Outsourcing SEO and the SEO industry have changed, so finding the right white label SEO reseller is more important than ever! When outsourcing SEO in 2015, there are three things that you need to think about and understand when shopping for a white label SEO reseller program. In this Daily Brown Bag you’ll learn what the appropriate strategies are when outsourcing SEO in 2015. You’ll also learn about the importance of utilizing content marketing and PR for higher quality content outreach, how SEO has transformed over the years, and what you should really look for in a quality SEO program in 2015.
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Hello, and welcome to The Daily Brown Bag. Today we’re going to be talking about outsourcing SEO in 2015. I’m Chad Hill, and I’m joined by Adam Stetzer.
Yeah, good morning, Chad. Welcome to the Brown Bag. I’m really excited to be talking about this topic because I think there are a lot of questions out there, Chad, about how to choose the right outsource partner. There are a lot of people shopping for a white label SEO reseller and wondering what the appropriate strategies are in 2015, and this is an area where the industry really has moved.
Google Updates & The Impact of Panda and Penguin Updates On SEO:
They say, sometimes, things don’t change that quickly, but if you look at outsourcing SEO in particular and the search engine optimization industry -- tracking it as we have for the last six or seven years -- it was a big checkpoint in 2013 with the Penguin updates and the Panda updates from Google, which really changed all the strategies around how to outsource SEO.
What we want to talk about today what you should be looking for in 2015. But, first, a little history: When outsourcing of SEO started, it was definitely focused more on the technical side of a website. Go back to 2010 with outsourcing SEO, Chad, it was sort of a one-time event -- a technician could update your website and it was “optimized.” As things heated up, link building became the craze, and there was a lot of buzz and a lot of activity around link building because it worked. Particularly into 2011 and 2012, we saw a frenzy in outsourcing SEO, and mostly focused on, “How can I acquire links?” People were putting comments -- some spammy, some good comments. People were out there building low quality links and low quality domains, just for the purpose of linking. Of course, we’ve always said that’s not a great idea, given the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Things really changed with outsourcing SEO in 2013 when the algorithm made a very large update and really shifted how you have to approach getting links and building domain authority, and really brought content marketing into the forefront. I think that’s what you’re going to talk about here, Chad, and what you have to do in 2015 when you look for a partner.
Absolutely, Adam. This has changed a little bit, as you said, over the years.In 2015, there are really three things that you need to think about and understand when you’re looking at outsourcing SEO.
The Top 3 Things To Think About When Outsourcing SEO:
1. Economies of scale.
We talk to a lot of different agencies, and oftentimes what we hear is that they are very good at selling and account management, but they have tried to handle the operations side (or actually the deliverable side of things) and it’s very difficult. And it’s difficult for really three reasons. One, because you need to have expertise. If your time is spent on selling and account management, some people do not have the time to stay up on the latest trends in terms of what’s bringing results. So, when you outsource SEO, you want to make sure that you’ve got thought leaders -- people that are very active in the community and in understanding what the trends are.
That group needs to be able to hire and then train a team of people who can actually do the work for you.
Ideally, that team of people can’t be jack of all trades. You want to have specialization. Writers aren’t good at technical analysis, and people that are good at managing paid search campaigns aren’t always good at running a social media campaign. You want to be able to hire a team of experts that actually have specialization in different areas, and then establish a training program to make sure you build up those skills.
Then, that team needs to be able to project manage, and make sure that all of the deliverables, all of these nuance little tactics.
Adam, that you talked about -- title tags, making sure content is getting on the website, making sure that phone tracking and forums are actually working -- all of that stuff needs to be delivered with a good project management system, so that you can ensure high quality work. That’s economies of scale.
2. Make sure that the team that you are working with is very result-oriented when you are outsourcing SEO in 2015.
Again, there are a lot of people that -- as you call it, Adam, practice “checking the box SEO”/”Your site is now optimized” -- but, if you don’t have good rankings, you don’t have traffic. You don’t have leads. The likelihood of retaining that client over the long-run is very low. You want to make sure that your team is looking at and has a very good handle on, “Is the campaign performing?”
Usually, when you’re talking about SEO, you want to make sure that that starts with the rankings and then, of course, leads to traffic and leads. You want to make sure they’re very focused on ROI.
3. It is critical to think about and understand how Google is talking about what they’re looking for with SEO in 2015.
And it’s very difficult to do good SEO if you aren’t thinking about the end user, making sure that the content you’re creating is actually valuable to a real audience, not just the search engines.
There is always going to be a component where you want to make sure that your content and the activities you’re doing are optimized so the search engine gets maximum value out of it, but you can’t make the search engine the primary audience. It has to be a real person.
That means blog posts that are actually interesting and insightful.
One of the things that we’ve done at Semify is that we’ve actually aligned a lot of the content that we create with the news. So we’re able to newsjack interesting information and add that to a client’s blog, which, of course, has a much higher value to a potential customer on your website than just recycling the same content over and over again.
The other point there is that you then want to make sure that content gets shared and launched (as we call it in our REAL SEO process) -- launched across as many different places on the Web as possible so that you can earn maximum benefit and increase your likelihood of earning links back to your website, which is going to improve your domain authority and improve your rankings.
Takeaways on Outsourcing SEO in 2015
Those are the three things that I think are important when you’re looking at outsourcing SEO in 2015.
Excellent list, Chad. Listening to you cover those, I realized just again, as I said at the top of the video, how much the times have changed. Back in 2010 and 2011, you could just look for an outsourcing partner who was a link builder and off you went. That’s just not how things are in 2015. If you are interested in shopping for a white label SEO reseller program, you really need to be looking for a partner who understands all of those things that you just covered, Chad -- that really understands return on investment, that has a focus on results, that is using content marketing and PR (which are rapidly merging with SEO) for higher quality content outreach, and earning those links the way they should be, so that they’re building equity in your client’s site.
Excellent topic for today. Very interesting for our SEO reseller community. I appreciate everyone joining us. We ask you to go ahead and hit “Subscribe” because we would love to see you back tomorrow for another fascinating topic.