Alternatives to SEO Agencies, and what does your business need?

As a business, you continually want to grow, and while paid ads may have supported you in the beginning with immediate results, or you simply are just starting with your online marketing, you are looking into improving your online presence with search engine optimisation.

Looking online the immediate search results bring up large agencies with a great track record. Surely the ones ranking the highest must also be the best at their job, right? Seems like an easy decision to make, so why are we considering alternatives to SEO agencies?

Make sure it’s the right fit

As with any new employee, you want to make sure this is the right fit for your company. Are they familiar with your industry, and do they offer the services you need? If you have more than one language site, does the agency have native speakers on hand to support those needs?

Agencies are a great choice for large projects that require quick scalability, or if you are looking to house multiple services such as SEO, PPC, affiliate marketing and more. Agencies can work on a large scale, but in return also come with a higher price tag.

The cost of agency SEO can get quite high, and it may not be within your budget at this point. Agencies also usually come with a longer-term commitment, with months of contract terms averaging between 12 and 24 months.

There are, however, alternatives you can consider before giving up on SEO altogether.

In-House SEO

Instead of outsourcing, you can consider hiring your own specialist. A dedicated employee will always come out cheaper than hiring an agency. Alongside finding the right fit you also have to consider: do you have enough work to offer a full-time role?

As with external support, you want to make sure the price and quality are what you need. A low salary isn’t going to attract the experience that you need; and while an in-experienced SEO executive may cost less, they will not be as effective, especially if you can’t offer them the needed training in-house.

Hiring a freelance SEO as an alternative to SEO agencies

The third option is a freelance SEO consultant. This may not be your first choice when considering outside support, but depending on your situation a freelancer can be a great investment.

If you don’t have enough work to cover a full-time in house role, a freelancer is a great solution. Flexible contracts allow for as little as 1 day of support per month, often with easy scalability if needed.

Available at different experience levels and budgets, there will be a freelancer with specific experience in your industry. Working directly with the expert, as opposed to an account manager who will have to liaise with the specialists, will make communication of your needs easier.

Moving from an agency to an in-house team

As your company keeps growing you may consider moving away from external agency support to a full in-house team of specialists. However, you may not be able to find all your experts at the same time, which makes building the team efficiently more difficult.

Depending on your agency contract you may be able to scale back as and when needed. If this isn’t the case, you may have to keep paying for a resource you partly have in-house. Considering a hybrid approach with interim freelance support gives you the skillsets needed to keep your digital marketing running, but also the flexibility to keep building your in-house team on the most cost-effective basis.

Are freelancers or an in-house team always better than SEO agencies?

In short, no. In-house, freelance, or full support agency; there are use cases for each one of them.

In-house support is great to have when your growth can sustain full-time roles. Having these skills at the table can also help improve the strategy of the entire company in the long term and earlier in the process.

Agencies offer a larger range of services across marketing channels and can operate at scale with great autonomy if you so wish. A good option for larger companies with complex needs, large service support requirements and complex business models.

SEO freelancers, (or paid, affiliate, or social media freelancers), are great specialists that you can liaise with directly, offering greater flexibility in support levels and contract terms. If you are in between growing stages or only just starting with your digital marketing, considering a freelancer can give you years of experience and quality support for a lower budget, offering a great alternative to an SEO agency or in-house resource.

What would be your preference?

If you are looking to improve your website’s organic performance and want to know what a freelancer SEO Consultant can offer, get in touch for a free consultation.