With Google processing a whopping 3.5 billion searches per day, your business cannot afford to ignore search engine optimization. But let’s face it: Managing your SEO isn’t easy.
Google is constantly releasing new updates, which can affect your site’s rankings. You need to stay on top of these updates and adjust when needed. On top of that, you need to do keyword research, create content, optimize your infrastructure, ensure proper indexing, build links — the list goes on and on.
Many business owners prefer to outsource SEO efforts to a specialized agency so they can focus on their own zone of genius. Let’s dig deeper into what SEO outsourcing is, what it can do for your business, and how you know when it’s the right time to look for an SEO agency.
What Is SEO Outsourcing?
SEO outsourcing is the act of hiring a professional or team to handle SEO-related tasks for your brand. The activities that the team performs can vary depending on your business’s needs. However, some of the general responsibilities include keyword research, content creation, technical SEO, local SEO, and link building.
It’s worth noting that outsourcing your SEO doesn’t mean giving total control of an aspect of your business to strangers. For best results, the outsourced SEO company should work with your in-house team to ensure your efforts align with your marketing, brand, values, and overall organizational goals.
What Does an SEO Outsourcing Company Do?
Below are some of the ways that an SEO company can help your business.
White-Label SEO
If you are a digital marketing agency, you know that many clients today want a one-stop agency for their marketing needs. However, staff limitations may hinder you from offering your clients the range of services they are looking for. Sure, there’s the option of hiring new employees and setting up a new department, but that route costs a lot of time, effort, and money.
A cost-effective way to meet demand, fill skill gaps, and expand your offerings is to hire a white-label SEO company.
For example, let’s say you specialize in web design, but one of your clients wants to add new content to their site. In that case, you can contact your white-label partner to create the optimized content on your behalf. You would then deliver the content to the client under your brand’s name. In the end, your client is happy. Depending on your white-label partner, you can offer your clients all of the SEO-related services they need without doing the work yourself. Ultimately, this allows you to cater to a broader range of clients while increasing your revenue and profit margins.
On-Page Optimizations
On-page optimization is the process of monitoring and making changes to your website’s design and content to improve its visibility and search engine rankings.
An SEO company can help you with various techniques, such as:
- Optimizing meta tags and heading tags
- Improving URL structure
- Improving internal linking
- Auditing site maps and “robots.txt” files
- Including relevant keywords
Good on-page optimization takes time, dedication, and an eye for detail. You need an experienced SEO agency with proven expertise and results.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO deals with the technical aspects of your site such as its speed, technical structure, and security. If your site has excellent technical health, search engine crawlers can easily navigate it and index all of its pages, leading to more visibility and higher rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Technical Audit
An SEO agency can thoroughly audit the technical aspects of your website, including its speed, architecture, security, structured data, and mobile-friendliness. The audit helps identify any issues that must be addressed to make the site easier for users and search engines to navigate.
Technical SEO Support
After the technical audit, your SEO agency can provide technical support to ensure your site is in perfect technical health. This includes:
- Optimizing website architecture
- Improving website security
- Optimizing structured data
- Improving website speed
- Ensuring mobile-friendliness
Migration Support
If you’re changing your website’s hosting provider, domain name, structure, or platform, the process can have negative outcomes if not done right. When not executed properly, it can cause your rankings to plummet, even if you’re currently ranked number one on Google. An SEO outsourcing company can ensure a smooth site migration by providing clear guidelines, support, and expertise throughout the process.
Off-Page SEO
SEO professionals can also help you with off-page SEO, focusing on factors outside your website to enhance its online presence and credibility. Optimizing off-page SEO takes many forms, including:
- Strategic link building campaigns
- Sharing your content across various social media platforms
- Collaborating with influencers in your industry to amplify your brand’s reach
- Guest posting to build your authority
- Monitoring online reviews, comments, and mentions, as well as responding to feedback to boost your business’s reputation
Some off-page tactics go beyond the scope of regular SEO activities. It helps to confirm the agency you’re interested in can handle your business needs.
Link Building
Backlinks are an important ranking factor on Google. If your page has multiple links from other websites, Google interprets that to mean your site is relevant and popular. However, even more important than the number of links is the quality of those links. A link from the New York Times will carry more weight than a link from a random blog, for instance.
Successful link building involves a detailed process of research, outreach, content creation, distribution, and follow-up. All of this takes time and effort, but if you’re not well-versed in the process, your effort may not bring the desired results.
When you outsource to a reputable agency, you get access to professionals who specialize in creating backlinks for websites. They know how different link building strategies work and which ones are the most effective for your industry. They also have better connections within the SEO industry, which can help during the outreach process. As a result, you have a better chance of building high-quality backlinks faster.
Content Development and Optimization
Many SEO outsourcing companies offer content creation services. This content can come in many forms, including blog posts, product descriptions, case studies, white papers, landing pages, service pages, newsletters, images, and videos. Content creation follows thorough keyword, market, and competitor research to ensure the information on your site is informative, accurate, and valuable to users.
Apart from creating new content, professionals evaluate your existing content to ensure it’s up-to-date, relevant, and engaging. If necessary, they’ll eliminate or consolidate some of the content to improve your chances of attaining SEO success. They’ll also use analytics tools to make data-driven decisions and monitor search engine rankings.
Local SEO
Did you know that 46% of all Google searches have local intent? If you want your business to show up when someone is looking for an offering like yours in your area, you need to invest in local SEO.
Local SEO is similar to traditional SEO, but instead of trying to rank for generalized keywords like “cosmetic dentist,” you’re focusing on targeted keywords like “cosmetic dentist in Back Bay, Boston.”
When looking for an SEO outsourcing company, consider one that understands local search engine optimization best practices. Here are some of the actions the company can take to improve your visibility among local customers:
- Optimize and update your Google Business Profile with accurate information.
- Conduct detailed keyword research that’s specific to your locality and strategically integrate these keywords into your website’s content.
- Ensure your business’s information is consistent across online directories and local citations.
- Create location-specific landing pages to address the needs and interests of your local audience.
- Implement local schema on your site to provide the search engines with structured information about your business (business type, address, reviews, and more).
Signs It’s Time to Outsource Your SEO
Hiring a specialized SEO company is no small decision. Here are five telltale signs it’s time to outsource your SEO efforts.
1. You Have Limited In-House SEO Experience
If no one on your team has experience in SEO, it can be difficult to generate any meaningful results.
SEO is a complicated endeavor, and one single algorithm update can tank your site’s rankings if you don’t adjust accordingly. Considering that there have been more than 60 confirmed Google Algorithm updates in the past five years alone, your in-house team may be unable to keep up with all of these updates.
Some of the technical aspects of SEO require knowledge of code. For example, coding is necessary to create “robots.txt files” and XML site maps, which ensure proper communication between your site and the search engine crawlers. Without this knowledge, managing your SEO efforts is going to be an uphill battle.
Outsourced SEO services give you access to experts with deep expertise. They’re up to date with all of Google’s algorithm updates and will promptly implement any required changes on your website to avoid unwanted penalties. This, combined with their cutting-edge tools and techniques, means you’ll always be on top of the SEO game.
2. You’re Thinking About a Website Redesign
Reputable SEO agencies offer a wide variety of digital marketing solutions, including website design services. If you’re doing a website refresh, there’s no need to spend days (or weeks) learning about site mapping, URL redirect mapping, and heading tag structures. You can just hire the experts to finish the work in a fraction of the time.
Dedicated professionals will work alongside your development team to ensure your redesign keeps SEO top of mind. They’ll also take care of the technical aspects, like ensuring the site has good loading speeds and is mobile-friendly.
3. Your Internal Bandwidth Is Low
Optimizing your content to rank higher on the SERPS takes time and dedication. If you’re running a small business, your internal resources may already be strained, and time is a precious commodity that must be spent on core activities. You don’t want to neglect your existing customers while searching for new ones.
By outsourcing your SEO efforts, you can focus on growing your business while the experts do what they know best. In the end, you’ll enjoy the benefits of a well-executed strategy and keep your customers happy as well.
4. You Aren’t Seeing the Results You Expect
Is your website getting five visitors per day? Or have the engagement levels dropped? Not seeing the results you’ve worked so hard for can be disappointing. It can also have negative implications for your business. If the traffic to your website is low, for example, it means users aren’t finding your business on the SERPs, and you’re missing out on sales.
An experienced professional can conduct an SEO audit to determine why you’re not seeing the results you expect. They’ll then formulate a long-term plan to ensure your efforts are productive in the future.
5. You Don’t Have the Resources to Keep Up
The alternative to outsourcing your SEO efforts is assembling an in-house team. But this option can end up costing you more than you expect.
For starters, having an in-house team means more employees on your payroll. You’ll have to take care of their salaries, health insurance, retirement plans, bonuses, and more. You’ll also need to invest in regular training to keep them up to date with changing SEO practices.
If you don’t have the relevant in-house expertise, there’s also the risk of hiring an employee without the right skills or experience. Considering that SEO takes time to deliver results, you may have wasted thousands of dollars by the time you realize you hired the wrong candidate.
When you hire an SEO outsourcing company, you transfer these resource challenges to another party. You won’t need to worry about staffing issues or figuring out tools as you go. And because the company wants to keep your business, it will try its best to deliver the results you need.
There are many reasons to consider outsourced SEO services instead of handling everything in-house. But of course, you can’t trust just anyone with such an important task. You need a strategic partner that’s committed to working with you and your team to understand your goals.
For more than 20 years, Sure Oak has been at the forefront of helping businesses generate impressive results from their efforts. Schedule a free strategy call to talk SEO with us!
