Why you need to outsource your SEO?
“I have no time for this.”
How much time do you spend on SEO every month? Every week? Every day even? I bet it’s a lot.
And if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s just not the most optimal use of your time.
Chances are that more important tasks should get done first before spending hours optimizing your meta tags or tweaking your title tags to rank better on Google.
Why not hand over these mundane tasks to someone who knows what they’re doing and can do it efficiently while you’re focusing on growing your business.
But how is it done?
I understand that outsourcing SEO can seem daunting initially – But don’t worry. It will be a breeze if you follow these three simple steps.
Step 1: Create the processes and SOP’s
You need to create a process before outsourcing your SEO to ensure that whoever is doing your SEO knows exactly what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how it needs to get done.
How to create an effective SOP for SEO outsourcing?
Break down the SEO tasks into processes that are simplified and easy to follow.
Create an SOP for On-Page SEO – For on-page SEO, you’ll need to create a checklist covering everything from meta tags to content optimization.
Don’t forget the technical SEO tasks, like 301 redirects and canonicalization.
If you don’t know where to begin, there are lots of on-page SEO checklists out there, so I’d recommend you to check some of them out and use them as a reference for creating your own processes and SOP’s.
Create an SOP for content writing – For content writing, you’ll need to create a checklist covering article creation and ensuring that your blogs are optimized for SEO.
A good content brief can serve as a guide and resource for any writer that you hire, ensuring that when he/she writes the article, they use keywords appropriately and include all of the necessary components to rank well on search engines.
And ultimately, the brief provides data to the writer about your target audience so they can write something your customers are actually looking for.
Pro Tip: You can easily draft up a content brief with Frase. Check out my YouTube tutorial below on how to create effective blog outlines easily.
Never stop updating your SOPs and processes
Google consistently updates their algorithm; each update could mean that what worked before might not work now.
Thus, change is necessary if you want to stay ahead of the curve.
Make it a goal to continuously improve and refine your SOPs, whether it be on-page SEO processes or content writing SOPs.
Frequent reviews on your SOPs and processes mean better results in the long run.
Once you have your processes and SOP’s in place, it’s time to find the right people who can do your SEO for you effectively.
USEFUL: Here’s our link building checklist for SEO.
Step 2: Hire a team that can do the SEO for you.
There’s a lot of different options when it comes to hiring someone to do your SEO, for example:
- SEO Agencies
- Content writers and bloggers
- Freelancers
- Link builders
Determine what kind of outsourcing model works best for you
Personally, when I’m building a big process like SEO, I hire freelancers most of the time. This is simply because I can coordinate the entire process, for example:
– I can manage my freelancers better and make sure that they don’t go off my requirements concerning a particular task/project.
– Outsourcing freelancers with SEO experience means that I can delegate a particular SEO project to someone who is experienced in that particular area of SEO. For this reason, there are greater chances that they’ll be able to do things correctly and remain consistent.
– I can track their performance to ensure that they complete their tasks and projects on time and to the standard that I require.
If it’s just one specific task in SEO you need help with, like link-building, I would recommend outsourcing it to an agency to do it for you.
Simply because agencies have a team of people who specialize in link building, and they can do this process more efficiently than you or freelancers.
How to hire freelancers?
When hiring a freelancer, there are two things you need to make sure of:
Make sure that they really know what they’re doing with SEO.
Ask them for examples of work that they’ve done in the past. This way, you can get an idea of their SEO skills and whether or not they really know what they’re doing.
Always give them a sample task to work on before you hire them on a project basis.
For example, if you’re hiring someone to write a blog post for you, give them the content brief and ask them to write 500 words for it.
This is so you can actually test their ability to follow instructions and their content writing skills before you take them on permanently.
Where to hire freelancers?
In my opinion, the best place to look for freelancers is Upwork. Here’s why:
It’s a huge marketplace that offers SEO freelancers, writers, developers and almost every other job that you can think of.
There are many SEO specialists on the platform who charge reasonable prices and still do great work for your business.
If you choose to hire someone from Upwork, make sure to check each freelancers profile review.
That way, you can get an idea of their work quality and whether or not they have experience in the SEO field.
If you’d like to learn more about hiring people on Upwork, check out this link below:
Step 3: Tracking the SEO results
Now that you’ve got your freelancers and SOPs all sorted, it’s time to track the progress and see how your SEO is going.
You should be setting goals and objectives for SEO so that you can monitor them and ensure that your team is meeting the goals that you’ve set out for them.
What gets measured gets managed, right?
You also want to communicate with your team regularly, make sure that they know what is required of them and whether or not they’ve met the goals and objectives that you’ve set out for SEO.
Hopefully, if all goes well, you’ll see that your website has ranked highly in search engines in a couple of months, which will mean that your SEO processes are working.
What if it’s not working?
This is where you need to assess the situation and see what went wrong.
If your SEO is lagging behind, you should ask yourself whether there are any problems with your team or processes. For example:
- Your freelancer doesn’t know how to do a particular task, causing delays in getting the job done. You’ll have to hire another freelancer who can perform better than them.
- Your SOPs aren’t being followed correctly, and that’s why your SEO isn’t performing according to plan. You’ll have to review your SOPs and make sure that everyone is following them accordingly.
Pro tip: Hire an SEO manager to manage your SEO freelancers and ensure everything’s working smoothly and the quality doesn’t drop.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve read my article on outsourcing SEO, it’s time to give it a try! This will allow you to have more time to focus on growing your business instead of doing the tedious technical stuff.
I hope this article has helped give an overview of what outsourcing SEO involves and the possible benefits of hiring a team to do this job for you.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below, and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.
Also, if you need help to rank higher on Google & drive more organic traffic with link building, schedule a strategy session with me below.
