Ready to Outsource Your SEO Services? 5 Things to Consider First.
by Josette Millar
When making the decision to outsource SEO services, business owners need to ensure their investment isn’t wasted. Considering a few key questions can ensure that businesses go into their search for SEO services with open eyes and realistic expectations. Before calling for quotes on services, consider these five questions.
Why Do You Need to Outsource SEO Services?
Many businesses get so caught up in the idea of outsourcing their SEO services that they lose sight of why they need that expense. Are you looking to free up more time? Increase search engine rankings? Drive more sales? Getting to the heart of what you expect outsource SEO services to provide can guide businesses to a company and service system that meets their needs. Sit down and evaluate why outsourcing SEO services will strengthen your business and your brand.
What’s Your Budget?
When making the decision to outsource SEO services, a little investigation will yield companies offering services for pocket change to services costing thousands of dollars. To avoid courting businesses that are well outside your budget or setting sites too low and getting a sub-par product, create a realistic budget for those SEO services. By setting a budget before searching for services, businesses can determine whether their budget will reach their SEO needs.
What Services Do You Need?
SEO services vary drastically depending on the SEO company and your business needs. There are one-time fees that cover a set number of blog posts or some rewritten landing pages all the way to companies that specialize in continually writing, promoting, polishing, and tracking websites. Businesses seeking to outsource SEO services need to ask themselves what services they need to elevate their brand. Is a weekly blog post enough or does your business need a complete revamp of your current website? Getting a list on paper of what specific services are needed will help target SEO services that can meet your needs.
What’s Your Competition?
It may seem counterintuitive to worry about the competition when improving your own business but a competitor analysis can be invaluable when deciding whether to outsource SEO services. Understanding your current competitor’s strengths and weaknesses can help guide what services would benefit your own business. From determining what SEO keywords to focus on so as to improve search engine rankings to whether to spend more time cultivating a strong landing page, understanding their competitor’s online presence can help businesses determine what to look for when hiring businesses to meet their own SEO service needs.
Do You Have a Measure of Success?
Outsourcing is well and good but if there’s no method to measure success, then it’s wasted time and money. Many SEO services tout their ability to reach number one search engine ranking but they try to get there by over-stuffing content and making nonsensical posts and landing pages. Creating a measure of success when hiring outsource SEO services can ensure that services drive sales and improve your business’ brand. Decide what targets to reach for when choosing SEO services. Presenting potential service providers with clear cut metrics of what you want to achieve can help drive and optimize their services.
Outsource SEO services can provide business owners with a lot of relief when it comes to creating an effective website and online presence. An outsource SEO service that provides a good fit and a good value for a company can be invaluable to its growth. Conversely, hiring an SEO service in a way that is poorly planned and executed is a waste of company effort. Set your business up for success when outsourcing SEO services and consider these five questions first.