Utilizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your business is a must if you want to maximize your online presence, visibility, and brand reputation through organic searches.

Maybe your in-house team members aren’t trained for it, are too busy to handle extra SEO tasks, or you’re looking for an SEO expert with specific skills for your marketing goals. Either way, outsourcing your tasks to the right SEO specialist can make your business more profitable and more powerful within the timeframes you have in mind.

Why outsource SEO? It’s quicker and more cost-effective. Whether or not you have an in-house SEO specialist, you and your team can focus working on other projects and outsourcing gives you the flexibility to scale up or down, depending on your budget or current projects.

SEO Tasks you can outsource

When you can, take repetitive tasks off your in-house team so they can focus on other projects. Delegate these tasks to outsourced team members and watch your business grow.

Here are just some of the SEO tasks you can transfer to your outsourcing team:

• SEO strategy
• SEO audits
• Competitor SEO analysis
• Keyword research
• Link building
• On-page SEO
• SEO writing
• SEO article outreach and partnerships
• Directory optimization
• Content optimization
• Forum and social media posting

Your website’s success relies on these SEO tasks. For example, your current website might need auditing to spot any problems that prevent you from reaching customers. Or you might need competitor SEO analysis to evaluate SEO opportunities from successful competitors’ sites and use them to improve your website. Your website might also be invisible from a lack of strategies like optimized blogs and relevant pages.

There’s so much time and money wasted when you don’t optimize your website. Ready to outsource SEO?

6 tips for outsourcing SEO

SEO is at the heart of digital marketing processes– landing pages, websites, content marketing, digital advertising, and more. Whether you’re a lone SEO freelancer or an entire team, you want specialists that fit well with your company’s unique needs, budget, and projects. Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Know your SEO goals

Before you start outsourcing, you have to know your goals and expectations. What KPIs do you want to see immediately? What about long-term results? How many SEO specialists do you have to hire?

You can speak with an agency to know more about timelines and the demands of the work involved. Outsourcing is usually done for project-based tasks, say a website tune-up or keyword analysis for your site. But it can also be done for SEO maintenance. If it’s the former, you can hire a freelancer or a specialist from an agency.

But if you need SEO retainers to catch up with the requirements of your website every month, a team from an SEO agency can get you all set up.

2. Prepare your budget

Outsourcing your SEO is a budget-friendly option for startups who need help with site building and a cost-effective solution for enterprises than hiring in-house.

Agencies have cost-effective packages and can give you estimates on costs for one-off projects.

If you’re tight on deadlines, an SEO agency has teams with different specializations and levels of expertise to finish work faster. Given that, of course, the deadlines aren’t too tight.

3. Decide the level of experience

The greater the experience, the greater the pay.

SEO agencies are usually a mix of junior SEO specialists and senior SEO specialists who have worked on several SEO projects. They also have access to different SEO tools for keyword research, technical SEO, link building, and more.

If you want faster results, say for strengthening domain authority plus keyword research, you want to spend a little more for an expert-level SEO specialist. It’s more cost-effective that way. But if you’re just on to basic SEO like keyword research, a junior SEO specialist can do the task.

4. Prepare SEO interviews and trials

If you’re going to work on long projects, you’d want to screen your potential SEO candidates to determine if they’re the proper fit for your company. Does their value system align well with your company’s values? Switching between new SEO specialists in the middle of a crucial project can be time-consuming.

Whether it’s a company or a consultant (solo freelancer), determine how long they have been working. What experiences do they have that could work for your company?

If it’s for short-term projects, you can save time by asking the essential questions (e.g. experience relevant to your project, understanding of the three SEO levels) and a trial task to gauge their skills.

You also have to be wary of SEO specialists who promise instant or guaranteed rankings. It usually takes 3-6 months before you see results.

5. Define your deliverables

At the outset, you want to be clear with your potential SEO candidates about what KPIs they are expected to bring. Is it specific keyword rankings? Growth in organic traffic? Increased revenue?

You communicate these deliverables and ask what techniques they use or how they can achieve those. You want to know the current ranking of your website to optimize it in the search results.

How do they audit? Do they do web crawl analysis?

6. Set SOPs, Your Standard Operating Procedures

Before you hire an SEO specialist or team, set a standard operating procedure. Give them a checklist of their responsibilities. Brief them. How frequently should they report and communicate?

Agencies usually have a structured way of reporting and communicating with you via online collaboration platforms.

Outsourcing SEO is working smart

Outsourcing SEO specialists presents a lot of pros– it’s cost-effective, saves you time, and strengthens your marketing strategy, to name a few. It’s one of the best investments you can make as you start your business or at whichever juncture when you aim for more growth.

You plan first to know what to expect. Identify the needs and capabilities of your company so you know what type of SEO specialists you should bring to your team.