8 Advantages of Using an SEO Agency over a New Hire

SEO agencies are some of the most helpful B2B companies in the world. Any company can benefit from an SEO agency, especially in the long-term. And even if you only have a set amount of money in your marketing budget, most SEO companies can form a plan that fits in your price range.

But that’s vague. Let’s take a look at the real, concrete reasons that a company would contract with an SEO agency — even if that company already has a marketing department!

These are the eight most important reasons, and all of them help businesses earn more.

1. Experience

Experience is one of the biggest reasons why so many companies outsource their SEO to an agency. Collectively, the marketers who work at an SEO agency know what they’re doing. Even after major industry changes, they can quickly and easily learn the important points of SEO by working with the people around them.

Every SEO agency has its share of experts who know SEO inside and out. For some agencies, that might be one or two people who run all of the departments. At others, it could be the entire Internet marketing team held to extremely high standards.

Regardless, the collective experience of the people in these agencies is greater than the single experience you’d get from hiring one SEO specialist. Even if you hired three specialists, they still wouldn’t be able to match the average size of an SEO company, especially if they haven’t worked in SEO for very long. Whether you want to launch your first social media profiles or go toe-to-toe with your biggest competitor, an SEO agency’s experience will trump most issues that you’ll encounter.

2. Established processes

Established processes are also big advantages of using an SEO agency instead of hiring your own SEO team. SEO agencies already know the best ways to achieve results for clients. They also have established procedures, checks, and reports to make sure their strategies are working for you.

In other words, SEO agencies are ready for virtually anything. Your marketing team may have a similar system in place to make sure your strategies work, too. But when you jump into SEO for the first time, you’ll spend a lot of your early months establishing protocol instead of actually promoting your business.

That’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, either — every new initiative in business takes time to work out and perfect. It’s inevitable that you’ll lose hours to troubleshooting, discussion, and brainstorming. That downtime may not seem like much at first, but it can be devastating if your competitors are already using SEO agencies.

And with so many SEO agencies out there, you can bet that at least one of your competitors pays for that service already. So instead of losing those valuable hours for months at a time, go with an SEO agency that already knows what to do (and when to do it).

3. Increased productivity

Perhaps the most noticeable advantage of using an SEO agency is the sudden increase in productivity you’ll experience at your company. The reason is simple: You’ve essentially hired extra “employees” at a decreased rate, and they work outside your company. That means your current employees can maintain their typical productivity levels, and everything from the SEO agency is an extra bonus.

Plus, nobody in your company has to sweat about learning and implementing SEO strategies. On top of that, their supervisors don’t have to worry about getting reports and making sure you’re seeing a positive return. The agency is doing all of that already.

That means your employees work according to their strengths, and the SEO agency works to theirs.

4. Low cost

Some SEO agencies have a reputation for being expensive. But even for how much they cost, it’s nothing compared to the cost of hiring someone internally to do your SEO for you. When you hire a new employee, you have to worry about:

• Employee salary
• Health coverage
• Perks
• Output and how to measure it
• Coworker interactivity
• Employee trial period(s)
• Morale
• Keeping good employees (raises, more perks, etc.)
• Firing bad employees (losing money)

Firing a bad hire is the worst situation that a business can encounter in terms of personnel. Firing someone requires proof of wrongdoing by law (in most places, anyway), and it opens the door to extended and costly legal litigation if the employee perceives discrimination. Even a firing that results in a clean break costs 50% to 75% of that employee’s salary before you hire their replacement.

So if you fire someone earning $40,000 per year, you’ll lose their productivity and an additional $20,000 to $30,000 before you get their replacement. Ouch. But when you contract an outside agency, you only have to worry about:

• Initial investment
• Any recurring monthly costs

By comparison, hiring an SEO agency will save you money, even if your employee eventually pays for themselves.

5. Increased revenue

Speaking of paying returns, SEO agencies are masters of gauging exactly how much money you should earn for your investment. That’s because Internet marketing as a whole uses detailed measurements to determine your rate of return for any investment. Google Analytics is the leading supplier of these measurements, and lots of third-party systems like MarketingCloudFX supplement that information with even more detailed data.

But even without the third-party bells and whistles, an SEO agency can still get you exceptional returns on your investment — and faster than a single hire could supply. After all, you have a whole agency full of Internet marketing experts who work hand-in-hand with you to make sure your company grows. That’s a lot of people in your corner, and it goes back to the issue of experience.

The option that’ll get you the best returns will most likely be the one with the most experience.

6. Brand trust

One of the little-known side effects of SEO is establishing brand trust. SEO is all about getting higher placement in search engines, which are universally trusted across almost all customer demographics. So when someone sees that Google, Bing, or Yahoo!

lists your company at the top of search results, then they know you’re worth their time. The same goes for features like Google Maps and any local listings on search engines. If a search engine is showing your company, they’re practically endorsing you to their users.

An SEO agency will have many different strategies to improve your visibility in search engines. They’ll start with organic listings and methodically move through local listings, business listings, and any other applicable areas for potential growth. When all is said and done, an agency can have you listed on multiple search engines and in multiple places.

But with a single hire, it’ll take longer. And the individuals you hire may not have the comprehensive, long-lasting knowledge that an agency has. After all, an agency pools the knowledge of a group of people and maintains it from day to day.

That means you get to be on search engines faster, ensuring more people see and hear about your brand.

7. Competition

There’s one unavoidable fact about SEO today: Even if you’re not using it, your competitors probably are. So if you want to compete in the fast-moving, 24/7 Internet marketplace, you need some serious SEO strength on your side. That means that hiring a few marketers for your company might not just be an expensive investment — it might not even be enough to help you succeed as a company, even if they’re successful individually.

But shopping around for an SEO agency gives you the ability to find the companies that do the best work. Plus, because SEO agencies are so comprehensive and versatile, you could use one to catch up with or even beat a competitor who outranks you in search engines. That means more customers, better returns, and increased revenue.

Granted, catching up to competition that has an established SEO presence takes time and patience. But an SEO agency brings knowledge and skill to the table that can help you surpass practically any competitor you have. If that’s your goal, then the trick is choosing the right SEO agency for your needs.

8. Long-lasting results

The last important reason to work with an SEO agency is kind of the sum of every other advantage. An SEO agency works to make sure you get long-lasting results that will continually help your company grow. Those long-lasting results aren’t achieved overnight, though they’re achieved much more quickly than a single person or small marketing team could do alone.

They also require maintenance. SEO is a complex industry that changes frequently, and there are new changes to trends and best practices every day. It’s a full-time job just to keep up with SEO news.

With that in mind, it’s borderline impossible to find a single marketer or small-time marketing team that would be able to beat (or even replicate) the results an SEO agency offers. An SEO agency can get you to the #1 spot in search engines more quickly than a single hire, and they can ensure you stay in that spot for months and years to come. So before you hire an SEO specialist for your business, take a few minutes to check out what SEO agencies can do.

You could wind up saving thousands of dollars and earning thousands more.

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