If your marketing activities rely mostly on SEO, then you must know the power it has to turn things around. High visibility, better ROI, more leads —- thought-out SEO strategy can help you achieve milestones no other marketing channels can.
But the practice of optimising for search engines is tricky. Algorithms evolve continuously, there’s a continuous need to publish new content, and the never-ending struggle to secure your backlinks. Every day is about surviving online.
If you’ve got specialists in your in-house team, they may be putting up with these problems. Realising you need an extra hand is never too late, and you can always give your marketing efforts the push they need.
Here, we’ll talk about everything you need to know before you partner with an SEO agency.
Why Do You Need an SEO Agency?
If you’re a business owner or a marketing manager, the thought of outsourcing can raise a lot of questions in your mind. Making an important business decision of entrusting your brand’s communication to a set of strangers can make you doubt your decision in the first place.
Yet, if you find the right SEO agency, these doubts will render invalid. Many businesses benefit from outsourcing rather than doing SEO in-house.
So, if you’re still sitting on the fence about it, think about how going the in-house way or the agency way would be favourable for you:
- Do you have the time, bandwidth, and budget to hire an in-house SEO team?
- Is your SEO-related work enough to justify the cost of in-house resources?
- Can you monitor and lead your in-house SEO team to ensure it benefits you?
You may not get black and white answers for these questions initially, but your ballpark budget and time may help you draw a conclusion.
Moreover, it’s not about making extreme choices — you can still partner with an SEO agency for expertise and consistency while fewer in-house SEO professionals can work hand-in-hand with them for better results.
But don’t think hiring a single resource for SEO would make the cut; Search engine optimisation is only fruitful when carried out by a competent team, and if you cannot hire one, then you can think of hiring the best SEO services agency NZ.
You see, SEO isn’t about making a few backlinks here and there, or improving the technical aspects of your website. Pleasing search engines requires exceptional copywriting skills, design acumen, and technical expertise to succeed online.
Here’s why thinking to outsource your SEO to an agency is a good idea:
1. Get an All-inclusive Strategy
Outsourcing your SEO tasks means access to a certified and experienced SEO expert that knows what steps to take in order to pull your website to the top of the SERPs.
In other words, when you outsource, you don’t have to build a strategy or roadmap. Instead, all you need to share with an SEO team hired outside of your business is your goals and access to your website while they’ll put in the legwork.
You might have to share additional information such as your branding guidelines, seed keywords that are most relevant to your business, and short term/long term goals.
When you work with the right SEO professional, they will utilise this information to create drive impact to your business. Be it copywriting, on-page, off-page SEO, and technical SEO, they will give you full support with all operations that an SEO strategy must comprise.
2. Save up More Money with an Agency
Hiring resources is no easy thing; neither is their replacement cost. In case an in-house resource decides to leave your company, finding a replacement will cost time and money can affect your bottom line as well as the progress in your SEO timeline.
According to a study by Gallup, replacing an employee could cost a company anywhere between 50% to 200% of the employee’s annual salary. Considering the salary of an SEO expert in NZ is a little over $45,500, replacing such a resource will cost your company anywhere between $20,000 and $90,000.
During the time of seeking a replacement, you may come across employees that aren’t the right fit — not having the right set of skills or experience. This will cost your thousands of dollars and may not get you anywhere.
Furthermore, the cost also adds when purchasing SEO tools. This is one of the most overlooked aspects that doesn’t come to the surface until you get an in-house SEO team. Most SEO tools can be surprisingly pricey.
Basic plans may start at a minimum of $100/month — we’re talking about the best SEO tools in the industry. Some of these also charge on an annual basis. So in the end, you may end up paying $1200 for tools alone. But is your project that vast to justify this cost?
On the other hand, while outsourcing you are mostly dealing with independent entities like freelancers or agencies that have case studies and customer references to prove their expertise.
When you outsource, this cost is not your problem anymore. All you need to worry about is the results of your SEO efforts.
3. Keeping Up Within Your Industry
Google currently dominates the search market and has control over 92% of the global search engine market share.
This means that every time Google introduces an update to their algorithm, the rules of the SEO game are altered.
Talking about how many times Google’s algorithm is updated, in the past five years, Google has rolled out over 65 major updates. That’s like one new update every two months.
Keeping up with these updates and making sure your website adheres to Google’s policies is a major aspect of search engine optimization. If you miss one important update, you could potentially lose all the time and efforts you put into SEO.
On the other hand, when you work with an outsourcing agency that is all about SEO, you can be assured that there are lesser chances of your website facing a penalty.
4. Documented Strategies
As far as SEO is involved, a documented strategy is a must. Since SEO takes a long time of consistent efforts to get results with SEO, having a strategy in place only helps.
If there is no documentation, one of the contributors could be lost and this might affect your SEO progress. So, not having a documented strategy will lead to a scattered and weak implementation, resulting in under expected outcomes.
When you work with an external partner, they will always take it upon themselves to document the strategy they have in mind.
This is because as a vendor, they will have to get the strategy approved from their client (you) before they can begin implementation. As a result, they have to create a strategy document before moving forward.
This way, when you outsource your SEO, you can be sure that all the efforts are laser focused at achieving the goals you have in mind.
5. Comprehensive Reports
While reports are definitely an important aspect of doing result-focused SEO, generating reports can be a time and resource consuming undertaking.
Think about it, tracking your website’s performance across tens of parameters, tracking backlinks, tracking rankings, tracking traffic numbers and sources, all of that takes time and over days and weeks, this time adds up and starts eating up your resources.
The worrying part is that after doing all that tracking, you will have to spend more time arranging and analysing the collected data to create reports.
Since SEO sometimes takes months to show results, you may even have to make preparing reports a weekly or monthly practice.
However, it is not difficult to imagine how this will not be a challenge when you are working with an outsourcing expert. When you sign a contract with them, all you need to do is ensure the contract clearly states how often reports will be shared with you and what KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) will be tracked.
Do you look forward to hiring an independent SEO team in NZ? Get your free consultation on SEO today.
6. Industry Connections
If you are operating an online business or even establishing an online presence for your existing business, chances are that organic traffic is not the only source of traffic (and revenue) that you will depend on.
You may be considering other aspects of digital marketing like social media marketing and paid advertising.
Finding the right professionals for these jobs can be time consuming. Not to forget, ending up in a contract with the wrong person or business can lead to a wastage of your precious marketing dollars.
Your SEO outsourcing partner, being a professional in the field of digital marketing, can help you connect with qualified individuals with a history of demonstrating results.
Even if they don’t have that kind of connections, most outsourcing partners would be happy to work with you to filter out undeserving candidates and help you identify the right outsourcing partners and consultants for other aspects of your digital marketing.
When it comes to outsourcing SEO, businesses usually have four options to choose from. Let’s understand each of these options in a bit more detail:
What Services Can You Outsource in SEO?
Now depending on your specific needs and business goals, you can hire an SEO agency to handle one or more SEO activities, such as:
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of determining the terms or phrases that prospective clients use to look for goods or services associated with your company.
It’s the fundamental stage in SEO since it makes sure your content matches the search habits of your target audience, increasing the possibility that your website will show up in search results and draw in more relevant visitors.
Through the use of advanced keyword research tools and analytics software, an external SEO team can provide a comprehensive understanding of the subjects and products that your target audience is interested in.
2. Content Strategy and Creation
Content strategy and creation is about planning and producing articles, guides, videos, infographics, webinars, and other materials that attract potential customers to your site via search engines.
High-quality content that aligns with search user demand helps to increase your site’s authority and relevance. This, in turn, can boost your site’s ability to rank prominently in search results.
By outsourcing your SEO content development, you can tap into the expertise of skilled writers and strategists who know how to create SEO-friendly work. High-ranking content pieces almost always incorporate relevant target keywords, adhere to SEO best practices, and, most importantly, provide tons of value to the reader.
3. Link Building
Link building is the practice of earning links from other websites back to your own.
It’s vital for SEO because search engines interpret backlinks as endorsements of your site. As a rule, the more backlinks you receive from relevant, reputable websites, the higher you’ll rank.
An outsourced SEO team can help identify potential sources of high-value backlinks and use tactics like guest posting, outreach campaigns, and broken link-building to secure more links.
4. Technical SEO
Enhancing the technical aspects of your website is the aim of technical SEO in order to raise its Google ranking.
It entails optimising page speed, simplifying the organisation of your pages, and making sure your website is mobile-friendly.
You need to have a technically sound website to enhance user experience and make it easier for Google to crawl and index it.
Your technical SEO may be managed by an outside team in a variety of ways, including managing reroutes, doing regular site audits, and improving site navigation.
5. Local SEO
Increasing your business’s search engine presence for location-based queries is the main goal of local SEO.
Since local intent is thought to be present in up to 46% of searches, local SEO is especially crucial for companies that depend on their local clientele.
By optimising your website for local keywords, maintaining local company listings (particularly your Google company Profile), and producing content specifically for targeted service regions, an outsourced team may help you get the most out of local search exposure.
6. Monitoring and Reporting
Monitoring and reporting are crucial components of a successful SEO strategy, allowing you to track the performance of your SEO efforts and make data-driven decisions.
By regularly monitoring key metrics such as traffic sources, keyword rankings, backlink quality, and conversion rates, an outsourced SEO team can provide valuable insights into what strategies are working and where adjustments may be needed.
This ongoing analysis helps ensure that your SEO initiatives are aligned with your overall business goals and are adapting to changes in search algorithms and market conditions.
Expert SEO Services in New Zealand: Let’s Drive Your Business Forward
If your company wants to create a successful SEO programme but doesn’t have the time, staff, or resources to accomplish it in-house, outsourcing SEO is a perfect solution.
As we’ve seen, there are three basic approaches to outsourcing: work with a full-service digital firm, a specialised SEO agency, or engage a freelancer or contractor. Whichever path you choose, it’s critical to define your SEO objectives and make sure any prospective partner can meet your specific service needs.
