Agence SEO
SEO is an increasingly important concern for companies that want to improve their online presence. More than 60% of web marketers are focused on increasing their positioning and traffic from SEO. Some try to do everything in-house and others turn to an agency that specializes in SEO. This article will discuss the questions to ask yourself about whether you should insource your SEO or whether you should outsource everything to an SEO Agency.
Questions to ask before insourcing
What SEO resources do you need?
Did you know that to implement an effective SEO strategy, you need to use a variety of specific skills, including a copywriter, a translator, a web analyst and possibly a programmer (back-end and/or front-end). SEO involves creating content that is relevant to your target audience and optimizing it for search engine robots.
We wrote an article on the criteria (in our opinion) that makes a good SEO agency and in it we explained that a good SEO agency should have all these experts with specific skills on its team. The same goes for you if you decide to go in-house. You therefore have to take into account these different professions and determine which ones are essential for your company.
What budget are you ready to invest in your SEO team?
You can imagine that all these people will have to be paid and supervised if you want your SEO strategy to be effective. Without going into details of salaries for each specialty, keep in mind that the amount spent on your company’s SEO can increase rapidly and that, once hired, you will need to be able to fill in your employees’ schedules.
Many companies that prefer to insource rather than hire an SEO agency have a natural reflex to recruit someone who will be in charge of all the company’s SEO. As an SEO agency, we can guarantee that no one person, however competent, who knows how to program, write SEO-optimized content, translate content, perform SEO audits and develop a link building strategy, even exists! You might meet a racehorse masquerading as a unicorn, but you will quickly notice your recruit’s weaknesses. This brings us to the next point.
How will you measure SEO results?
As a web agency, we encounter many clients who have chosen to do their website management or SEO strategy in-house and admit that they don’t always know exactly what their employees are working on. They have hired people to take care of the web strategy without necessarily thinking about defining specific goals and methods to evaluate results. They therefore see the wages they pay but sometimes wonder if they are really getting the return on investment they wanted in the first place.
It is therefore important to measure results and even if your employees tell you that “it takes time”, you have to set clear goals and deadlines for them.
Questions to ask yourself before hiring an SEO agency
What are your SEO goals?
This question could also be found in the previous section. If you decide to work with an SEO agency, you will usually be asked about your goals on the first call. It is impossible for the SEO agency that you contact to make a game plan for you if you have no idea what your goals are.
You need to think about the keywords you want your company to appear on and the approximate amount you would be willing to invest to achieve this goal. This brings us to the next point.
What budget do you want/can you invest in your SEO?
When the SEO agency asks you what budget you are willing to invest, you may not know what to answer. After all, you decided to contact an SEO agency (or several) to give you an idea of the budget required. However, you should know if you are willing to invest $500/month, $1000/month, or more.
For those reading this article wondering if we will give you an idea of the budget to plan, the answer is yes If you really want to give enough time to the SEO agency that will work for you, plan a minimum budget of $1,000/month. Some will say this is expensive, others that this is what they had in mind, and others think it won’t be enough. As a reminder, this is a minimum.
For those who feel it’s expensive, that their business is too small or in the start-up phase and can’t afford these costs, ask yourself how much it would be worth being on the first page of Google for the keywords related to your services. The answer is that you will bring in a lot of customers and the investment is REALLY worth it. For more explanations on this subject, don’t hesitate to contact us and you will soon be convinced.
How much involvement do you want to have?
Some companies decide to go through an SEO agency because they don’t want to deal with the process while others want to train and participate in their SEO strategy. Note that not all SEO agencies operate the same way and that some are more open than others to working as a team with their clients.
It is therefore important to clearly explain to an SEO agency what you expect from them and the level of involvement you want. For example, you could decide that everything goes through you before going online (written content, improvements on your website, listings in local directories, link building strategy, etc.). Keep in mind, however, that you shouldn’t let the approval process pile up on your end because you will also delay the results.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our article about choosing between an in-house SEO strategy or using an SEO agency. This is obviously a subjective choice and our discussion is inevitably a little biased, taking into account the fact that we are an SEO agency and that we are therefore preaching for our parish.
Keep in mind that it is not mandatory to delegate everything to an SEO agency or insource everything and that teamwork is often a good middle ground.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you want us to explore how My Little Big Web can help you develop your online visibility.
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