Outsourcing SEO;
why, how and what can it cost you?
Why is SEO important for your business? Why should you outsource SEO, what are the costs and what should you pay attention to? A lot of questions about a very broad subject, but in this blog we will try to give short answers to these questions.
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Why is SEO important for your business?
Simply put, SEO ensures that your website is better found online in search engines such as Google (at the top of Google!), that you attract more visitors, and that you turn visitors to your website into loyal customers. SEO therefore helps your company to become more visible online and increases your brand awareness and your turnover! That sounds simple, but it isn't. Because good SEO does require the necessary creativity, effort and patience; after all, there is only one website that can be at the top of Google, and there are many companies that try to improve the position of their website in Google.
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How do you get to the top of Google with SEO?
Google looks at more than 250 factors to determine how high your website will rank. SEO is about optimising all (or as many as possible) of these factors, divided into the following sub-areas:
Technology (for example: how fast does your website load? Are there any 'dead' pages or links?)
Content (including: how attractive is the content to users? How long do they stay on a page?)
Authority (what do other websites think of your website? How often do they refer to your website?).
In short, the ranking of a website in Google's search engine depends on many factors. Not all factors have the same influence on the ranking and not all components can be properly adjusted. It is often a combination of factors and improvements that together ensure that the ranking of your website in Google goes up.
Why should you outsource SEO?
Can you do SEO yourself? Yes, you can, if you have the knowledge (and the capacity, the time and the money) and a good understanding of the different knobs you can turn. And don't forget that there are things that you absolutely should not do and that are even counterproductive, such as buying links. Google pays strict attention to this and can even punish a website by giving it a lower ranking or even completely (temporarily) removing the website from the search results. If you don't feel like doing this, and prefer to call in a specialist to tackle SEO properly right away, you can also consider outsourcing SEO. If you are thinking about outsourcing SEO to an agency, you not only want to know what to look for if you want to find the best SEO specialist, but you also want to understand the SEO specialist costs that this entails. In this blog we indicate how we at upMention view SEO outsourcing.
Why is outsourcing SEO to the right company important?
It is important that you choose the right SEO company. The most important question you have to answer then is 'Does the company fit you?'; there must be a click. Because you are entering an intensive process together in which you work closely with each other and in which there is/has to be communicated a lot. Only when it feels right can you look at things like experience, specialisation, proven results and, last but not least, the satisfaction of existing customers. We at upMention are very honest about this: not every company suits us. We regularly advise against ourselves. Only when both sides see that it is right, and we see potential in the project, will we proceed to a collaboration.
What results can you expect and when?
Although there are companies that promise quick results, good SEO is a matter of patience. You can achieve quick results by, for example, buying links, but Google quickly realises this and punishes this by, for example, giving your website a lower ranking. SEO with lasting results is a long-term investment. Even when outsourcing SEO to the best SEO specialist, you quickly take about 12 months before you can seriously enjoy the results and returns. So what you need for SEO and search engine optimisation is a good dose of perseverance. What you build up in 12 months, you earn back in months 13-15 and in the following months, you will achieve a considerable return, because you hardly have to invest in search terms that are at the top of the search engines. So take into account the payback period if you are going to outsource SEO.
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What makes upMention different from other companies?
As said before, not every company suits us. We are ready to give it our all if you are too. We ask for your commitment, the willingness to think in the long term and to go for lasting results. In our more than 20 years of experience with companies that outsource SEO to the best SEO specialist, we have seen all kinds of projects come along. From simple experiments to highly strategic business choices. And as it turns out: trial and SEO outsourcing to an SEO consultancy do not go together. It's like trying to build a house. That is why we ask for your commitment and vision for your company so that we can get to work together.
What does an outsourcing process at upMention look like?
The collaboration with upMention starts with a clear plan, based on where you are now, the collaboration we enter into together and the clarity of activities that will be performed by both parties. Because we also expect the necessary effort from you.
Trial period and forecast After about 12 weeks, the direction and the way of working (together) are visible. Then an evaluation follows, not so much about the hard results, because that is still too early, but it is about whether the signals are green. Has the train started moving? Is it going in the right direction? Where are opportunities? Where in the past we were (and some colleagues still are) vague about what we expect from an SEO campaign and the SEO costs per month, we now share everything we know and provide advice and a detailed forecast based on facts and numbers. Sometimes that doesn't immediately make you happy, until you realise that we are not simply selling beautiful promises, but sharing a realistic and healthy growth model with you.
The collaboration
Direct communication is important to us. From the kick-off meeting on, you therefore have two permanent contact persons: the project owner and an SEO specialist. This makes it clear for both you and the SEO team. It makes the information flow structured and ensures that the right information reaches the right person. We want a relationship to be built, and we want to get to know you and your organisation through and through, and for you to get to know us. Every month we hold a strategy session to discuss the activities and results. In the second or third month, we provide a detailed 12-month forecast. You then know exactly where you stand. In addition, we do an interim evaluation in the third month to look at the cooperation and the progress we have made. The following months are about 'more of the same': everything is further expanded and adjusted if necessary, until the goals are achieved.
The budget determines the speed Based on the budget, we can do a certain amount of work per month. This also allows us to indicate when we are going to achieve a certain result. This means that the budget determines the speed of the project. SEO is a long-term investment and we have learned that with a scope of less than 12 months, you get relatively little result in relation to the investment. Count on an investment starting at £ 35K per year.
SEO services from upMention
We don't just start working for you right away. First, we do extensive research into your target group, and the objective of your organisation and we look at the competition. These points give us a clear picture of your organisation and the products or services. By investing in the preparations, we can make a good start. Then we start with a kick-off meeting in which we discuss how we will invest in your project over the next 12 months and which search terms we could use to optimize. Only then will we get started for you with:
Setting up measurements and reports
Website optimisation, inventorying and optimising the technology of your website. We do this with technical research, measurements and user analyses to see how visitors behave on your website and to gain insight into possible blockages.
For example, we measure the CTR (Click Through Rate), the number of times visitors to your website click through; the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation), measuring and improving the number of visitors who actually submit a request for information or place an order and the Website User identification: who actually visits your website and do they belong to your target group?
Keyword analysis.
Once we have determined together which search terms are important to you and have the potential to rank high in Google, we will continue with:
Processing the search terms in the website
Link building and writing blogs and press releases to give your website more authority (and therefore a higher position in Google)
Writing SEO texts with keywords that match the search intention of visitors and answer questions they have
Optimising your Google Business Profile.
SEA
In addition, we can use SEA (Search Engine Advertising) to find and activate your potential customers. By placing online advertisements you can advertise very specifically with exactly the people you want to reach. Based on our more than 20 years of experience, we help you with effective advertisements, the best media and suitable keywords. The result is that you reach exactly the target group you want to reach with targeted advertisements so that you spend your advertising budget optimally effectively and attract more visitors to your website. This concerns various types of advertisements, such as:
Text ads in Google
Remarketing
Custom Affinity Targeting
Facebook Ads
LinkedIn and Organic LinkedIn Marketing.
Our services are very comprehensive, but we specialise in SEO and SEA. But if, for example, you want to seize the opportunity to also adjust your IT infrastructure, or give your website a fresh look, you can use our Partner network. We can help you find reliable companies that we have experienced do a good job, and with whom we can communicate well and effectively so that everything runs as smoothly as possible.
In short, the strength of our approach can be summed up in three words: integration, consistency and collaboration. SEO, SEA and your website together form an effective whole that makes your company more visible, more findable and easier to access. So that your target group and your potential customers find you better, find what they are looking for easily and become and remain loyal customers. And so that you can see your brand awareness and turnover grow.
SEO outsourcing costs
Payback period First of all: in the first conversations you will hardly ever hear us talk about investing in SEO search engine optimisation. After all, it is the art to first know how, what and why you choose to outsource SEO, before the online marketing deal is closed. Because it is a much-googled question: “What should SEO outsourcing cost?”, we will go into it in more detail here.
And then you quickly get the lame comment: 'Outsourcing SEO costs nothing because it is an investment'. And yes, that is true, but it is also too simple. Because as will be clear by now, SEO requires a good dose of perseverance. Count on the fact that you will only recoup your investment in months 13-15, and will only earn a substantial return after that. So keep this in mind if you are going to outsource SEO.
(Growing) budget The advantage of a fixed budget is that you clearly determine in advance where your money will go. The disadvantage, however, is that a successful campaign can be inhibited by a fixed budget. That is why we advise customers to work with a growing budget. In other words: the relationship between cash flow and growth is arranged on a custom basis. This creates more cash flow = more growth = more cash flow = more growth, etc. In other words: exponential growth on all fronts! Good for everyone.
SEO costs But, of course, the question is: what should outsourcing SEO cost? A few years ago we analysed all our projects and provided a numerical basis for the correlation between budget, duration and results. On this basis, we have decided that we can not accept projects for which we can work less than somewhat more than 3 days per month (= 26 hours), or in which we do not see a perspective for a period longer than 12 months. We therefore work between 80 and 100 hours per month for most customers. That amounts to an investment starting at £ 3K per month.
Finally
Of course there is much more to tell about SEO, SEA and the services of upMention. This general blog only gives a general overview of what you can expect if you choose to outsource SEO to upMention. In other blogs, we go into more detail about the services we can offer you to profile your company and increase your turnover.
