We live in the SEO services industry, so of course we believe that most companies should consider SEO outsourcing to a high-quality firm with Fortune 100 experience. But just because we think this, doesn't make it right. So let's examine the business case for an outsource SEO web site promotion strategy vs insource.
Bottom line: If you are a business the wants to grow online business or greater awareness from your web site, here are 4 solid reasons you should consider SEO outsourcing:
1) Economies of scale: This argument is pretty much the same for all outsourcing evaluations, whether it's payroll processing, facilities maintenance, food services or SEO outsourcing. That's right, there is a certain argument to pushing well-defined business processes to those firms who specialize only in that activity. The economy of scale argument is simple. As you execute a single business process at a large scale, you achieve savings not possible at smaller scales. This applies to many parts of business. In my previous life I saw first-hand the amazing savings that can be found in the Human Resources space. Does this apply to outsource SEO activities? Yes. Take content generation, for example. We all know that a key part of search engine optimization is having unique, high quality content on your web site. This means writing, and lots of it. Can you complete this activity in-house? Yes. But you are likely to pay someone in a management position to do this activity. Their costs (via salary) will be much higher than using a freelance writer. But it takes time and energy to organize a group of reliable freelance writers. The writers also need to be educated on your business. So in the end, most companies end up generating content using management employees that are, frankly, overpaid for this activity. In the case of a specialized outsource SEO firm, they have built up a team of freelance copy writers. They have a process for efficiently identifying topics and consolidating research briefs for their writers. They have the systems and quality control in place to generate content at a large scale at much lower costs than an in-house team. They can pass these savings along to the corporate buyer - which is the argument of economy of scale applied to SEO services.
2) SEO expertise: In-house promotion teams are usually extremely good at branding and marketing their business. This is because they know their business better than anyone else. However, they are not SEO experts who spend all day living and breathing SEO tools, SEO tactics and talking with other SEO experts. When you outsource SEO to a specialized services firm, you get their collective expertise and experience. They know what to do, and what not to do to achieve the best results for your web site. This is likely to be quite an asset that will benefit your search engine marketing efforts.
3) SEO Tools: Very few in-house SEO teams will be able to generate the types of SEO tools that full-time SEO outsourcing experts use every day. Again, because this is their core business, they have the funds available to invest in IT infrastructure built specifically for search engine optimization purposes. If you don't know what these tools are, there's another reason you should outsource SEO. And no, we are not talking about black-hat stuff here. We're talking about generally simple workflow tools, alerts, and tracking tools that turn the confusing business of search engine marketing into productive daily activities.
4) It won't get done otherwise: We see this one all the time. Even once a business figures out exactly what needs to be done on a daily basis, they just don't have the bandwidth or discipline to execute. In today’s competitive Internet environment, there really are no quality keyword phrases that are “easy” to rank on. To dominate a meaningful organic search space requires more discipline and drive than the other guys going after the same market bring to the table. Even if a business has had an expert SEO consultant come in and outline exactly what needs to be done, 9 times out of 10 these things are not followed-up on. (If you’d like to understand this phenomenon in organizations from a scientific point of view, read The Knowing-Doing Gap).
In sum, I believe that the business case for SEO outsourcing to a trusted firm is easy to make for the reasons above. You will ultimately save money and achieve better business results for web site through an outsource SEO strategy.