Outsourced SEO Services: Pros, Cons, And Final Verdict

93% of buying experiences happen from a search engine. Your brand’s SEO has to be top-notch to get your product on the first page. You may or may not already have an SEO strategy in place…either way, outsourced SEO services may be the best solution for your company.

Do you have the most updated industry knowledge on your internal team? Or do you need to start SEO from scratch? An outsourced agency can help you no matter which stage of SEO your business is in. Discover the pros and cons of outsourced SEO services in this article. And our final verdict on if they’re a suitable solution for most businesses.

What Are Outsourced SEO Services?

Outsourced SEO services are when a business works with an external agency for its SEO strategy. A solid SEO component is an important part of a strong digital marketing strategy. Organic searches are the best way to get in front of targeted audiences.

Good SEO practices involve many moving parts. And for countless businesses, this can be more of a time investment than they can manage. Marketing teams for most companies have too much to do as it is, so an outsourced agency could relieve some burdens.

Outsourcing for SEO should be a collaborative process between the company and the agency. For SEO to work correctly, the strategy, activities, and end goals must align.

By working with an external agency, you can save your team time and costs. And you will gain access to industry-leading tools and experts in SEO. Of course, like with any business decision, there are also a few cons. Keep reading to learn more about what SEO services you can outsource. And the pros and cons of using an agency.

Options for SEO Services

There are many options for outsourced SEO services. You can focus on one key component of an overall strategy. Or you could hire an agency to do all aspects of SEO.

A complete SEO strategy includes several components. A few of the most common services include:

• Keyword research
• Content creation
• Monthly reporting
• Backlink building
• Technical SEO
• Site audits
• Speed optimization
• Backlink monitoring
• Competitor analysis

Each of these services is a part of an overarching digital marketing strategy with an emphasis on SEO. You can usually combine services or purchase a package that includes several components to create a digital strategy. The above components each contribute to a successful digital marketing strategy. Read more about each type of service below.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is when you determine what phrases or words your target audience uses the most often. Most brands use Google or other search engines to determine the most popular words. There are also keyword tools available to help you better determine the best keywords for SEO.

Keyword research is an important component of an SEO strategy. Once you have found the most popular keywords, you have to incorporate them into your SEO strategy. This will boost your rankings and help your products at the top of the first page of searches.

To accurately conduct keyword research, you have to pick a topic that’s relevant to your products, services, or industry. You should research this before implementing your SEO strategy, so you can maximize your results. This is a process that takes some time to complete. And many companies don’t have the time to wait for marketing teams to get to it when they have so much on their plates.

Outsourcing this SEO service could speed up how quickly you apply your strategy.

Content Creation

Content creation is vital to truly engage audiences. What you create and where you post it will impact your SEO strategy. When you create content strategically and in alignment with your SEO strategy, you reach more audiences.

Some examples of content created by companies include:

• Blog posts
• eBooks
• Videos
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• Press releases
• Infographics
• Ads
• Webinars

Utilizing SEO to drive traffic to your website will be useless without valuable content for visitors. Valuable content inspires visitors to take action. Quality and consistent content also help your site get indexed more quickly. When you rely on old, outdated content that is a repeat of many other articles out there, search engines will rank it lower.

You can ensure your site has fresh content monthly, weekly, even daily with outsourcing. You can hire an SEO agency to help you set a content strategy. Or you can use them to create content for your brand.

Monthly Reporting

How will you know how to better your SEO strategy if you don’t continually monitor the results? Another SEO service you can outsource is monthly reporting. This type of service is best combined with the campaigns the agency already runs for you.

When you have accurate monthly reporting, you can assess the progress made on each aspect of your SEO strategy. This will give you a clear view of how each part is working and where you need to improve. You should monitor:

• Bounce rate
• Organic traffic
• Click-through rate
• Site authority
• Keyword rankings
• Site speed
• New backlinks

An overview of these metrics gives tells you the bigger picture. You’ll see success much faster with continuous monitoring.

Backlink Building

Getting other websites to link to your site is an important part of SEO. Backlink building will help boost your site’s authority. Once you have a higher authority, the algorithms will rank your site higher. Having many backlinks will signal to Google that your site has quality content.

Backlinking needs to naturally happen. Earning each backlink will go a long way in making sure your website gets to the top.

Organic backlinking is a time-consuming process that requires a long-term strategy. All backlinks are not equal, so it’s important to focus on getting quality sites to link to yours.

There are several ways to do this:

• Create quality content
• Strategically promote content
• Get reviews from influencers
• Links from friends and partners

It’s important you build backlinks with websites that are relevant to your industry. For example, having a cat littler company link to your resume writing website would not be a good fit.

Site Audits

You can hire an SEO agency to conduct a site audit to tell you what needs to change on your site. There are several factors that come into play with websites and SEO, such as:

• Website design
• User experience
• Site speed
• Content found
• Keywords

Hiring an external agency to conduct an audit before you define your digital marketing strategy may be a good idea. This will give you a few areas to focus on. And it will help you to better align your goals with strategy.

Website audits can lead to better-performing sites. You can also discover pain points with users, so visitors have a better experience. And an optimized site will drive more traffic. Do you want a free health report to assess your website? Schedule one today.

Speed Optimization

How quickly content loads on your website has a direct and indirect correlation to SEO ranking. Algorithms access and review website speed when indexing pages. Having a slow-loading website can result in several issues. When sites are slow to load, search engines can’t crawl rapidly. This means it analyzes fewer pages when ranking a site.

A slow website also means a bad user experience. People do not have the patience to wait for slow-loading pages and will leave the site. This will lead to high bounce rates, another factor in SEO ranking. You can outsource speed optimization to an SEO company to get your site where it needs to be. The agency can also help you maintain a healthy SEO site with best practices.

Banklink Monitoring

An important follow-up in the backlink building is to monitor the links. Backlinks can take weeks to have any impact on SEO, so this is a long-haul watching game. It’s important companies monitor all links on other sites to make sure they are quality links that will drive traffic.

Broken and suspicious links can have a negative impact on ranking. And you can get them taken down with a few steps, but you have to be monitoring them in the first place to know you need to report.

By outsourcing this SEO service to an agency, you can worry less about what sites on the web are linking to your website. And worry more about creating high-quality content that will be used across the industry.

Competitor Analysis

You can hire an outsourced agency to conduct competitor analyses for your brand. Researching and collecting information about competitors can be extremely time-consuming. Instead of using internal resources, you could hire an external agency at a cost-efficient price to get the same results.

There are several steps that go into preparing for competitive analysis. Those include:

• Identifying competitors
• Determining direct and indirect competitors
• Understanding the market

Once you have that information, you much do your research. There are several ways to collect data. You should focus on finding out information about the following:

• Social media marketing
• Paid-per-click advertising
• SEO
• Content marketing

From there, you conduct a thorough analysis. You can save your company hours by outsourcing this important aspect of an SEO strategy.

Pros of SEO Services

Now that you understand more about how to create a comprehensive SEO strategy, you can see the importance of doing it correctly. And outsourcing with an agency may or may not be the right solution for your business. But how can you know if it is? And what are the other benefits, besides the obvious SEO rank increases, that come with outsourced SEO services?

There are a few benefits, such as:

• Time-savings
• Cost-savings
• Faster results
• Access to expert advice
• Stronger digital marketing strategy
• Best practices
• Access to leading SEO tools
• Internal team optimization

Learn more about each of the pros below.

Time-Savings

Partnering with an outsourcing agency will save your company hours of time. There will be time saved that is spent on each aspect of the SEO strategy. But there are also ways an agency will save time.

When you implement an SEO strategy, you have to know SEO and understand how to do it correctly. Many companies do not have this knowledge, so they have to spend time and money to train employees. Outsourcing your SEO will eliminate the need to train internal employees.

SEO is difficult, complex, and time-consuming. You can save your team a lot of stress and expedite your results with an external agency.

Cost-Savings

Marketing may be one of the busiest departments in a company. Adding SEO to the already hectic department could mean it may or may not get completed. When you add in the costs associated with buying tools and training employees, you realize SEO is a significant cost for your organization. And there is a risk with keeping SEO in-house. If your team members aren’t experts on SEO best practices, it may not be beneficial to your business.

Outsourcing the services allows you to partner with experts from the get-go. You can spend your budget wisely by knowing you’ll see results from your efforts. And you will save tons on not having to get your team up to speed on SEO practices and strategies. Of course, it’s important to remember working with an agency is a partnership. Your marketing team will still be involved with the process, but having the expertise needed to succeed will fall on the agency.

Faster Results

Working with SEO experts means your company will see results much faster. This is especially true for businesses that already have a high amount of organic traffic or a good marketing strategy. Occasionally, a few simple shifts to incorporate a digital focus can make a huge difference.

There isn’t a learning curve when you work with experts. An SEO agency can take your information, create a strategy, and implement it immediately. SEO experts also have the knowledge needed to know what is working and what isn’t.

You’ll continue to see faster results even when you have to adjust the strategy. SEO experts can look over performance metrics and quickly identify what to change. Outsourcing accelerates the entire process from beginning to end.

Access to Expert Advice

Have you already taken a digital marketing webinar? Or read tons of articles on SEO to get some knowledge in how to optimize your site? Many people have. You can get ahead of competitors by connecting with an SEO agency. You will have an expert available to not only define your strategy, but to execute and refine it.

You’ll also get a new perspective when working with an external agency. Let’s face it, once you’re a business owner, you have some bias toward your company. An external agency won’t have that and will be able to guide your decisions with honesty and expertise.

Collaborating with an SEO agency also gives you new brainstorming options. Innovation thrives when new brains are involved, so think of how many new ideas an SEO expert could bring to the table. You may see a positive impact across your entire marketing department.

Stronger Digital Marketing Strategy

The beginning of this article told you what all goes into a strong SEO strategy. Creating a digital marketing strategy focused on SEO is a complex process. An external agency will help you craft this to meet your specific industry’s needs.

An SEO agency will help you come up with ideas regarding:

• Keywords
• Content creation
• Content calendars
• Link building
• Competitive advantage
• Generating quality leads from content

An experienced agency can take your existing marketing strategy and transform it to fit digital activities. A strong strategy connects SEO to video content, blogs, social media posts, email campaigns, and more. Digital specialists will be able to connect it all together without negatively impacting your conversion rates or user experience.

Best Practices

There are some SEO best practices that are used to make sure your ranking improves. There are also several SEO practices that harm your ranking. Your company must know the difference. Partnering with an external agency means they do know the difference. You won’t have to worry about potentially harming your efforts with a slipup because they are well-versed in the best practices.

Access to Leading SEO Tools

SEO experts have a host of tools and software to use for SEO. Many companies can’t justify the cost of some of these systems. By working with an agency, you gain that access for a fraction of the price. SEO practices and algorithms constantly change.

An SEO agency remains updated on those changes, so you don’t have it. You can ensure the best tools and processes are always in place for your SEO strategy.

Internal Team Optimization

Marketing departments are often overworked and overwhelmed. SEO is a long-term strategy with a lot of monotonous work in the beginning. Keyword searches can take hours upon hours to complete. You can reduce the stress and workload of your internal team with an outsourced agency.

By removing SEO from the marketing department, you give your team more time to focus on promotions or lead generation. All while your SEO is being optimized and working to improve your ranking. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Earn a Better Reputation

Improved SEO and more time to focus on other operations can make your brand’s reputation grow. Outsourcing SEO frees up team members to focus on other areas, such as customer service. This is an important benefit for small businesses with team members who wear many hats.

Cons of SEO Services

There are also a few cons to outsourcing SEO. Many companies feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, but ultimately that decision is up to you. What do you feel is the best for your company?

Potential cons to outsourcing include:

• Agencies have multiple clients
• Loss of control
• More risks
• Choosing an agency can be complicated

Discover more about the impact of each potential issue below.

Agencies Have Multiple Clients

Obviously, you won’t be the agency’s only client. This means you won’t be able to speak to someone immediately about an issue like you could if SEO was an internal function. This can become a bigger issue in some cases.

Your business could get lost in the shuffle. You could feel like you aren’t receiving the services you signed up for, or potentially feel like you are wasting money. It’s important to have open and regular communications if you do decide to outsource your SEO. This way you can maintain transparency with the agency.

Loss of Control

When you work with an agency, they are the experts in SEO. So, you’ll lose some control over how your strategy is crafted and executed. It’s important agencies have the freedom needed to make your SEO strategy a success.

An experienced and good SEO agency will involve you in all decisions. And will take your input as valuable advice and consider how it could be implemented. Be wary of an agency that doesn’t involve you in decisions or makes changes without alerting you.

More Risks

You’ll have to provide sensitive company information to the agency, so they can do their job. It’s always a risk to share information with an outsider. You must trust the agency you choose. Additionally, there is a risk associated with the service. SEO is not a guaranteed strategy. What the agency does may or may not be successful for your company.

Choosing an Agency Can Be Complicated

There are countless factors to consider when choosing an external SEO agency. This can be a lot for some companies to consider. And having an in-house SEO team may be the better choice if that’s how your organization feels about choosing an agency. A lot of research and questions should go into choosing an outsourced agency. It should not be a spontaneous decision or taken lightly.

Final Verdict On Outsourced SEO Services: Yay or Nay?

We have assessed the pros and cons of outsourced SEO services. And the verdict is…Yay!

There is always a risk to working with an external agency, regardless of which department it is with, so it’s important to be cautious. If you prepare for SEO services and research potential agencies thoroughly, finding a great partner will be easier than expected.

How to Prepare for Outsourced SEO Services

So, now that you’ve decided to outsource your SEO, what do you need to prepare for the new partnership? There are a few things you should decide before picking an agency.

Those include:

• Define your long-term goals
• Determine what services you want
• Set your budget

We’ll discuss more in detail below.

Define Long-Term Goals

SEO is a long-term game. You should go into a partnership knowing what you want out of the campaign. And depending on what services you outsource, the goals could differ vastly. You may want to hire an agency to find what keywords you need for your industry. Or maybe you want the whole package. Either way, you need to know the long-term goal.

The agency can’t work toward something if they don’t know what it is. And it’s ok if you don’t have a definitive answer for this one. You can have an idea about what you want out of outsourced services and let the agency help you narrow it down.

Determine What Services You Want Outsourced

When researching potential agencies, you should know what services you want to be outsourced. Some agencies offer a full digital marketing experience, while others specialize in certain areas. Knowing what services you need for your organization is an important step to preparing to work with an agency.

Set a Budget

Cost is always an important factor to consider. You should set a budget for how much you want to invest in SEO. This will help the agency to select the most appropriate package in your price range. SEO usually takes months to a few years to work, so setting a budget that you are willing to commit to long-term is important.

Brand Positioning

Is the agency well-versed in your industry? Do they understand the competitive landscape? Know the market? Making sure the potential agency has worked within your specific industry is a key step in preparing for a partnership.

If the agency doesn’t have the experience, are they willing to learn? Make sure the agency you select is willing to put in the effort to help your company’s SEO strategy succeed.

Questions to Ask Potential Agencies

Once you have selected a few companies to work with, you should schedule calls to determine how successful and knowledgeable they are at SEO.

A few questions to ask include:

• How long have you been in business?
• What results have other clients seen?
• What services do you offer?
• Do you have experience in my industry?

Asking each of these questions will tell you more about your potential partner.

How Long Have You Been In Business?

While it’s important to not discount newer agencies, having some experience in the business is important. Is everyone in the agency wholly new to SEO? That may be a red flag.

Is the agency new, but do the leaders have years of experience they can prove? That’s not as worrisome. And for the companies that have been in business for a long time, you can easily search and find reviews about their services.

What Results Have Other Clients Seen?

A good agency will have case studies and examples to provide for you. And they will have past clients who rave about their services. If it’s impossible to find any reviews or testimonials, ask for some. And if the agency refuses your request? Well, you need to ask yourself why. And move on to the next agency.

What Services Do You Offer?

Once you have determined what services you want to be outsourced, you need to make sure the agency provides them. This should be one of the first questions asked so no one’s time is wasted. Think of how frustrating it would be to build rapport with an agency only to find out the service you really need isn’t an option. Find this information out upfront.

Do You Have Industry Experience?

To accurately craft and execute an SEO strategy, the agency has to understand your industry. They can’t create content for you, find keywords, or build backlinks if they don’t understand what it is you do. If they are willing to learn, great. Ask and see if you can do a probationary period to ensure they learn what is needed.

If they aren’t willing to learn the industry…it’s a big red flag. And the agency won’t be a good fit because your efforts will most likely be wasted.

Get Started With Outsourced SEO Services

Now that you understand more about the pros and cons of outsourced SEO services, you can make a more informed decision for your organization. If you follow the preparation steps above, you can make outsourcing a breeze. Do you want to get started with SEO soon? And do you want to partner with an organization that has years of success in digital marketing and SEO?

At David Taylor Design, we have 15+ years of award-winning experience in digital marketing and SEO. We offer various marketing services to help position your brand for growth. You should consider our SEO offerings and how we can help your company to get a better ranking ASAP. Take a look at our SEO services page to get started today.