Have you ever really wanted to know the search engine optimization services you shouldn’t be outsourcing when doing clients’ work?
Keep in mind: This is not your regular “how to outsource or how not to outsource this or that SEO services” kind of post. For instance, if you find this post telling you content creation should not be outsourced, I can bet you’ll find the ‘why’ very close, in addition to the real world marketing results some organic SEO companies were able to achieve for their clients when they stopped outsourcing vs. when they were outsourcing.
To quote Vivek Patel: “Let me be clear – I’m not against white label SEO outsourcing; there is no universal truth that says what works for one company will work (or will not ) work for another. However, content creation, outreaching, link building, citation building, social media promotion, etc. are tasks that require commitment as well as effort, which is why you can’t get it done by someone else for a few hundred dollars.”
Now that it’s clear that this post isn’t for, or against doing SEO tasks in-house vs. outsourcing it, neither is it favoring one at the expense of the other, it’s however expedient – perhaps as an SEO agency outsourcing its activities or maybe you’re otherwise an SEO firm doing your own stuff in-house – to know the option in use by some other SEO service providers (who may even be your competitor); to know what informed their decision to outsource or not to outsource; or, perhaps, to even see if there is any sense in their decision.
As you’ll soon see in this post, in addition to six of those SEO services that you shouldn’t be outsourcing which is also backed by their “whys”, top minds in the SEO and digital marketing space also weighed in on what happened the last time they outsourced some SEO activities and even so, the particular SEO activities.
The 5 SEO Services You Should Never Outsource, According To 21 Marketing Experts
1. Content planning, onsite content creation, and editorial calendar
He added: “It’s the baseline for a solid SEO strategy because you’re only as good as the relevant, engaging content you create. I need to understand the client’s goal and business then correlate that to content that’ll connect with the right audience. On top of that, substantial competitor and industry analysis need to be done to find the right keywords, topics and content titles to make the post have the most impact. What I have found is that when this is outsourced the content can become “plain vanilla” and may lose what makes the client unique and differentiates them from their competitors.”
Depending on your industry, some are easier to create content for than others. Our industry isn’t the easiest so we like to be the content creators, rather than take weeks training someone who may not care to learn the in-depth meaning of our business.
We have outsourced content creation in the past and the outcome was not satisfying. The blogs that were written needed to be heavily edited. By the time the editing was finished, it would have been faster and cheaper to create the content ourselves.”
When you outsource onsite content you dilute the understanding of the clients business, as you’ll have to pass on second-hand information to somebody who a) don’t know the business and b) (with the best will in the world) doesn’t care about your client.”
Straight from Steven Macdonald: “One SEO activity I’ll never outsource is content creation.
When outsourcing in the past, I’ve received content from writers and companies which either required grammatical editing or SEO-editing, both of which cuts down on cost-effectiveness and efficiency. For more menial tasks, outsourcing can be the way to go. Writing, however, should not be compromised for the sake of costs. Writing quality is simply too important a factor in the SEO-process for that.”
For creating content, we found that working closely with our clients and internal teams was imperative to producing good quality content that ticked all the boxes. That’s fundamentally why we’ve moved away from outsourcing and towards an in-house solution for our SEO offering.”
Another scenario that facilitates outsourcing is when you’ve put in the effort to build a strong and solid network of freelancers, who are the best at what they do, better than you can do it in-house, and who can commit to undiminished quality in delivery at any time you want them to.”
And, with over 45% of marketers outsourcing content creation, that’s too prominent a figure to miss. Which means, if you’re comfortable with outsourcing your content or other SEO services and it’s working for you then, by all means, stick to your guns.
In this regard, however, Jonathan offers some helpful tips.
“We often need to find skilled folks who haven’t worked for other SEO’s in the past. If they have the skills but less industry experience that is often better. That way we don’t have to undo years of bad training that is focused on strategies that don’t work and we can instead focus on providing real quality.”
But by the way, who’s Justin, Cassie, Aaron, Steven, Caleb, Vivek, Jonathan, Veronica or even Nick? And how do they qualify to offer opinions on this topic?
Well, Justin Knott is the president of Intrepy; Cassie is a marketing associate at Factorfinders; Aaron is the SEO manager at Converted; Steven is the lead digital marketing strategist at Kingspoint; Caleb happens to be the marketing director for Mapleholistics; Nick is the director of Seed, a Brighton-based digital marketing agency; Veronica is the co-founder and president of LoSoMo; and Vivek is a local search specialist at E2M.
2. Outreach
He further adds: “The simple reason for this is because I find outreach to be much more effective when the email is coming from the domain it is associated with. When outreach is done via an agency or freelancer who’s using an unassociated email address, I find the response rate to be much lower. I also find that the webmaster recipient is much less receptive to an agency as they see them as a middle-man. As a webmaster myself, I would much rather speak directly to someone rather than speaking to an agency on behalf of them.”
3. Link analysis and link prospecting
The issue with outsourcing this is you can never be 100% sure the white label agency or virtual assistant is using black hat techniques or spammy links – which can cause much more harm than good. We like to have full control, so if there are issues with links we can remove them immediately and not rely on a 3rd party.”
We don’t outsource link building because many of the link building opportunities are built through relationships we form with writers and our doctors.”
4. Website analysis
I tried outsourcing keyword arbitration two years ago and ended up refunding the client and doing it myself. This is something that should not be outsourced unless you know the employee performing the task personally.
Not only does this activity involve in-depth knowledge of SEO copywriting and general marketing copywriting (which few SEO’s have), it also involves being the type of person that can learn a new subject in a timely manner. Very few people are true autodidacts like this.
5. Account Management
Additionally, our account managers are in charge of making sure everything gets completed on-time from an internal perspective. They act as a form of project manager. To do this job effectively, the account manager must build relationships with the rest of the staff.
So internally and externally, the account manager’s job revolves around the relationships they build. Relationships are too important to give up that kind of control over. If a relationship deteriorates, the company needs to have the ability to take action to mend that relationship back to health. By outsourcing the account manager position, we wouldn’t have the information or control necessary to do that.”
6. Directory listing and aggregator submission
Wrapping up
Possibly you skimmed or maybe you in fact followed through to this point but still can’t figure out what in ten heavens the post is trying to say…
In the past, I have referred clients or prospects we can’t help to local/regional competitors, but at least once I tried to train someone to our standard before handing over the clients, so I could take a few clients off the roster of our in-house team, yet maintain a small revenue stream and consistency of service for those clients. It backfired because the person we tried to train could not meet our standards.”
Final thought
Regardless of the liberal nature of the opinions made so far like this one from Jordan Kasteler (take note of the bolded text) “As long as there’s a good relationship then there shouldn’t be anything you can’t outsource. I’d consider the most caution when outsourcing link building as you have to maintain a healthy link profile” or the more conservative ones as in the example of Veronica who asserts that they don’t outsource at all, building relationships, being able to have full control, and having to take responsibility for and remedy eventualities promptly (should they occur) are few phrases you may have noticed occurred severally in the post.
Seeing that the majority of the SEO services companies that aired their views in this post have been able to satisfy their clients and helped them achieve their marketing goals through assuming full control and responsibility of their clients project, something that wouldn’t have been possible should they have outsourced, don’t you think they’d better stick with this?
Guest author: Call me Sam. Being passionate about SEO as a business and SEO for businesses, I regularly write about this topic and have bylines in Huffington Post, Search Engine People, as well as in a couple of other publications. If you like the post you just read and would like to keep in touch, samueldave.com is my website. Use @samuel_o_david to find me on Twitter.