As an online business owner, you must be aware of the fact that grabbing customer attention isn’t an easy task. To drive continuous traffic to the website, it is crucial for it to be optimized with the latest updates rolled out by the search engines.

If the sources are to be believed, then Google reportedly changes its search algorithm around 500 to 600 times per year. So, having a dedicated team for SEO or search engine optimization is imperative.

But, hiring an in-house team is a both costly and daunting task. This is one of the reasons why many companies started outsourcing professional services from dedicated service providers – SEO is one of those services.

So, what is SEO outsourcing?

SEO outsourcing is the process of handling your website’s search engine optimization responsibility in a professional’s hand who doesn’t work within your organization but is willing to help you in exchange for capital.

Then there is offshore SEO outsourcing. The process here is similar, but instead of handling the work to a service provider based within the country, you outsource SEO services outside the country or your primary sector.

Talking about the search engines, the ranking algorithms rolled out every now and then by the search engines can get complex from time to time. In fact, they are getting challenging to crack, meaning, as a business owner, you cannot choose the path of the “jack of all trades” method here or hire a novice team to handle your SEO needs. Plus, hiring a team of experts and building the required infrastructure is just an astronomical expense for the companies.

Thankfully, SEO outsourcing comes here to the rescue and saves the day. By outsourcing SEO needs, you not only save your time, money and efforts but also ensure a strong brand presence online. And since 68% of online experience begins from search engines, your investment in SEO outsourcing will pay back as expected.

How to effectively outsource your SEO needs?

Now more than ever, people are aware of the benefits associated with SEO. This increased demand for SEO services has also given rise to too many suppliers (service providers).

In order to effectively outsource the SEO needs, choosing the right company is the key. In fact, you win your half battle then and there itself.

So, while hiring a service provider, ensure to:

• Choose the right service provider based on their reputation in the market.
• Cross-check if their employees have the required skills and expertise to deal with the complex domain of digital marketing.
• Ensure that they have an internal team to look after your entire project. This is because some service providers tend to hire freelancers to get the job done at a low cost. You cannot be sure of the quality of the work done here.

Apart from checking for these things in the service provider, it is important that you practise a few things, too. For instance:

• Set clear, measurable goals
• Agree on an action plan
• Create time-based targets
• Discuss your budget, etc.

And keep in mind SEO isn’t something you do once and expect for it to work forever. As mentioned before, search algorithm changes so do the SEO need. In order to formulate a long-term blueprint with your service provider, you are both required to be on the same page throughout the entire project’s phase.

And to ace the game of SEO and reap the best results over time, you need to follow a few do’s and don’ts, such as:

The Do’s

1- List your goals and expectations

One simply cannot run a digitized business without goals. Being goal-oriented keeps you on the right path and results in less wastage of resources.

So, the first thing you must do immediately after hiring an SEO service provider is set a meeting to list your goals and expectations from them. And since different companies have different objectives when it comes to SEO, it is best to list the same with proper clarity and organizational visibility.

Here are some common expectations business owners have from an SEO outsourcing company:

• Make use of relevant SEO-related knowledge while ensuring technical expertise is used rightfully in technical marketing campaigns.
• Enhance the organic search result by creating an intelligent SEO strategy that also includes content development, link insertion and distributing the optimized content through multiple digital channels for broader reach.

If you know your goals and expectations from the SEO outsourcing company, you can stay assured of thorough outcomes.

Choose the service provider based on offerings, such as:

SEO is complex and quite deep. It is certainly hard to wrap your head around it.
And since every business’s needs are different, it is important to check for the types of services your service provider is capable of providing.

Here are a few things to look out for:

• If you have a limited budget and no other service providers are capable of staying within your expectations, then you can opt for SEO services from freelance platforms. Here you can pay for any specialized managed SEO services as a project at pre-decided rates.
• White hat SEO agencies are ones that use the best market practice to offer relevant content along with a well-labelled image. Such agencies perform structured data analysis, conducts content auditing and focus on unique page titles, good sentence structure and compliant HTML standards.
• If your needs are quite extensive, you might want to opt for comprehensive SEO service providing agencies. These companies can provide managed SEO service packages that cover almost every digital marketing needs you have. They can even offer supplementary services like inbound lead generation, branding, reputation management, email marketing, link building, etc.

So, before you jump in and give your website’s credentials to a service provider, ensure to research their performance, reputation in the market and history.

2- Select preferred SEO engagement

The best part of working with an SEO outsourcing company is that you are in charge of most of the aspects. This means you get to choose from many types of engagement for your campaign. And choosing the right method of outsourcing can regulate the success of your performance; therefore, take time to decide what will work best for your business.

For instance, if you are looking forward to enhancing your digital marketing strategy and making a few adjustments, then consider building a small SEO project. A reliable SEO agency will help you manage the project with all the required resources at your disposal.

Similarly, if you wish to focus on SEO along with its primary objectives, then try opting for the whole package and let the digital marketing agency help you. With such an expectation, you will benefit best by working with a comprehensive SEO service providing agency. They can assist you with the full-time campaign.

3- Check the progress on the project

Similar to how you would check on your in-house team for routine updates on the project, you need to do the same with your SEO outsourcing company, too.

We aren’t asking you to nag the service providers, but it makes sense to be in the loop of the operations. You can either request a weekly report of the running campaigns or check the same once a month.

Whatever option you choose, you will gain the opportunity of tracking outcomes of implemented SEO strategies. You can track what process is working best for you, which aspects require a little push and what strategies need to be improvised completely. Of course, you will require working with the project experts, but checking the progress of the project helps you gain valuable details.

This way, you can work again with the team to set new, measurable targets. Agree on new and improved action plans.

The Don’ts

1- Expecting the outsourcing agency to work without guidance

Many people expect their outsourcing agency to do everything for them without any guidance. Well, such an expectation is completely absurd.

Yes, we agree that outsourcing SEO agencies work with various clients. They must have worked with clients similar to your industry specialization, too. But that doesn’t mean they are capable of delivering your company’s needs.

No matter how similar the two companies are, their nature of business, corporate goals and products will vary significantly. So, it is imperative that you or your in-house marketing and IT team guides and supervises your service provider for optimal results.

Similarly, get them on board with your operations to provide them with a clear understanding of your business model. This way, you make your service providers capable of using the right tactics and strategies to create quality content for the website with the right keywords and backlinks.

2- Hiring a company that isn’t aware of the latest advancements

Search engine optimization is a dynamic domain that is evolving rapidly. And this is one of the prime reasons why you need to invest in an SEO outsourcing company in the first place.

If the service provider you chose does not use obsolete technologies and tools, then you are not just wasting your time and money but are keeping wrong expectations from the incapable provider.

If you wish to make profits from your SEO game plan and increase organic traffic to your website, it is worth choosing a service provider that is aware of the latest trends and uses the latest resources and technologies to meet your SEO requirements.

There are tons of new advancements in the SEO domain, including voice search, mobile-first indexing and constant algorithm updates, making it a fast pacing field. So, ensure to take the advice of an SEO consultant to be assured that the strategies utilized by your chosen SEO outsourcing company are appropriate for the modern landscape and are capable of making a solid impact on your bottom-line objectives.

3- Expecting instant results

This is very important. Many business owners expect SEO to work like magic.

First of all, SEO experts aren’t magicians, and neither are they using any potion or spells to boost your website’s visibility and organic traffic from the very next day.

So, being patient is key here. SEO takes time. Not just a week or two, but months. And that too, only with tactical strategies and plans.

In simple words, you need to trust the process. Once you are done choosing a reliable service provider for your SEO needs, you can stay assured of obtaining result-oriented services from them.

You can share your expectations and goals with them, but let them decide what methods they wish to use to facilitate the process. Also, avoid questioning every step taken by the experts. SEO outsourcing is a collaborative process, meaning it will yield results only if done positively so you can navigate the field seamlessly.

4- Forgetting to align SEO strategies with marketing goals

The marketing plans you have for your business and the SEO hacks are just the different sides of the same coin. It is important that you or your in-house marketing team or IT team brainstorms with the SEO outsourcing company to align the corporate goals and even remain on the same page.

Identifying the benchmark is the stepping stone for your SEO outsourcing company and the marketing department. They need to work in unison to define SEO and content metrics such as keyword insertion, organic backlinks and the total number of backlinks.

Your marketing team can assist the external SEO service providers in distributing the content throughout maximum channels for improved visibility, and of course, wider audience reach.

Over to you

Keep in mind outsourcing SEO needs for your company’s necessities may seem like an easy procedure, but in order for it to work as per your expectations, you need to be hyper-vigilant from the very beginning. Make sure to get all the facts right in advance, no matter what your decision is.

Make a list of trustworthy service providers, research on them and choose the one that has enough experience to help your website gain the needed traction. And once you sign the contract, ensure to follow the do’s and don’ts as mentioned above to make the most out of your investment in SEO outsourcing.