Outsource SEO - A Strong Business Case

Outsourcing became quite popular in the 1990's as companies raced to reduce costs by moving non-essential functions out of the corporate cost structure. One of the main methods for doing this was to outsource. The basic business case to move any function to a subcontract was quite simple. Subcontractors that focus only on one thing have probably developed a deeper technical understanding of the process and are more effective. Economies of scale allow the outsourcer to provide the same (or higher quality) service at a lower price. Non-essential functions are a distraction from your core value proposition and need to moved out of the company. While the pendulum swing back a bit after the dot-com crash, there are very few companies today that do not use subcontractors in their strategy.

The same arguments can be made as a firm considers if they should outsource SEO. This business process is no different than any other when you boil it down to the actual work being completed and the technical knowledge required. However, the is one major difference in the SEO industry, and that is how new the service is. Because the consumers do not have a full understanding of search engine optimization, it makes the decision to outsource SEO difficult for several reasons. First, developing the selection criteria for an SEO subcontractor, or SEO reseller, is difficult when you are not completely sure what defines a world-class operation. Secondly, because of the miss information, many web design companies and PR agencies believe they can actually do search engine optimization themselves. Perhaps they still believe that adjusting a few title tags and meta settings will make a website rank on a competitive term. Any search engine marketer knows this is no longer the case for any keyword that has true economic value. When outsourcing SEO, the companies you talk to are likely to demonstrate this for you in a way you can understand.

In summary, the business case to outsource SEO is strong. But finding the right subcontractor and evaluating how strong their search engine capabilities is tricky. There are many creative solutions to using another firm for fulfillment, such as private label SEO or white label SEO. Using this method, you can outsource SEO and maintain customer control as all the work is delivered under your logo. This is a great option as you can remain flexible on what firm you outsource to. However, you need to be sure that the work is completely transparent as firms that don't have direct customer contact can also lose accountability. Regardless of the flavor selected, firms need to be armed with the right selection criteria and questions to dig deeply into the offering to assure themselves it is white hat. As difficult as this may sound, it is still a better move than not outsourcing SEO and ending up with unhappy clients on page 7 in Google.

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