Outsourcing SEO can feel like a big task. There’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders to find the right SEO agency or SEO partner to deliver results from SEO and content marketing campaigns.
Whether you need B2B SEO services, help with your eCommerce store or want to know more about driving more traffic using SEO best practices, in this post, we’ll look at the top questions to ask when outsourcing SEO.
We’ll also cover what a great SEO strategy looks like so you can confidently manage your SEO agency when you outsource SEO work.
Outsourcing SEO To An SEO Agency
If you need to outsource SEO to a third party, then an SEO agency is the best place to turn. A professional SEO company will have a whole team with the skills required to research, plan and implement a comprehensive SEO campaign for your business.
Outsourcing your SEO is a fantastic way to generate results from organic traffic and content, allowing you to focus on other channels that play to your strengths or require more of your time to manage.
Some of the key services to look for when choosing an SEO agency are:
- Technical SEO services
- Content writing
- Link building
- On-page optimisation
- Keyword research
- Tracking and reporting
Outsourcing SEO work is a great way to claw back time in your already busy day and knowing the basics of SEO will ensure you’re effectively managing a campaign or agency and keeping an eye on the right metrics to deliver SEO success.
Outsourcing SEO Vs Doing SEO In House
In the past, you might have decided to hire an in house SEO team or use a freelance SEO expert for your SEO work. However, hiring staff, creating processes and training an in house SEO team is expensive and time-consuming – especially if you’re not already experienced at SEO.
In addition, with Google algorithm updates becoming more frequent and SEO best practices changing all the time, not knowing the ins and outs of SEO could harm your website’s rankings.
There are many reasons to outsource your SEO. Here are our top 5.
1. SEO Skills
Hiring competent staff can be expensive and time-consuming. An experienced digital marketing agency will have all the skills required to deliver results, saving you time and money. We work with account specialists at Google and have completed a range of training in digital marketing and Google products to ensure we’re always up to date on SEO best practices.
2. SEO Scalability
If you’ve got a big project or a new initiate around promoting a new or existing website it can be difficult to scale your in house team. When you work with an agency you don’t have to recruit additional staff or train new people. An outsourced SEO agency can provide the same work at a higher standard, more quickly and can easily scale up their efforts when you need it.
3. Tight Deadlines
If you need SEO work carried out urgently, an agency will be able to ramp up its efforts quickly. However, in house teams may not have the necessary skills to deliver or the time to work to tight deadlines.
4. Cost-Effectiveness
Specialist SEO agencies provide a higher standard of work at a lower cost than hiring in-house staff. Plus, agencies like Neural Edge have access to the latest SEO software, meaning you don’t have to buy and use expensive software in-house.
5. Focusing SEO Efforts
An experienced SEO agency will know how to get results without you having to manage them. You can focus on your core business, knowing that the agency is working for you.
Outsourcing SEO Campaign Activities
There are three SEO pillars that we focus on when delivering our SEO outsourcing services. These are on-page SEO, off-site SEO and technical SEO.
We’ve given a brief explanation of each to help you better understand the core SEO activities when it comes to creating SEO projects. You can use these as part of your questions when choosing an SEO agency.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the process of making changes to your website so that it ranks as highly as possible for specific keywords and phrases.
Common on-page SEO activities include: Writing helpful, quality content using target keywords, optimising meta tags and titles, internal linking and adding relevant images to your website and blog posts.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is the process of building links from other high quality, relevant websites back to your website. This can help build trust with visitors and get your website ranking higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Building links to your website isn’t as simple as getting links on other sites. You’ve got to make sure that the site you’re getting a link from is quality and relevant to your website.
Getting backlinks from high authority websites helps push the power of your SEO campaign significantly!
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is all about making sure your website is easy for Google and other search engines to crawl and index.
The main technical SEO activities include: Checking and fixing issues with your robots.txt file, making sure you have a sitemap.xml file for Google to crawl, checking broken links are removed from your website, minifying CSS and JS files and ensuring the speed of your website is fast enough for visitors.
How Much Does It Cost To Outsource SEO?
The price of outsourcing SEO will depend on an agency’s success rates and the amount of time they need to work with you.
Digital marketing agencies that have a lower overall cost tend to be either less experienced or don’t offer as comprehensive a package as those agencies who charge more.
You should always be wary of SEO companies that use old SEO tactics or black hat SEO and promise to make their clients rank number one – we certainly don’t ‘guarantee’ #1 rankings.
Equally, you should stay away from super cheap SEO services. Although £100 may seem like a great deal and cost-effective, trusting your SEO to a third party company is a big decision, and it should come down to more than price!
Our comprehensive AI SEO services start from £999 a month. We incorporate SEO activities into your existing digital marketing strategy and align content and SEO efforts to your business objectives to ensure we deliver measurable and scalable results.
While it might be tempting to outsource SEO to a digital marketing agency that ‘does it all’ – working with SEO specialists like Neural Edge will get you better results, and all of our SEO work is managed in-house by us in the UK.
10 Questions To Ask SEO Companies
Hiring an SEO company can be a daunting prospect for some. There is so much information about the best type of SEO and how it should be carried out.
So, before you start asking SEO agencies to give you estimates and quotes, here are ten questions we think every business owner needs to ask when looking to outsource SEO services.
1. What technical skills do you have?
Never sign up with a company that doesn’t know about the technical side of SEO. Technical SEO is the building block of every other type of SEO, so if they’re not technical, you’re not getting the best service for your money.
Typical technical SEO skills sets include updating and adding code to your website, working with professional software like Google Seach Console and Google Tag Manager, and being up to date on how factors like site speed and mobile usability impact organic rankings.
2. What link building strategies do you employ?
Link building is an important part of any successful SEO campaign because it helps push your website’s authority up. Be sure to ask the SEO agency about their link building strategies, so you know what kind of links they’ll provide for your website.
Your backlink profile is a crucial indicator of site authority, and all comprehensive SEO services will ensure this element is taken into account when reviewing your overall SEO strategy.
3. Do you employ local SEO strategies?
If you’re looking to rank locally (a city, town or county), then make sure you hire an agency that can give you specific information on local SEO strategies. Local SEO is becoming increasingly important as more consumers look for local businesses to work with and buy from.
According to Google, nearly 1/3 of all mobile searches are related to location, highlighting the importance of incorporating local SEO into your overall SEO strategy to capture local customers looking for your products or services.
4. How will you measure the success of my SEO campaign?
A good SEO company will provide you with information on how they can monitor your website’s performance during an ongoing SEO campaign, so be sure to ask what kind of tools and software they use for monitoring websites.
Google Analytics, Google Search Console and professional SEO tools are the go-to tools for his job. We also offer our clients access to a 24/7/365 online dashboard and customer area, so they always have access to the latest SEO campaign stats, results and changes.
5. Who manages our account?
It’s important that whoever works on your account knows what they’re doing. If you hire a company that doesn’t have the skillset but manages your account anyway, you won’t see results from an ongoing SEO campaign.
Ensure the services offered match the skill set you’re looking for, and the entire team working on your account knows how to deliver results.
6. Do you provide monthly reports?
Make sure you ask for regular progress reports from agencies during the course of an ongoing SEO campaign. These should include which keywords are ranking for you, how many visitors are coming through to your site and what content is performing best.
If you’re running SEO and PPC ads together, you might ask for a combined dashboard so you can see how all of the marketing tactics you’re using are performing together.
7. What kind of working relationship will we have with the SEO company?
Having a solid working relationship with your SEO agency is obviously essential. Still, it’s important to be clear upfront about the level of support you need and the level of support the agency is willing to offer.
For example, does the agency need to be flexible or work to strict deadlines? Will you require the agency to help you report to your superiors, or do you expect them to work as a silent SEO partner?
8. What experience does the company have?
Ask to see testimonials and case studies from previous clients who have worked with the SEO company, as well as examples of their website.
If they cannot show you these things straight away, then move on – agencies that don’t advertise their track record aren’t worth wasting your time or money with. You can also ask them for a client reference for further due diligence.
9. How much do your packages cost?
When you contact an agency, make sure you ask what kind of packages and prices they offer to get a good idea about how much they charge and the success rates and strategies they employ.
Content and SEO services are usually sold in monthly packages, which makes it easier to compare pricing and services.
10. What SEO technology do you use?
There’s a multitude of SEO technology out there, so make sure you ask an agency what kind of software they use when carrying out an ongoing SEO campaign.
We use a range of tools that help with keyword research, technical SEO, content writing, and reporting.
Contacting An SEO Agency
When you’re ready, book a meeting with an agency or ask for a quote from the company. If the prices and strategies they use to suit your budget and you’re happy with their services, then move forward and get started!
If you need a hand in choosing an SEO company or if you’d like a customised package for your website, why not contact our team here at Neural Edge?
We offer SEO outsourcing packages for a range of businesses, including B2C eCommerce, B2B eCommerce and B2B services.
White Label SEO Services
If you’re an SEO agency or a digital marketing agency that offers SEO services and are interested in white label SEO services, we recommend getting in touch with a member of our partnership team.
Our SEO experts can support you every step of the way, from client onboarding to carrying out SEO campaigns and setting up a white label dashboard for your clients to track SEO campaign results.
All of the SEO techniques we use are white hat SEO, and we use the latest SEO tools to power our SEO services.
As an agency, outsourcing SEO to SEO experts will save your team time and allow them to focus on the projects and tasks they are most passionate about, and that will keep your clients happy.
If you want to deliver outstanding SEO results for your clients but don’t have team members with up-to-date SEO skills, talk to us about our SEO reseller packages and SEO reseller programme.
Book A Free Consultation & SEO Audit
We’ve worked with clients across multiple industries providing the best SEO outsourcing services powered by artificial intelligence.
If you want to outsource SEO for your business, we can help. Our outsourcing SEO services cover every element of search engine optimisation, from technical SEO to link building.
We combine SEO expertise with the latest SEO tools to increase organic traffic and help you win new clients.
Contact our team of SEO professionals today to learn more about outsourcing SEO services to our AI-powered digital marketing agency.
