Online marketing is gaining increased importance with each passing day. Start-ups of varying sizes continue to invest in digital marketing channels to garner business and enhance ROI. Search Engine Optimization, labeled SEO, is a powerful pillar of online marketing that stands in the front-line.
SEO, your business’ long-term investment, offers better ROI when compared to other online marketing channels such as, PPC and possibly Email Marketing. You can undertake the SEO of your business website in three ways: hand it to SEO freelancers, hire an SEO agency or hire an in-house SEO. Detailed here are the finer aspects of hiring an SEO agency.
#1 An SEO Agency Provides Your Business Excellent Strategic Leadership
An SEO agency with a veteran Head of SEO is identical to hiring an in-house Director. Nevertheless, the agency option is much better because of numerous reasons.
Although your in-house director is capable of doing everything an SEO agency’s head does, the agency Head wins because of broader experience across several marketing campaigns. For a good agency, good communication is everything. Your business benefits greatly from senior-level strategic leadership. An agency that offers website design, PPC, and other services has a specialist team that integrates your marketing campaign. Your agency’s team eats, lives, sleeps, and breathes SEO. An in-house SEO director just cannot access this level of SEO experience and leadership.
#2 An SEO Agency Provides Your Business a Pool of High-Quality Links
Although SEO includes a hierarchy of interdependent needs, links are indispensable to SEO. The quality, topic and other attributes relating to external links play a vital role in the search engines’ assessment of what’s actually on your web pages.
SEO agencies offer diverse strategic resources, contacts being one of them. Established SEO agencies deliver natural links as well as social signals from authentic, influential people and business websites across a broad range of niches.
Niches overlap and interconnect. This only amplifies the power of an SEO agency in delivering campaigns with impact, reach, and breadth that an in-house director cannot possibly achieve.
#3: Hiring an SEO Agency is Cost-Effective
An in-house SEO Director costs up to 5 times more than hiring an SEO agency with a seasoned Head of SEO.
A really competent SEO Director will need tactical support from other specialists across disciplines including design, copy writing, and link building. Since generating content is crucial for an efficient SEO strategy, you need copy writers and design specialists. Never underestimate the significance of researching, crafting, and promoting great content!
Also, you don’t have to pay tax when hiring an agency because it’s an expense whereas an employee you have to match taxes, FICO, Unemployment, etc.
#4: An SEO Agency is Equipped With Diverse Skills
An SEO agency comes equipped with a ready-made team that’s motivated, primed, integrated, and ready to roll. The team encompasses the entire spectrum of SEO skills that include:
- Outreach and engagement
- Analytics and monitoring
- Competitor Analysis
- Strategy
- Reporting
- Technical optimization
- On-page optimization
- User experience optimization
- Social media signals
- Content generation for social media, viral campaigns, and link bait
- Conversion Rate Optimization
- Integration with PR, PPC, and other campaigns
The finest SEO agencies offer skills beyond SEO as well. These skills overlap SEO and complement it. These integrated digital agencies comprise of several individuals led by a customer-facing, strategic Head.
#5 An SEO Agency Presents Immense Scalability and Flexibility
Investing in varied tools and expertise needed for a comprehensive SEO campaign may just not be feasible for your business. For instance, very few businesses would be willing to invest in a full-time designer for creating killer link bait. Similarly, few brands would opt for a full-time developer for infrequent technical SEO audits. Access to such resources proves to be exorbitantly expensive for in-house SEO campaigns. However, since SEO agencies work with several brands, they are able to split the cost of SEO resources. Consequently, investing in SEO with an agency delivers your enterprise a stronger ROI compared to investing in in-house SEO.
Conclusion
SEO agencies have a team of link builders, content producers, project managers, and SEO. They are veterans who work with numerous clients, worldwide. Outsourcing your business’ SEO needs to an SEO agency means you are handing over the work to individuals who are connoisseurs and specialists in this work. This post is a little biased. But would you hire an in-house CPA or a company that has a CPA?
