SEO requirements, you will need to outsource to a full-service SEO agency. If your requirements are narrower, you can partner with an agency or company specializing in the tasks you need done.
3. How Long will the Results Take?
You need to understand that when it comes to SEO, you cannot expect instant results. For SEO rankings to increase, search engine bots need to assess website changes by crawling the web. Therefore, businesses generally start seeing substantive results after around four to six months, or even more.
For this reason, beware of any SEO agency or company that promises overnight success. Either they have no clue about SEO, or they may be indulging in black hat SEO practices that can get you penalized by Google.
If you still think you cannot wait patiently for the results, you should probably invest in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing, or something else.
4. What Metrics Do You Want to Analyze?
SEO would amount to nothing without metrics. Such metrics include organic search volumes, keyword rankings, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, new referring domains, lead conversions, and text readability.
Naturally, the metrics would differ based on their relevance to your business. Before choosing an agency to which you can outsource SEO, find out what metrics they measure and why.
5. Which SEO Agencies Do You Wish to Outsource To?
Always check for an agency or company’s online presence to see what kinds of reviews their past clients have left them. Also, ask them what types of SEO results they focus on. Have the results of their SEO efforts driven meaningful business outcomes in the past?
Other questions to ask them include:
- How they will try to understand your customers
- What SEO outsourcing services they offer
- What tools and technologies they use
- How often they report data
- Whether they can provide client testimonials
- How long they have been in the game
Any SEO firm or agency should be transparent when answering any question you may have regarding their services.
5 Mistakes to Avoid When Outsourcing SEO
1. Sending a Vague Brief
Merely telling the SEO agency that you need an article on a particular topic, or rank for a certain keyword, is not enough.
For example, you may inform the agency that you require a search optimized blog post on content marketing metrics. The agency, in turn, would be left guessing as to the exact length of the content you need, the keywords you want to target, and the expected timeframe.
So, to avoid the guessing game, you need to provide instructions to the SEO agency. These may include a reference site for information, the types of backlinks or interlinking you want, and any long-tail or special keywords you wish to rank for.
2. Providing Too Many Details
At the same time, it’s important to not shift to the other end of the spectrum. What we mean to say is that giving too many detailed instructions is also a mistake businesses make.
Think about it, if you are sending the SEO agency two or three pages of instructions, why do you need to outsource the work at all? Why not do the work yourself?
Secondly, detailing each and every task the agency needs to do is like putting them behind bars.
You should just let them know what basic tasks you want done and the kinds of results you expect. As for how they should perform those tasks and drive the expected results, leave that to them.
3. Looking for the Lowest Price
When availing of SEO outsourcing services, the cheapest option may be the most attractive one. However, try not to ignore the most expensive SEO agency, either.
What good would your savings be if these do not translate into any marketing ROI in the long run? Rather than thinking about pricing, focus on the option that can bring you the maximum ROI for your business.
The main question is, is the agency you are considering up to the challenge of producing the results you need?
You can always ask them for their case studies or success stories. These will help you understand what kinds of SEO tactics they have used in the past and what results they have been able to deliver.
4. Chasing Vanity Metrics
Many marketers may zero in on only one or two keywords and keep tracking their brand rankings for these keywords. However, if you do not expand your keyword landscape, your SEO metrics cannot be aligned with your business goals.
It is also vital to remember that only keyword rankings and traffic may not translate into your brand’s success.
Of course, anyone would feel great if they ranked high for a particular keyword. If such a high rank does not bring you more leads or customers, though, it is only a vanity metric.
5. Not Providing Feedback
Just because you have outsourced your SEO projects, it does not mean you have to cut off communication. Yes, when working with an in-house team, it is easy to walk over to someone’s desk and tell them what changes need to be made.
That option of walking over right away is not available in the outsourcing world, but that should not stop you from sharing your opinions.
To build a long-term and successful relationship with your outsourced team, you need to communicate properly with them. No matter what kinds of results they are delivering, whether good or bad, you need to provide them with your feedback.
Radio silence on the SEO agency or company’s work will leave them out in the wild, without any idea if they need to improve or they did well. Even if they make any errors, be sure to provide them constructive feedback, so they can avoid those errors in the future.
Wrapping Up: SEO Outsourcing Services
With a powerful SEO strategy, your business can drive more traffic to your website by ranking higher in Google’s results. A great way to kickstart this process is to outsource SEO.
Again, choosing the right agency for this work is very crucial to your brand’s SEO. They can capture your customers’ interest and help you avoid any common pitfalls you may run into when doing SEO on your own.
On that note, you can reach out to the SEO Experts at MyTasker. Apart from reducing hiring costs, they can help you grow your brand’s organic search presence by scaling your SEO efforts.
