We talk to a lot of businesses who say they want a company to "do SEO" for them - they're looking for a company or consultant to whom they can outsource their search engine optimization completely. Many people who are new to the space and don't yet understand how SEO works - how it is an ongoing process that requires a business' input - think that it's simply a checklist of items that they can hand off to an outside consultant. But that is not actually the case.
Why Your Business Can't Fully Outsource SEO:
- Your Keywords . You (hopefully) know your business better than any SEO consultant you could hire. This means that you know your market and you can make the right judgments on the most relevant keywords to optimize around. When it comes to developing a smart Internet marketing strategy, you should do a full keyword research process to identify which keywords (1) have a high number of monthly searches, (2) are not as competitive or difficult to start ranking for, and (3) are relevant to your business.
- Your Content . A big piece of search engine optimization is creating interesting and relevant content for your audience. That often means calling on your expertise for the content of a blog post, for example, even if it means hiring a writer or editor to put it down in sentences and paragraphs.
-
Your Relationships
. Another big piece of search engine optimization is
linkbuilding
- links serve as references for your site and signal to the search engines that you are important. Some linkbuilding you can outsource - getting listed in high quality directories, for example - but another piece of your linkbuilding strategy should include engaging in the blogosphere and developing relationships with bloggers in your industry. Much of building up your business' reputation online involves building up your personal reputation online by interacting on a individual level with the consumers and peers in your industry - something a consultant cannot really do on your behalf.
All that said, this is not to say that you should not hire an SEO consultant. The key here is that you cannot fully outsource this project - you must be commited to being involved in your SEO initiatives (and should probably be wary of any SEO consultant that says they can do it all without your input). Whether you hire a consultant or decide to take on your SEO yourself, you should probably educate yourself on the basics and understand what you should be tracking and measuring to make sure you're not wasting your time and money. Our one hour marketing webinar on SEO 101 can quickly get you up to speed.
Or, really want a quick fix ? How about some SEO Pixie Dust ?
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
peter caputa 3:30 PM on June 20, 2008
Couldn't agree more, Ellie.
I like to tell people that there are two kinds of SEO. The kind you pay somebody a few thousand dollars to do once, which may or may not help you generate more leads and business. As you point out, if it doesn't involve your input and activity, it'll probably NOT produce results.
And the kind that requires ongoing work in order to generate ongoing and compounding ROI from it.
You talked about the latter. SEO should be like any other "prospecting" activity that a sales and marketing team does.
I say "prospecting" and not "marketing" because if you get good at it, it's just like being good at prospecting. It hand delivers sales leads into your pipeline.
Peter 3:38 PM on June 20, 2008
Ellie, interesting post. Small business owners know their businesses the best and can write and talk about them like no one else. SEO compliments this perfectly.
Taking a bit of time to learn the principles you outlined can help demystify the challenges of SEO and make it a more manageable part of any companies repertoire.
Haz 3:59 PM on June 20, 2008
If you can't find a company to outsource completely to, you haven't found the right SEO company. An excellent SEO company will address all the points listed above. The business owner should be focused more on strategy and broader-scale projects than SEO. For the business owner, spending your time in SEO is a poor ROI on time.
peter caputa 5:32 PM on June 20, 2008
Oooh. Oooh. Debate.
@Haz. I don't think Ellie is saying that an SEO firm shouldn't be involved with the process. I think she's suggesting that there are certain parts that an internal resource should be involved with.
And since SEO produces leads and sales for companies, I fail to see how it'd be a poor use of a small business owners or marketing professionals' time.
Ellie Mirman 5:37 PM on June 20, 2008
Thanks, guys, for all the comments.
I'd also add that there's a lot of experimentation that should go on in marketing and SEO in particular, where you try optimizing around particular keywords, see if they generate qualified leads for your sales team, and keep trying out new initiatives to find what provides the best business results.
Gail Cavanaugh 6:34 PM on June 20, 2008
I agree business owners should try to do their own SEO. I have learned a lot just by doing this myself. I have gotten better at this and as a result I have a lot of traffic to my website which keeps increasing. I make changes and update my sites frequently.
Haz 8:26 PM on June 20, 2008
@Caputa: if you're a marketing professional, then yes, SEO is where you should be spending your time. However, if you are *the* business owner, you should be hiring somebody to do the SEO, so that you can spend your time managing strategy, HR, finance - the higher level, more strategic components. Many business owners end up working *in* their business, when they need to be working *on* their business.
I am debating the contention that "You can't fully outsource SEO". You may need to pay a premium price for it, but the fact is, you *can* fully outsource SEO.
Prashant Kaw 12:35 AM on June 21, 2008
Great post! Above and beyond what you have outlined there are other issues with outsourcing SEO.
- You may have to let a 3rd party into your system (servers and site) if they are performing the optimization for you.
- Your web personnel could feel insecure about their position and not cooperate
- A lot of the success of the 3rd party vendor is contingent on you helping them by approving, delivering or updating the content, keywords, server side changes, etc. Be prepared to work as hard as your SEO vendor.
- If you are project managing both the SEO consultant and your web team you have to put in a lot of effort to facilitate the seamless exchange of information.
But in the end it is worth it!
Prashant Kaw 12:44 AM on June 21, 2008
Oh yeah, one more point: Depending on your site, you may want to:
A) create a CMS for constantly updating/tweaking keywords, and
B) Have the whole process be database driven.
These are requirements that save a lot of time and effort in the long run but will require internal resources and efforts to make happen!
peter caputa 11:45 AM on June 21, 2008
@haz Agreed that business owners should work on and not in their business, in a perfect world.
However, most solopreneurs and small business owner's primary responsibility is generating new business.
If the business owners can write well, they should blog. If they're blogging, they should take the 2 extra hours and learn how to use the right keyword research tools in order to do on-page SEO, in order to generate leads for the business.
Once a company gets past 25 employees or so, I agree that they should have another person take over the SEO work. But, I think it should be an internal resource with support from an SEO consultant when needed, not a completely outsourced $2k+/month SEO consultant. The primary role of the consultant should be to provide the proper content management system, blogging platform, keyword research tools and training to the content producer, and advise on strategy on a periodic basis after reviewing SEO ROI data.
Daniel Gebura 6:05 PM on June 21, 2008
SEO is a long process but it can pay huge dividends when it's done properly. There are so many so called SEO EXPERTS who use unethical methods of optimization that I decided to learn SEO myself.
Best Regards
Amichai Inbar 11:56 AM on June 22, 2008
It is true that we can't outsource 100% our website or business. Its only the owner that should have the fully access of certain site. Like on my part, I don't have any access on its site when it comes to on-page optimization and I have nothing to do with it since its my clients decision. This is good for us to avoid hacking and scam on this kind of industry.
adikhresna 12:51 PM on June 22, 2008
I don't know much about SEO. I get many inputs from above comments. Thanks for all.
Jeff Wilson 10:50 PM on June 22, 2008
IMO an SEO company should consult the business owner to better understand the mission to be accomplished. This is really just marketing 101. Great post.
Haz 12:20 AM on June 24, 2008
@peter: Agreed. I think at this point we are debating over the "Should", vs the "Can" or "Cannot". However, I do agree with you on your last point!
Andy G 3:06 PM on July 19, 2008
I respectfully disagree! The cost factor is a MAJOR factor that will always drive business owners to outsource. I am dealing with a prospect that has a team of 6 SEO professionals on his payroll. We are estimating he is paying 10 times more than he would if he worked with us. We have close relationships with our clients and feel that the generalization that SEO companies cannot have the relationships that an in-house person is ridiculous in my opinion. Both have pros and cons for either choice. What I would recommend is to outsource, and have ONE qualified person on staff to manage the on going campaign on top of other related responsibilities. This will keep costs down, while having the best of both worlds! The cost will only increase when you now need to hire an in-house SEO team to produce commercial or informative marketing videos for one of the newest breakthrough SEO strategies……….. VIDEO SEO!
SEO technology will always evolve!
http://www.anargroup.com/solutions-seo_video.htm
Ellie Mirman 2:53 AM on July 20, 2008
@Andy G - I've actually found that hiring an outside consultant is actually much more expensive than taking on SEO in-house. I think one of the most appealing factors of hiring an outside consultant is the saved time, and that's why many companies try to do this.
Andy G 8:14 AM on July 20, 2008
Ellie, I believe you. Although I think you may be basing your opinion on the TOTAL cost. The painful reality is that we typically have 8 hour work days. There is just so much one SEO can do in that time frame. Yeah it may look less expensive, but in this highly competitive market you should consider the time it takes to complete each SEO related task. What I am trying to point out is that Anar Group for example has a TEAM. Not one, two or 3 people. Try to figure what the cost would be if they were on your payroll. When I say seo “TASKS” I am referring to what I have listed below:
• Article Generation
• Article Submissions
• Social Bookmark Submissions
• Directory Submissions
• Blog Install and Integration
• Blog Submissions
• Local and Industry Search Evaluation & Submission
• Page Rank 2 Back Links .
• Page Rank 3 Back Links
• Page Rank 4 Back Links
• Press Release
• Initial Offsite SEO Report
• Quarterly SEO Reports
• Extensive Onsite Optimization
• Video Commercial Edit &Production
• Voice Over Edit & Production
• Scripting
• Video Site Submission
• Video Social Bookmark Submission
• Video Blog Submission
• Ping feed aggregators
• Audio Conversion
• Audio podcast & iTunes Submission
• Audio Submission
• Total Media Tracking
You may say… “yeah I can do that in-house” I will then ask at what duration and at what price. There should be one person for each responsibility! So just imagine the cost of hiring one person for articles, blogs, video, video production, directory submissions, social networking, reporting, etc……..
Give us a call if you’d like. 603 548 7834 – We will give you a FAIR quote!
http://www.anargroup.com/solutions-seo.htm
Andy 11:03 PM on November 16, 2008
Allen,
We are partnering up with marketing firms like yours to add video search marketing and optimization to your equation. Give me a call if you would like 603 548 7834
Vermont Web design 5:12 PM on November 24, 2008
Allen, Contact me
Andy G. 8:15 PM on November 24, 2008
Allen and Vermont Please contact me 603 548 7834.
martin 11:46 AM on January 15, 2009
Hi,
I have just found your site whilst searching Google for the keyword outsource seo.
I have some high quality PR sites that I can offer in a 3 way link exchange below. If you are interested in any of these sites please reply to this email and I can put your links live today and then, I will give you the URL and details of my links.
http://www.singaporehotspots.com/ PR6
http://www.ibf2007.org/ PR5
http://www.iconsat2008.com/ PR5
Kind regards
Martin Seedall
Link Building Professionals
P.S. Get links from Dmoz sites today, see www.link-building.biz