SEO Outsourcing Strategies
Should your small business outsource your website design and SEO work? Maybe you want more control over the resources and would like to have them located within your organization. Every company will have different SEO outsourcing strategies depending on their size and more importantly their objectives. At the extreme, if you just need a basic website, outsourcing is definitely the way to go. All you need to do is provide basic information about your company. An outsource website development company can have your website up in no time.
Conversely, a company that has a lot of content, changing content, and a specific target market may want to bring the content and web site development in house. Then there is the location of your SEO team and who they should report to. So many questions and all you want is a web site.
SEO Outsourcing Strategies
There are many different situations that will drive various SEO outsourcing strategies. The following are situations, economic, manpower, and expertise issues that should be considered in your decision. In every category, there needs to be someone accountable within the company who has a mandate to drive an online presence and controls the budget as well. If there is no budget it is a nonstarter as far as building a website.
If there is no leader or person accountable for the website regardless of who designs and builds it, the site may be doomed. Some people must take ownership of all of the decisions both technical as well as design. It does not mean they need to be experts in the field, but they do need to own the decisions and the process.
Small Companies – with few employees, they have little time to spend on the design, development, and maintenance of a site. Most will outsource these functions and rely on the outsource company to provide all of the necessary technical and SEO expertise.
Medium Size Companies
May have a small group or at least one resource dedicated to the online presence and website activities. Large projects will be outsourced, while day to day maintenance may be completed by this resource. He or she is still responsible for the overall design and development of the site and the content that is presented online. They need to work with other internal resources to make sure messages are clear and on target for whatever the objective of the site is.
Large companies – will often have a large in-house team responsible for everything to do with the company’s internal and external sites. They will interface with other members of the company to collect content ideas, marketing ideas, customer support information, etc. It is their job to make sure it is current and up to date.
Other Factors for SEO outsourcing strategies
Online Retail – these sites require a great deal of tweaking and customization to ensure they are current and up to date. Financial functions must run smoothly and accurately. Control, site design should definitely be in house. Outsource ongoing development efforts.
Information – sites are often more static and do not need the constant updating that many other sites require. Once the site is developed and online, the maintenance, etc can often be handled internally by single resources.
Security and Summary
Security – Responsibility is definitely internal, however, the field of security is complex and changing all of the time. Hackers will constantly be looking for ways to gain access to the companies server. Many companies employ an internal resource who may work closely with outsourced security resources.
All of these categories as well as internal company politics must be considered when you are developing your companies SEO outsourcing strategies.
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