Outsourcing SEO Services
9 Benefits of SEO Outsourcing and 12 Questions to Ask White Label Agencies
This article was first published on March 8, 2021, updated in April 2022, and most recently updated in January 2024.
Today, running a successful marketing campaign without some kind of search engine optimization is impossible. If you’re not optimizing, you’re letting one of your greatest resources waste.
So, how do you make the most of your online presence? While you may consider creating an in-house position, outsourcing SEO services has many benefits, especially for small businesses.
This article explains what to expect from outsourcing SEO services, the benefits it can offer your agency and clients, and the questions you need to ask potential partners.
Table of Contents
- What is SEO Outsourcing?
- Should You Outsource Services or Keep It In-House?
- Outsourcing SEO Services: 4 Signs When It’s Right
- Outsourcing SEO Services: 9 Benefits
- 12 Questions to Ask a White Label SEO Outsourcing Company
What is SEO Outsourcing?
SEO outsourcing is when an agency seeks assistance from a dedicated SEO provider to complete and deliver an SEO strategy for its clients. It’s common for agencies to outsource SEO services for a few reasons:
- The agency lacks the bandwidth, resources, and tools to complete the services independently.
- Lacking the knowledge and experience on more advanced SEO strategies.
- Needs additional assistance to help complete more tasks efficiently.
- The agency is interested in becoming a white label SEO reseller and can integrate a new revenue stream without the risk and overhead costs commonly seen with in-house services.
SEO outsourcing processes and services are categorized into on-site and off-site optimizations. On-site SEO focuses on keywords, meta descriptions, content optimization, etc. Off-site SEO focuses on link building, business listings, guest posting, etc.
Both optimizations help benefit outsourcing SEO but in different areas and ways.
Should You Outsource SEO Services or Keep it In-House?
Overall, you want to make sure that your customers are taken care of. It’s essential to ensure they have the best possible experience with your company and that their website gets optimized with more traffic, higher engagement, and ultimately, more business revenue.
If you’re considering bringing on SEO as a product, then there are two ways to go about it. You can either hire an in-house SEO team or outsource SEO services to become a reseller.
In-House SEO Team
It can be overwhelming and costly to sustain an in-house SEO team that provides effective and quality services that benefit every client. Especially as your client list starts to grow. It’s hard to maintain enough staff without overwhelming overhead costs like salaries, software subscriptions, and bandwidth.
That’s why scalability with SEO is key. Hiring an in-house team can work if you know your client list won’t grow or you have a very specific clientele. You ultimately want to make sure that your in-house team has enough bandwidth and knowledge to provide high-level SEO tasks for each client.
Outsource SEO Services
Partnering with a third-party company for white label SEO outsourcing can be a financially sustainable solution. Dedicated agencies that have a proven and trusted track record already have those resources and large teams whose main focus is on SEO, tracking algorithm updates, and driving organic growth for businesses.
You drop those high overhead costs by outsourcing SEO services. These agencies, like Boostability, have all the tools and software needed to track SEO campaigns. They already have the expertise and the people in place to do all the campaign work.
They’re likely built with scalability in mind, so they can take on all your clients and any new ones you add without having to worry about additional hiring. An SEO outsourcing company is built to handle all your clients and help them succeed at every level.
Both of these options are great for you to choose from. Ultimately, you need to analyze what’s best for your company and its needs.
Outsourcing SEO Services: 4 Signs When It’s Right
There are numerous benefits to white label SEO outsourcing with a dedicated company. If you’re unsure whether or not to outsource or keep efforts in-house, here are four key signs agencies should be on the lookout for that could signal the need to outsource with an SEO company.
1. You Need More Expertise
Sometimes, your agency may reach a stopping point where you need more assistance or expertise than you thought you originally had. Any SEO or digital marketing platform could tell you that aspects, rules, and processes constantly change.
Google constantly evolves, and it’s never easy for anyone to be fully up-to-date with them. With overwhelming amounts of algorithm updates, it can be hard to keep up with the changing ranking factors, what Google likes, what it no longer values, and much more.
When you find that you’ve fallen far behind the updates and don’t know how to fix or improve them, this might be a sign that you should work with an SEO outsourcing company. SEO outsourcing can help you stay current and ahead of the next change.
2. Needing Extra Hands to Help Complete the Work
While it can be successful in revenue, taking on more clients can create service and demand issues. Your business and teams may be stretched too thin and need more assistance to complete all the work that needs to be done.
A white label SEO outsourcing company can step in to alleviate the burden and stress on you and your team. Even if you want to make edits to what they have done, it still eliminates the majority of the time it would have taken for your business to create it.
The more hands that contribute to your business tasks, the more opportunities you have to complete additional tasks that benefit your business.
3. You are Looking to Scale
When your agency starts growing exponentially, it’s important for you to always be one step ahead of it. When you start to become overbooked or struggling to complete a deadline, instead of falling behind, you could advance with the help of a white label SEO outsourcing company.
Working with a dedicated company for outsourcing SEO services can help your business take on more clients without skipping a beat. You wouldn’t have to compromise your current bandwidth, time, or resources. When your business is looking into taking the next steps to focus on business growth, outsourcing is a great advantage to help you stay consistent or even ahead of your daily tasks.
4. You are Interested in Expanding your Service Offerings
When you feel like your business is ready to expand or add something new, this could be a great opportunity to work with an SEO outsourcing company and become a reseller. By doing so, you can add a new revenue stream to your existing business service or product lineup. All without the risk and overhead costs commonly seen with in-house services.
For example, let’s say you were already a PPC agency or social media agency. Adding SEO to your service offering could be a great opportunity for your existing clients and getting new SEO clients. It helps them trust and find more value in your business.
Outsourcing SEO Services: 9 Benefits
1. SEO Expertise
Outsourcing SEO doesn’t just give you access to resources, such as content writing and link building. It connects you with knowledgeable professionals as well. This means you don’t have to build your strategy alone or in the dark. In fact, most white label partners prefer to nurture long-term relationships with clients.
Relying on a business partner for SEO expertise allows you to play on both of your strengths. As the reseller, you know your customers and your product. The white label SEO provider knows how to increase your online visibility. When you choose a firm to work with, you should communicate the following about your business’ priorities:
- Long-term company goals
- Short-term goals
- Brand features such as tone and mission
- Keywords and phrases you want your enterprise associated with
- Improving the quality and authority of your website
- Additional questions to ask an SEO outsourcing company before you commit to a partnership
Skilled SEO professionals can take this information and turn it into a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. Who doesn’t love help that could be a huge success for your business? Having professional SEO expertise could be the greatest benefit of outsourcing SEO services you never knew you needed!
2. Expanding Your Client Base
Another benefit of outsourcing SEO is expanding your client base. This opens another avenue for generating recurring revenue by offering SEO services. Especially with more businesses switching their focus on establishing an online platform, every business needs and can benefit from utilizing SEO.
By expanding your client base, you can pass it off to white label SEO marketing experts that would provide the service on your behalf. All while under your own branding. This is one of the many benefits of outsourcing to utilize for your business.
3. Consistent Staffing
In-house teams are typically made up of a few team members (depending on how large the company is). So if someone decides to leave that position, a large burden falls on the remaining employees to complete the work.
If this kind of stressful atmosphere isn’t resolved quickly, it can create more of a snowball effect with your other employees or even your SEO strategy. Having an in-house position for SEO is never a bad idea for a business to use.
However, aligning your business’s available resources with your business goals may change whether or not it’s a good idea to add an in-house position. Let’s say your business may only be able to open one or a few spots. While you might not want more, this means your SEO relies solely on those few individuals.
If we’ve learned anything from small businesses and the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s never knowing what’s coming next for your business. If an SEO specialist decides to leave or has to be let go, you lose all of your knowledge and resources in advancing your organic strategy.
SEO is a process that takes time and effort, and losing that could set your business back.
SEO outsourcing increases productivity and time management for your business by having a larger staff. SEO agencies typically have a larger staff, and when someone is cut, there’s no need to worry about falling behind on the campaign progress.
4. Saves you Money
In the long term, one of the best benefits of white label SEO outsourcing is helping your business save money. When your agency implements an SEO strategy into your business plan, you want the best ROI over time.
Think of the value and ways you could save by outsourcing SEO services before you commit to it. Here are a few ways this can save your business money:
- Trained staff: When you hire an in-house SEO position, you never know how skillful or experienced their contribution may be to the success of your business. A white label SEO outsourcing company is staffed with experienced industry professionals. In this sense, you’re saving money on acquiring skills that other individuals might not have experience in.
- Buying appropriate tools: Most white label companies are up-to-date and equipped with the tools your business needs to succeed. Let’s say your business is at the starting line of learning about search engine optimization. You’re new to the competition against you in the race and have no direction or tools to help you take the first leap forward.
SEO tools are vitally important in ranking and being recognized in your industry. Opting for a white label SEO service can benefit your business by saving money on tools you wouldn’t need to buy if your partner already has it for you.
All of this adds up, especially if you want to hire experienced professionals. High turnover can also exacerbate costs if you constantly train new people. When you partner with a dedicated agency, on the other hand, you only pay for services rendered. This gives you more control over expenses, which can drastically reduce your marketing costs.
5. Staying Up-to-Date Within Your Industry
An essential part of delivering effective SEO is staying on top of online marketing developments. For example, the SEO world gets a shake-up every time Google updates its algorithm because these updates affect SERPs.
You can rely on your white label SEO outsourcing partners to be aware of the latest updates and best practices following algorithm updates. This responsibility should not and does not have to be your burden alone. Your partners will know how to prepare, handle, and situate your client websites in the right position they need to be in.
When you have a smaller team and fewer resources, it’s easy for something to be missed or ignored when an update happens. Keeping track of marketing news is a core part of an SEO firm’s business model.
When your business isn’t knowledgeable about these types of areas, you want the benefits from outsourcing SEO services to have your back. With more employees, the partnering agency can designate more personnel to optimize processes and strategies so you don’t have to. This approach can boost overall quality and efficiency for your business.
6. Comprehensive Reports
How can you tell if your campaign is effective? If you try to determine this on your own, you have to invest time and money into generating regular reports. Understanding your campaign’s effectiveness is essential to properly allocating your resources.
Pouring energy into a strategy that doesn’t show an increase in key metrics is basically throwing money away. An SEO outsourcing company has already invested in the technology and labor needed to create reports, thereby saving you the trouble. This is a great benefit of outsourcing SEO services for a business with no standings, understanding, or rankings within their industry.
7. Documentation
Did you know that only 37% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy? The reason for this comes from those businesses wanting to use their time and efforts towards a different task or effort.
Not documenting your SEO strategy can really set your business back. Documenting helps keep track of what strategies are being implemented, what SEO tasks team members are working on, and what problems need to be looked back on in order to move forward.
If outsourcing SEO is the right decision for your business, you can ensure your marketing strategy is documented and is easy to reference for current strategies. Documentation is vital from an SEO perspective and helps provide context and detail for when information needs to be transferred or passed down.
Having a partnering agency that documents the right information for your business is a great benefit of white label SEO services.
8. Industry Connections
A white label partner likely has industry contacts who can provide additional value to services, such as advertising, branding and logo design, and lead generation. It might also connect you to influencers and vendors who can promote your products.
If you go the in-house route, you have to build this professional network yourself. Having an outlet to resources that could help promote, share, or even produce content for your website could help strengthen your rankings. These types of advantages can boost your SEO strategy more than you know.
9. Establishes Set Procedures
Sometimes, it’s hard for an agency to keep track of all of the information in a client’s account. With all of the different services, updates, and changes over time, some things can become disorganized and not have a set procedure for them to keep it all on track.
If your agency is in need of assistance, white label SEO outsourcing can help establish a better process for your client’s SEO campaign. An established partner should have a set procedure already put into place to help keep your clients organized, and on track. That way, processes and strategies can run smoothly for your agency and clients.
Questions to Ask a White Label SEO Outsourcing Company Before Committing
Before you commit to any partnership, there are a lot of questions that you probably have and should consider. Your business should always ask the following questions (in addition to your own list) and gauge the response of the prospective white label SEO outsourcing company you’re prospecting.
1. What Are the Goals For the Client? (Get As Specific As Possible)
This is a key question to ask early on in the process. You want to know what their ultimate goal is for every client’s SEO campaign. When you outsource, that company’s performance ultimately reflects on your business.
You want to make sure that your goals are aligned. Are they trying to achieve page-one rankings? Are they trying to improve ROI? Bring in more traffic? There can be multiple reasons. However, you need to make sure you and your outsourcing SEO partner are on the same page.
2. What Kind of Results Have They Been Able to Generate For Other Businesses?
Ask about their success stories and case studies! Even ask about scenarios or times when things didn’t go as planned and what their actions were. You need to know that your SEO partnership will get results for their clients and how they will respond to certain situations.
And this isn’t an easy thing to ask. You want to make sure they can get results for your clients as well. So, don’t feel guilty about asking these kinds of in depth questions.
3. Have They Worked With A Business in the Same Industry Your Client Works In?
This is somewhat related to the previous question. But make sure to ask if your white label SEO outsourcing company focuses on any specialties or particular clients. See if they have worked with clients in the same industries you typically work with and what kind of results they were able to produce for them.
You could even ask for case studies for specific client industries. Doing this can really help you know if outsourcing SEO services will work out for your business in the long run.
4. What is Their Approach to Creating an SEO Strategy?
Here’s another key point. Ask about their SEO process! This is one of the most important questions you can ask. Every agency does things a little differently, so it’s important to see how they’re different from the rest.
A boutique SEO agency is different from an enterprise agency, which is different from one that focuses specifically on small businesses. The strategy is different for each type of campaign, so know what your approach would be before outsourcing SEO to someone else.
It’s important to know the kind of tasks and processes the agency will do. Is it an a-la-carte model or full service? Ask about their SEO process and approaches and how it will translate over for every single one of your customers.
5. What is Their Role in Implementing the Strategy?
Another key piece when you outsource SEO services is knowing what the agency will do and what your business will need to do. Find out if you will need to implement all the work or if they do it for your client.
Do you need to be involved in customer service or fulfillment of tasks? Find out how much the agency is involved in implementing the strategy. And if you want to be involved, make sure you let them know. It might not be the right partnership if they want to keep you more or less involved than you would like to be.
6. What is the Timeline of When You Can Expect to See Results?
Here’s another crucial question to ask. Normally, ethical SEO practices take approximately 6-9 months to see traction on search results pages. It can be longer with more competitive keywords or in more competitive markets and industries.
Be extremely wary of any agency that promises faster results than these ones. Faster results than six months could mean they’re possibly using unethical practices that will hurt your clients in the long run. Make sure you understand their process well enough that you also know when their customers and clients generally find success in SEO campaigns.
7. How Transparent is the Strategy and Communication Between the Two Agencies?
The answer to this question can set the tone for an entire business partnership. Sometimes, companies prefer a hands-off approach and just let the white label SEO outsourcing company handle everything.
But others like to be more involved in client management and other aspects of a campaign. That being said, however, involved you want to be, you should still be able to check in at any time.
The SEO process for all your clients should be fully transparent. They should make it so you can track the progress of your customer’s campaigns at any time. A good outsourcing agency will set you up with a partner growth manager who will speak with you at least monthly, if not more often.
This way, you’re able to discuss the progress of campaigns and any new developments. You should know the progress of your clients’ campaigns. And know that the SEO outsourcing company you’ve partnered with is on top of the latest search news and developments.
8. Are They Able to Provide Full SEO Services, or Do They Prefer to Focus On Specific Areas?
Some companies just work on onsite optimizations. Some companies only work on offsite optimizations. However, there are companies that do completely full service with both optimizations.
If you’re only looking for off-site effort optimizations, don’t focus on outsourcing companies who do both or the other. You might not need extensive tasks for every client, but it’s important to know the business model of your SEO outsourcing company.
Ask the company what their strengths are in each optimization and expand on the services they offer for each of them. This helps give a better understanding of what you could be offering your clients.
9. Are A-La-Carte Services Available?
This is related to the previous couple of questions. Maybe you only need a few services like blog writing or link building. Some white label SEO outsourcing companies only offer full-service packages, while others specialize in these a-la-carte options.
Know what you need and your options if you decide to change it up and go another route or if your partner is flexible depending on what their clients need. Discussing these factors could be to your advantage.
10. What Do the Packages and Pricing Options Look Like (and How Does Billing Work)?
Some agencies bill by the hour. Some bill by the amount of tasks completed and the type of tasks. Others bill on a monthly basis, or by how many hours of work are done in a month. And sometimes, it’s a package model.
The pricing model can affect your partnership. You need to understand how you make money and how your clients will be billed from the partnership. Do not underestimate this question.
Make sure you fully understand how billing and revenue will work within the partnership. You never want to be scammed or taken advantage of in the long run because of this.
11. Is This a Month-To-Month Partnership, or Do They Require A Specific Time Commitment?
This goes into the packages and pricing model. Know if your clients will need to sign up for a specific contract or if they go month to month. When selling SEO, it’s important to help your clients understand that it does take time for some results. So, even if it is monthly, it’s important to stick it out for some time to get the results they want.
12. Who Will Be Working On My Client’s Campaigns?
Some larger white label SEO outsourcing companies have big fulfillment teams that perform different specialized tasks for clients, so it keeps costs down and productivity high. Almost an assembly line approach.
Others have SEO specialists who dedicate their time to an entire campaign. But ask how the work will be done and what their process looks like.
Here are some additional articles that go over more questions:
Are Outsourcing SEO Services Right for You?
As we’ve discussed, there are multiple benefits of outsourcing SEO to help boost your agency in a variety of ways. While it’s important for you to focus on what’s best for your company, consider Boostability for your white label SEO services!
Not only can we provide the expertise and fulfillment for your business and clients, but our Sales Support team can help you learn to sell SEO more effectively. Get in touch today for more details!