The decision to outsource any service or function of a business is typically one that comes as your business scales. You may choose to preserve your resources and run everything in-house in the initial days since you have more time and limited budgets. Eventually, you will run out of the time and energy to handle everything on your own.
When it comes to SEO, the success of your efforts depends not just on the method, but also on the expectations, budgets, goals, competition, and tactics. Yet, the comparison between DIY and outsourced SEO remains a hotly contested debate for many.
While some SEO experts swear by outsourcing SEO activities since it produces desired outcomes at an affordable price, others would argue in favor of businesses and entrepreneurs handling SEO themselves due to budgetary and confidentiality concerns. In this article, we draw up a detailed comparison of the two to help you decide better which alternative suits your organization best.
Scenario 1: DIY SEO
The DIY SEO route is when you handle SEO strategy and efforts yourself, typically individually in a small business setup. At the outset, doing SEO yourself is a great start for business owners wanting more flexibility and control when they set out, given they have some basic understanding of SEO techniques.
There are a few benefits of the DIY route. First, no one is more motivated than you to handle your own website’s priorities and goals, which reflects in your efforts. You are much more focused and nimbler to achieve the desired rankings and conversions. Any adjustments required do not have to go through tons of formal communications and follow-ups.
However, carrying out SEO efforts yourself also has several downsides (a tad more than the advantages).
- First, SEO is one area that is ever-evolving, maturing daily. To be able to do justice to your website’s performance and visibility using SEO, you will need to keep up with the latest trends, tools, and tactics, only for them to be outdated soon. This calls for repetitive investment in tools, research, and resources if you want to stay on top of the latest advancements. As you spend hours searching through online tutorials and FAQs to gather information, this might take up a lot of your valuable time.
- Second, if you are opting for a DIY SEO approach relying on the built-in tools that come with your self-built website, you are in for a disappointment. Most built-in websites offer limited SEO potential, which could negatively impact the traffic, exposure, and search engine rankings of your website. Unless you are sufficiently experienced in leveraging the SEO tools to your benefit, doing so without professional support can be difficult and time-consuming.
- Third, designing an outcome-oriented SEO strategy is easier said than done. Businesses must think about how search engines assess content, which SEO factors have the biggest impact, and how to modify their present content to better meet search engine expectations. Delivering high-quality content and merely using popular keywords is insufficient. Additionally, the entire user experience should be considered as part of the SEO value chain.
Due to a combination of the above factors, it is often worth outsourcing SEO services to make sure that your online presence is having the greatest possible impact and drawing in the most potential clients. Outsourcing SEO enables businesses to decide on their most important strategic objectives while leaving the difficult task of achieving them to experienced SEO specialists.
Scenario 2: Outsourced SEO
Outsourcing SEO involves giving an external vendor the task of overseeing the search engine optimization strategy and activities for your website. Depending on your specific needs, it could be off-page, on-page, or both. Here’s why outsourcing SEO is the better alternative to handling SEO efforts for your website:
- One, small firms and entrepreneurs can leverage all the time they get to concentrate on customer conversions, product upgrades, and new ideas instead of having to learn the ins and outs of SEO.
- Two, you can lower your investment and use the savings for other business expansion projects.
- Three, instead of doing critical tasks in-house, where you would need to spend a lot of time either adopting the know-how or onboarding new personnel, you could immediately hire an SEO agency and get started.
- Four, an SEO agency has a team of numerous individuals with cross-domain competence to better handle any persistent or emergency issues as they spring up. To expedite project execution, an agency can have a team of aligned workers ready to deploy for SEO and can swiftly assign them to ad-hoc tasks.
- Five, hiring a reliable, customer-centric SEO agency ensures that you meet all your business objectives at a reasonable cost. You can save the money otherwise spent on resources, tools, onboarding, training, or other related tasks. Simply put, you get what you paid for.
The Verdict: Which is Better?
Both the in-house and the outsourcing models are effective, but each one does best in its own niche. Businesses working with a reputable SEO agency in London swear by the expert guidance and team committed to delivering the outcomes they desire that outsourcing brings. Additionally, an agency requires very little management and is self-sufficient. If it meets the needs, goals, and priorities of your company, outsourcing SEO services can give much better results for scaling businesses.