If your brand lacks SEO protocols, your web team must be confronting challenges to boost your brand outreach. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most robust must-have for digital marketing. In case your current team is struggling to keep up with all your SEO campaigns, it is time to outsource your SEO to a third party like an agency or a specialist. While Cloud Vertix—a digital marketing solutions company, would argue that some tasks are best left to internal teams. SEO is just one of those areas where companies of all sizes can benefit from an advanced SEO specialist or a team of SEOs. However, their sole focus is to help you grow traffic and sales.
Many brands cannot afford an in-house permanent SEO. It is not a budgetary practice either. We are going to review a few of the nuances you’ll want to consider when outsourcing your SEO: the four SEO outsourcing questions you must consider:
One of the two SEO outsourcing models you have to consider is an all-inclusive SEO outsourcing. This model depends on what stage your company is in or what your current in-house team looks like. Those are outsourcing all SEO or combining outsourced SEO with an in-house team. If you don’t have the budget for an SEO specialist or team (and we will get more into cost later), the obvious choice here is to outsource all of your SEO needs.
What Includes in All-package SEO
When talking about SEO tasks, we are often talking about on and off-page SEO, content writing, and the often understated crux of development and graphic design. These are super cost-intensive to perform in-house, and not all SEO agencies provide all of these services. So, that’s something to consider when hiring, which Cloud Vertix offers and we will discuss it a little bit later when we open the section of outsourcing based on needs.
If you do have some existing marketers who need overflow help or specialized help, then it makes sense to join your in-house team with outsourced SEO. In our experience, the best cost savings and performance come into play when you have an existing writing team and development team. However, it leaves the heavy lifting to SEO specialists, such as research, link building, site speed recommendations, content audit, etc.
Let’s elaborate, moving back to our four focal areas of discussion.
At Cloud Vertix, you need to hire SEO based on a maximum business impact methodology. This means you should prioritize your SEO efforts based on whatever your most important goals are for your company. For example, if you want to be known for a particular service or product, you must come up with SEO strategies that help your brand rank for that service or product is a priority. Or, if you want to know where your content gaps are and what content is the most impactful, you’d prioritize a content audit using that content.
Perhaps you just want an SEO partner that specializes in content audits for SEO. If you don’t have such a specialized goal in mind and just want to increase sales, you should be able to lean on an SEO agency to help you strategize an action plan based on your goals and budget. Whatever direction you go in, it’s helpful to approach your SEO outsourcing partner with some specific goals, metrics, or KPIs that they can back into.
It will relieve you from many worries about finding really good SEO outsourced companies or partners. It is the most difficult part of moving towards this marketing model. There are main ways you can find potential partners. You can:
Similar to the example we covered above, looking for an SEO content audit service and seeing companies like Cloud Vertix who specialize in this type of service can be a good way to start some discussions. So you can get an idea of deliverables and costs. You can also do a search based on your industry, such as SEO for Shopify supply, an agency for e-commerce SEO, or an SEO agency for the pharmaceutical industry.
When using a directory site, you should probably go with Angie’s list or local listing. These are definitely the best directory sites that help you set through some of the noise. You can filter SEO agencies by:
We like the local listing for personal website needs because they require your clients to actually interview with them. It woll help to keep the quality reviews a bit more transparent and credible.
We will only suggest job boards if you’re trying to hire a freelance SEO and not an agency. Note that with freelancers, you can’t expect them to do everything really well. In other words, don’t expect an SEO freelancer to be an expert SEO content writer, developer, and project manager. If they do have all of that experience, expect to pay a pretty penny or expect some low-quality results across the board. That said, the best place to find SEOs on job board sites is probably Upwork. Other notable freelance SEO job board sites include Indeed.com and Fiverr. Although with Fiverr, you’ve probably spent a lot of time sorting through profiles of SEO generalists. So, you may find it’s not a good option unless you have really basic SEO needs.
The other way that you might want to approach this is by utilizing your network. If you have a good professional network, you can just reach out to contacts in your industry and see if they have any success working with SEO companies.
People make it seem like outsourcing SEO is the dream. You get to sit by the sea, drinking from a coconut, while others do the work for you. But people often leave out the fact that doing it well is hard. When you’re outsourcing something as complex as search engine optimization, it comes with completely new challenges like creating systems, hiring good help at reasonable rates, and management.
Step 1: Create SOPs
SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) are full-context documents that explain how you should carry out a task from start to completion. However, when you say detailed, it means covering all the aspects. For instance, McDonald’s is arguably the most well-known eatery brand around the globe. The consistency of their experience is huge because of their SOPs and training.
They get both in-person training as well as a handbook for each of their new employee. The special handbook discusses everything from greeting customers at the drive-thru window. It also handles how to meet kitchen responsibilities and even handling money. The document is so good that you can literally envision the experience as you read it. This is how you want to create your SOPs. Outline every last detail to the point of visualization.
1. Eases Onboarding
If someone quits, disappears without notice, or you let them go. SEO Outsourcing SOPs make it super-easy to hire and onboard new help.
2. Reference For Returning Workers
Suppose someone hasn’t done the work for a while. Then, SEO outsourcing will be a guide to reference to get back on track fast.
3. Efficiency is the Key
Since you’ve already gone through the SEO out-house hiring process, you should have documented everything in the most efficient way possible. It will allow your tasks to be completed faster.
4. Consistency Makes Master
It saves you time from answering the same questions over and over again. It also prevents people from deviating from a system that works.
5. Scalability Measures Pace
Scalability in SEO hires is what allows you to eventually remove yourself from the process so you can enjoy more free time.
SOPs don’t necessarily need to be written documents; they can be videos, too. You may use whatever format makes the most sense or create videos and hire someone to repurpose them into text.
Example: Creating SOPs for Link Building
You must break down tasks into broad steps, such as guest posting, broken link building, and unlinked mentions. Then, you get to write detailed descriptions of what and how they should execute their tasks. For example, for guest posting, the steps might be:
Step 2: Hiring Freelancers
People often look for one freelancer to do everything. While some are good at many facets of SEO, doing everything alone is time-consuming and inefficient. Hiring people to take over specific tasks allows them to become masters of those tasks.
1. Hiring Based on SOPs
Your first hire might be a data miner to find emails while you do the prospecting wr, citing, and outreach. Then, you can hire someone for prospecting, and so on.
2. Write Down Job Descriptions
With detailed SOPs, you can easily create job descriptions outlining the required skills. Additionally, include:
Further Notes:
3. Specific Application Instructions:
For example, use the subject line: “Position – Data Miner.” If applicants don’t follow this, they likely didn’t read your job post or can’t follow instructions.
4. Qualification Task:
You need to ask applicants to complete a simple task that shouldn’t take longer than five minutes to verify their skills.
Different networks have stronger candidates for specific skills:
Start new hires on a paid trial, being clear that it is a trial. This lets you quickly determine their reliability and skill level.
Step 3: Systematize Your Workflow
Even outsourcing one facet of SEO is complex. You should consider a project management tool to keep track of everything. Popular tools include Trello, Asana, Notion, Airtable, and Basecamp. Kanban boards are particularly helpful for visualizing project status.
Example: Content Creation Workflow in Trello
1. Documentation Column
Web administrators can use cards for different SOPs based on each person’s role.
2. Keyword Research Column
You should assign topics to team members.
3. Outline Column
Writers create outlines to complete the Column.
4. Draft the Column
Writers move completed outlines here.
This process enables anyone on your team to know what’s happening with the blog.
There are two massive benefits to outsourcing SEO over doing it in-house:
1. Creates Time for You
It creates time for you to focus on things where you’re most valuable if you’re a business owner or manager. This might be managing in-house employees to grow your business or just overseeing your SEO strategy at a higher level.
2. Global Talent Pool
You’re not limited by geography. You must be missing out on working with smart and efficient if you are limited on your team to just people within your city or even country. Rather, you can hire talented people from all over the world.
The costs of SEO outsourcing very much depend on the amount of work you need, as well as the industry you’re in. It is also about the competition and how quickly you need work done. You should track the record and reputation of your SEO partner and the amount of project management time you are willing to invest.
If you’re a small local business and you’re looking for turnkey sort of SEO services, you can expect to pay around $1,000 to $2,000 for ongoing SEO. If you are a regional business in a very competitive market, we would very much expect to get your wallet out. Cloud Vertix offers a personal injury SEO agency that is very reputable with $15,000 a month retainers. This reputation from a partner comes into factor as well. If there are companies that are really well known and have worked with household brands, expect monthly retainers in the $10k range and expect the projects to come in at a similar rate.
In terms of project management, you must have seen very successful business owners run separate teams of SEOs, developers, writers, and link builders from various regions and have total marketing costs coming in at a third to a quarter cheaper than if they went all-in with one agency. But that cost of project management is the onus on you as the owner.
One last thing we want to talk about is the cost of employees versus that of outsourced SEO partners. A lot of people juggle that. There are certainly pros to having in-house employees, but we would argue it’s almost always better to have an outsourced SEO partner.
For starters, the estimated total pay for an SEO specialist is over $71,000, according to Glassdoor. That’s not all, though. According to the SBA, the actual cost of an employee is 1.25 to 1.4 times their salary when you talk about taxes, insurance, healthcare, retirement plans, etc. So, the same SEO could cost you $89,000 to $100,000.
So then there’s the likelihood that your SEO is not a writer, a graphic designer, a developer, or a project manager. What do you do about those roles? Should you actually have the budget to hire that initial SEO? The point here is if we divide the cost of one seasoned SEO employee into 12 months, we’re looking at almost $7,500 to over $8,000 a month that can be used for an agency. With that sort of budget, you can likely get SEO specialists, writers, graphic designers, developers, and project managers who can all fall under one agency’s roof. So, to me, it makes a strong case to partner with an agency of specialists at the end of the day.
That’s all about SEO outsourcing and its wholesome process. What do you think? What exposure have you gained with SEO outsourcing partners through our blog? Cloud Vertix concludes that it’s far better to hire an outsourcing SEO agency for your e-commerce brand marketing. We are the best outsourcing digital marketing company for SEO needs. Come let’s share with us your digital marketing promotional needs.
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