In an environment where businesses are tightening belts and closely monitoring every dollar spent, there is a good argument for bringing many mundane tasks such as human resources or areas of product manufacturing in-house. Many businesses feel empowered in controlling each aspect of operation from beginning to finish, and are hesitant to entrust even the most reliable third party consultant. The recession of the past few years has brought many of these tasks full circle, residing once again with the companies’ own employees. SEO, unfortunately, should not be included categorically. The following are 5 crucial points to consider when deciding whether to “do it yourself”, or hand search marketing off to a specialized company.
1. Time Is Money
For large companies, the question of whether to outsource particular tasks is often answered by a simple equation: Is the cost to outsource a given task equal to or less than the cost to give the task to a new hire (or existing employee). With the costs of benefits rising, and the presence of tax burdens and unemployment insurance, many larger corporations focus their in-house employment on management and product development, making outsourcing an efficient solution.
The solution is not as simple for smaller companies. Smaller companies, more restricted by the recent downturn, have little choice but to add these tasks to their already overloaded, understaffed operation. This can make for very strained effort, where results are prolonged and processes often exhausted.
In respect to SEO, time is everything. SEO is not merely a task to be completed monthly, or even weekly, but rather daily. The daily influx of inbound links, content, and traffic give the impression that a website is a living thing, and that impression is likewise rewarded by the major search engines. Keeping this in mind, an SEO campaign carried out in-house, while balanced with other marketing tasks, will mature at a far slower rate. Outsourcing the campaign to a trusted team will increase the ROI by shortening the time period it takes for the campaign to mature and bring results. In addition to a better ROI, a business may enjoy months of revenue that would have been otherwise stalled while waiting for their in-house campaign to gain traction.
2. Keeping Up With Google
Are you aware of Google Caffeine? No, it is not a new attempt by Google to dominate the soft drink industry. Google Caffeine is a next-generation search platform that will include faster indexing, faster inclusion, and real-time data capture. Why should you care? Well, you should care because the upgrade to the indexing process may mean that the speed and load time of your site, as well as the magnitude of your pages, may directly affect what content is being indexed and included in search results. For us, this means managing our clients’ sites to prepare for these changes before they occur.
We don’t expect our clients to know these things, but they certainly expect us to. Will a company have the same expectations of their in-house search marketing campaign? It is doubtful. The truth is that Google’s algorithm is ever-changing; what is relevant today will most certainly not be tomorrow.
A future mentality will keep an outside firm on the cutting edge, while in-house personnel scramble to consistently cover all bases in the present. The decision is whether it is more efficient to have employees spend time researching canonical url tags or to have the work completed by an SEO company that is already passionate about research.
3. Getting Technical
Many of the tasks involved in internet marketing are off-site, such as social media, bookmarking, article writing, and commenting on blogs. These right-brain processes are often suitable for a very capable in-house marketing person. Alone, they will not affect search results, only further brand recognition. These tasks will certainly help in traffic and lead conversion, but the larger piece of the SEO puzzle resides on the technical side.
Tag optimization, site structure, sitemap management, link building, and competitor analysis are left-brain processes that require a different mentality. In most campaigns, this will require a second person involved in the process. Very few, if any, successful SEO campaigns have been executed without the knowledge of implementing these more technical items. This can often mean a separate person, such as a web developer, being involved in the campaign, thus increasing the costs. Outsourcing to a team of left-brainers and right-brainers that actively balance these efforts will save on cost and inevitable frustration.
4. Content Creation
A company is its best spokesperson. No third party will be able to fully understand your product in terms of being able to present themselves online as a reputable resource. THIS is how a company should divide there in-house marketing efforts, not engaging in SEO. Writing relevant blog posts, engaging other industry professionals in forums and on LinkedIn, and conducting video webinars are all items that should not be outsourced. By creating this content, you are contributing to an internet marketing campaign, without wasting valuable employee time spent tweaking code and link building.
Just think, if all of the time spent in-house on internet marketing is on grunt work SEO, then what content will the visitor see when the rankings do eventually rise? It is counterproductive to work tirelessly on inbound campaigns when there is not constant valuable content being updated onsite. Sticking with creating the content in-house and outsourcing the rest will allow both to happen simultaneously.
5. A Proven Track Record
Finally, given that SEO, as a whole, is a tremendous undertaking for any company, there is a substantial risk vs reward element to consider. If the marketing campaign is handled by employees, what analytical system will be used to track progress? What history does that employee have of successful optimization with proven physical results that translate into not only ranking, but leads and further sales? The reality of a slowly maturing campaign, with few results over several months, and countless wasted hours is entirely possible if there is no accountability or direction.
The best reason for outsourcing may be the value of proven results. Finding a company with proper testimonials of actual clients, willing to discuss the success of their own campaigns, will allow for targeted results and realized plans of action. In addition, reporting and a real-time analytical system will ensure that months do not go by without accountability and that the campaign can continually adapt as necessary.
At RhinoSEO, we understand the concerns of outsourced SEO in an industry where there is so much misinformation. This is why we let our track record speak for itself, and have built a company that addresses each of the above points, and analytical software to keep us accountable every day. All at very competitive pricing.
Now doesn’t that make perfect sense?
