Published on May 13th, 2019 | by Bibhuranjan

How to Successfully Outsource Your Small Business SEO

Did you end the year last year feeling burned out and more than a little disillusioned because you had to work so very hard to make a go of your business? Then it may be time to start thinking about getting some help before you go totally crazy.

For many though the problem with that idea is less about spending the money on hired help and more about a fear of losing control over what they have worked so hard to build. For a handful of small business owners, delegation comes easily and naturally.

For the vast majority though, letting someone get their hands on any part of their new business baby is a terrifying one.

However, if you want your small business to flourish and grow there quickly comes a time when you are just going to have to let someone else shoulder some of the burden. One of those areas is SEO.

SEO is essential for the success of any business website but it is also time consuming and difficult to master. Many driven entrepreneurs and small business owners do prefer to try to do all their SEO themselves. Letting strangers into their Google Analytics accounts or given password access to their website in order to perform a free SEO analysis? No thanks.

Often though these people do discover that SEO is harder than they thought, admit ‘defeat’ and start looking for help. But with so many individuals and businesses offering their services – often starting with a free SEO analysis and a SEO guide – who should you choose? here are some tips to help you hire the right folk:

Pick the Best People

This means giving work to people who actually deliver, not to those who are the least busy, or to those who are the cheapest. Check references and testimonials before you hire anyone, don’t just fall for some website hype and a fancy LinkedIn profile.

Understand the Risks of Going Cut Price

The risk of choosing an low-end company to reduce your SEO costs is a real risk. Consider not only may you not get results, but the SEO company does have the ability to create long-lasting damage to your website and domain if they do SEO incorrectly. It’s not only about the results not being what you want, but the wrong company could damage your business for years by performing shady link building practices, writing poor content and more.

Watch Out For Pie In the Sky Guarantees

As the saying goes, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. If an SEO company guarantees results, be suspicious. The best search engine optimizer will tell you, there is no exact way to know where your website will be ranked in the search engines after optimization is complete. Search engines do not reveal the exact way that they choose which website is better than another, so no one knows exactly what will place your site above another.

Check Their Work

If you were hiring someone to work in your office, you would check their references right? You would also interview them prior to hiring them. Sometimes you may even set a small test to access their capabilities. And any candidate would expect all of this and only be too happy to comply.

The same should be true of working with an SEO agency or SEO consultant. The references they offer – or case studies as they may be called in SEO – should be checkable. And you should be able to ask as many questions as you feel necessary before making a hiring decision. If an SEO company seems unwilling to answer these questions, they are almost certainly not the right choice for you.

And that test? It could be considered the free SEO analysis that many SEO companies offer. While you might not have the time or patience to learn all the many ins and outs of SEO, you can check the basics and if an analysis seems to be lacking in important points, or goes against the common SEO wisdom of the day at the very least you should ask why, and the SEO agency providing the report should be able to come up with a satisfactory answer.

Conclusion

There are of course more parameters to consider while outsourcing aspects of your business to 3rd parties. However, outsourcing can be quite costly in the long run and it often makes a lot more economic sense to localize tasks in the company itself. However in SME’s, there is sometimes little choice but to go this route, considering that their long term goals don’t might not include certain services for extended periods.

Tags: analytics, outsourcing, SEO, SME

About the Author

Bibhuranjan Editorial Officer, technofaq.org I'm an avid tech enthusiast at heart. I like to mug up on new and exciting developments on science and tech and have a deep love for PC gaming. Other hobbies include writing blog posts, music and DIY projects.