In this Video Tutorial, Adam and Chad discuss what to look for in your seo outsourcing service. According to Semify President Adam Stetzer, Ph.D and Semify CEO Chad Hill, there are a few central things to learn for when choosing seo outsourcing services. For instance, transparency in real-time is key. The firm who does your seo outsourcing should be able to show you data that demonstrates the success of your clients' campaigns and it should even be able to show you workflow by your outsourced team. Your SEO outsourcing service should also be sure to balance quantity with quality. With all of the Google algorithmic updates, quantity of links is a thing of the past. Having duplicate and irrelevant links will not help you. A solid content marketing strategy should be a part of your SEO strategy. Make sure when outsourcing SEO services that you aren't being promised X amount of backlinks--that is a recipe for disaster. Watch the video to learn from the experiences of the Semify execs!
TRANSCRIPTION:
Good morning, Adam. How are you?
I'm good, Chad. Good morning. We're talking about SEO outsourcing services today. I spend a lot of time in the forums, and I get a lot of questions, and I see a lot of folks out there shopping for these services. So I'd like to solicit your opinion on how should people evaluate SEO outsourcing services?
Awesome. I think when you're looking for SEO outsourcing services, there's a couple things that are going to be important. I think the first one is making sure that the company you're working with clearly explains their tactics and that the methodology they're using is up to speed with the latest in Google's algorithm changes. We still see so many of people in the SEO outsourcing services space that are still using tactics from two or three years ago. And so that is sort of a non-starter.
And if it's a mystery, that's even worse, right? It should not be a mystery.
Right. And I think one of the things that I always see and I'm always so surprised about is this whole quantity versus quality thing. So we still see so many people that are like, in one month, you'll get 600 links. Well, just as a sample, there are tons of fantastic websites that have fantastic rankings that don't even have 600 links to them and are doing great.
So if it was so easy to get 600 links, everyone would have millions and millions, which goes to show you that a lot of those are just throwaway links, duplicate content, all of the other tricks out there that I like to call kind of the window dressing. So that's the first thing.
And I think one of the things that's most important after that is being able to evaluate how actually the company's executing on the services that they've sold. So are they doing what they said they're going to do. And I know, one of the things that we've worked really hard is that we make it very transparent with our dashboard to show exactly what content's being created, what links are being done, what on-site implementation reporting is being done. So that's really important. And that's all real time. So if you have to wait two or three months to find out what someone's doing, again, to me that's a non-starter.
Two other things that I definitely think are important to consider. One goes sort of hand in hand with knowing what they're doing. But can you talk to them, and can you get responses in a reasonable time? Again, one of the things that Semify's done is we've-- in terms of being an SEO outsourcing service company, one of the things we've done is we've made all of our account managers available. They're all based here in the US. And so they're really an extension of you, your team. And we want people to contact them when they have questions.
And I think the final thing is technology. Again, this goes in the tracking, but also it's a part of workflow, so are you able to track everything that's happening from an SEO standpoint? And making sure that that's getting done on time and then measuring the results, not only from rankings but also traffic.
And then one of the things we've added in, which we think is great, is actually return on investment. Things like how many phone calls are you getting from search engines, how many web lead submissions are you getting from search engines. Those are all really important things. These are great points. This quantity versus quality issue, I'm amazed it's still out there, given the updates that have happened, particularly in 2012. Panda, Penguin. So many people who've used old tactics that had been focused on quantity rather than quality have gotten bounced out of the search. And you'd think that would've trickled down. But I think you're right. A lot of people, when they go to outsource SEO services, somehow make this transition and end up just outsourcing link building. And I know Semify's position, when you shop for SEO outsourcing service firms and look for those services, is that you really should not be purchasing link building in 2012. In fact, that's a crazy move.
You really need to be looking for someone to assist you in content marketing, because you want to be outsourcing SEO services, not just outsource link building. And there is a big distinction. So if you don't hear that from the outsourcing SEO service provider you're talking to as a potential SEO outsourcing service partner, you should stop right there.
And I think that dovetails into your points about technology, Chad, because I know for us in our content marketing practice, the way that our writers communicate with our editor, communicate with our research team, coordinate with the graphics team for image selection and even targeting sites to get this contest syndicated to, all of that couldn't happen without the technology and workflow tools that we have.
So it's not-- I think a lot of people think of technology as just something for reporting assistance on the back end to push things out to the client. And yeah, monthly reports and good looking logos are nice. But to me, it's really core to the content marketing process, which is more and more what SEO outsourcing really is in 2012, soon to be 2013, with new updates right on the horizon from Google. If you're not thinking about these things or hearing them back from your vendor, you're talking to the wrong team.
Right. Good points. So we'll get this posted up, and feel free to-- there's a ton of content on our website about this. And it's obviously a discussion we have quite often. So I'm looking forward to continuing it.
Cool. Thanks, Chad. See ya.