Local SEO is essential if a business wants to have a strong local online presence. But local SEO can be complicated – from formulating a strategy and executing it to looking at data and revising your approach.
Instead of doing local SEO in-house, businesses can outsource to experience so many benefits. In fact, local SEO outsourcing is so beneficial that even SEO agencies and contractors outsource to others as well.
Here’s everything you need to know about local SEO outsourcing.
Table of contents
- Value of local SEO to businesses
- Benefits of outsourcing local SEO
- Common local SEO services to outsource
- Providers of local SEO outsourcing
- How to choose a local SEO outsourcing provider
- Common local SEO outsourcing problems and solutions
Value of local SEO to businesses
Local SEO is about optimizing a business’s online presence to increase visibility in a specific geographical area. This is particularly effective for businesses with physical locations or those servicing local markets. Examples of such businesses include coffee shops, hair salons, restaurants, and home services like HVAC and plumbing. Local SEO is valuable to these businesses because of the following reasons:
- Local SEO enhances online presence and visibility. Traditional SEO boosts a business’s online presence and visibility. This is still applicable to local SEO. It’s just that the optimizations are more catered to local search results, not global. By optimizing for local search queries and results, a business can ensure that it’s targeting potential customers in its vicinity.
- It enables a business to target specific audiences. When you are optimizing for the local area, your business has a highly targeted reach. This means that you are already targeting an audience that is inherently more likely to convert into real paying customers. You get high-quality leads with local SEO. And you also get to save on your advertising and marketing costs because you can focus on a particular area and locality.
- It provides a competitive advantage in the local scene. Being a prominent or even just a searchable brand in the local market is a huge competitive advantage. There are many similar businesses that don’t invest in local SEO and digital marketing in general. Your investment can lead to more engagement, visibility, and brand awareness compared to the competition.
Benefits of outsourcing local SEO
Local SEO outsourcing is particularly beneficial to businesses that don’t have the money, time, or even expertise to do local SEO in-house. Even if they do, they should consider just outsourcing the entire thing because it is more cost-effective and time-efficient. It just makes better business sense. It also enables a business to focus on other aspects of their business that they deem to be more important, like product development and customer service.
- Outsourcing local SEO is more cost-effective than doing it in-house. Local SEO involves a lot of costs if you want to do it in-house. You have to build and maintain your own local SEO team. This means you have to recruit, provide, and train additional employees. You also have to invest in local SEO software and tools. When you outsource local SEO, your local SEO outsourcing provider can cater to your budget and requirements. This provider can also already have every investment in place, so it’s just more cost-effective to simply hire them than build and maintain a team of your own.
- It’s also more time-efficient. Local SEO involves a lot of processes. You have to audit your current local SEO situation, come up with a local SEO strategy, execute, look at data, and adjust your strategy and execution based on that data. This consumes so much time. Outsource to local SEO experts. Since they already know what they are doing, they can make these processes faster than your newly built local SEO team.
- It enables a business to focus on other things. Local SEO can take so much of a business’s attention and effort. Let someone else dedicate attention and effort to local SEO. This way, your business can focus more on its core competencies, such as product development and customer service. Local SEO outsourcing can help avoid distractions that can veer you away from the other important things in your business.
Common local SEO services to outsource
There are many local SEO strategies out there. You can practically outsource the execution of any of them. There will always be providers for these local SEO strategies and executions.
1. Google Business Profile optimization
This is about optimizing a business’s Google Business Profile, one of the biggest business directories in the world. This SEO service can alter your business profile and its information, add complementary details to make the profile comprehensive, and even continuously make posts and updates to attract more local customers. If you don’t have a Google Business Profile listing yet, the service provider can also make and verify one for you.
2. Local citation building
Citations are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number online. Most of them are in directories like Google Business Profile. But mentions in blog posts and social media posts are still considered citations. Make locally relevant citations with local citation building services. There are other complementary services as well, like citation cleanup services. With this service, you can ensure that all your business information across all platforms online is consistent with each other.
3. Local link building
Links are basically “votes” for a business’s website. The more authoritative and relevant your “votes” are, the better. Get links that are not just authoritative and relevant but also locally significant with local link building services. Be careful in outsourcing this type of local SEO service. Bad links and links acquired via unethical practices can have a negative effect on your online rankings.
4. Local content creation
Creating local content is great for attracting local audiences, boosting your organic local traffic, and building your brand as a local authority and resource. But this can be more complicated than you realize. You have to do extensive keyword research to find locally relevant keywords, do on-page optimizations to improve reach, and know how to write engaging content to resonate with your targeted audience. Outsource local content creation now to your local SEO outsourcing provider.
5. Reputation and reviews management
A business’s reputation in its local community is extremely important, especially when the community is tight enough to shut out those with bad reputations. By engaging with your audience, monitoring what your audience is saying about you, responding to online reviews, and maintaining a positive relationship with locals, you can improve your business’s local standing.
6. Local SEO audits and reports
Audits and reports are usually parts of other SEO services. For example, if you avail local citation building services, your provider will do an audit first before building citations and will submit a report after building citations. But audits and reports can be their own thing too, especially when you are just testing the waters. Try to ask for audits and reports first before jumping to bigger local SEO commitments.
Providers of local SEO outsourcing
There are many local SEO outsourcing providers, such as SEO and digital marketing agencies, software and tool platforms, and individual freelancers and contractors. It’s important to choose a provider that fits your company’s requirements.
- SEO and digital marketing agencies: SEO agencies provide a variety of SEO products and services including local SEO. They are usually composed of various teams, including analysts, content creators, SEO experts, and web developers. They work together to develop and execute local SEO strategies for you. Marketer’s Center is a great example. Digital marketing agencies are similar. They also have SEO products and services, but their offerings are wider. They can do PPC advertising, social media marketing, and other digital marketing executions. If you think you need these things for your business, digital marketing agencies may be a better choice compared to dedicated SEO agencies.
- SEO software and tool platforms: There are platforms out there that make it easier to manage local SEO campaigns. For example, if you are looking for local citation building and reputation and reviews management, platforms such as Yext may be the best choice for you because their platform specializes in these things. Other popular platforms are Ahrefs and Moz. These platforms are so popular and powerful that even SEO and digital marketing agencies integrate them into their products and services.
- Freelancers and other contractors: You can try hiring freelancers that specialize in local SEO. Some of the most popular places to look for such experts are Fiverr and Upwork. You can also try hiring freelance writers, graphic artists, video editors, and other contractors for specific local SEO executions.
How to choose a local SEO outsourcing provider
Your local SEO outsourcing provider should be a good fit for your business. To know if they are a good fit, see if they have the local SEO products and services you need. Check if their pricing is appropriate for the value they bring and if it fits your budget. And of course, see if they can actually pull off these local SEO products and services.
- Look at their local SEO products and services. Determine which local SEO product or service you need for your business. Once you know what kind of product or service you need, look for a local SEO outsourcing provider that actually offers such a thing. If you are not sure what SEO product or service you need, you can also consult with your chosen provider. Usually, consultations are free.
- Consider their pricing. Local SEO outsourcing providers usually have their prices on display somewhere, like their website or business profile. Compile many providers and compare them with each other. See if the value they provide is reasonable for the price they are asking. Be wary of providers who offer overly cheap SEO products and services. Many times, they cut corners or use unethical SEO practices that can cause more harm than good. Also, make sure that their pricing actually fits your budget. A well-established local SEO outsourcing provider may offer you good results, but their pricing may be too high for your current situation.
- Assess their expertise and get a feel of their reputation. Make sure that the local SEO outsourcing provider can actually pull off their local SEO strategies and executions. Look at their website or business profile. Usually, you can see blog posts, case studies, portfolios, reviews, and other social proofs that can make you more confident that they can get the job done.
Common local SEO outsourcing problems and solutions
Local SEO outsourcing is incredibly beneficial to businesses. But like any other business process and endeavor, it comes with challenges. When you outsource local SEO, you can have misunderstandings with your outsourcing provider because of communication issues. You can also have flexibility and scalability issues if you hire a provider that is not up to the task.
- Avoid misalignment in expectations and goals by clearing things up with your provider. There are many things you can bring to the table as a local SEO client. One of which is a clear business objective. Communicate properly with your local SEO outsourcing provider, so they know your business goals and your expectations for them. If you don’t, your provider may end up focusing on the wrong priorities – areas that don’t align with your objectives. Objectives can be as general as getting more local traffic or as specific as getting a 20% boost in local traffic.
- Prevent the lack of communication and transparency by setting up clear communication expectations. Establish clear lines of communication. When do you do your regular meetings and updates? How do you talk, through emails or video calls? Also ask for a culture of transparency. What are the problems being encountered along the local SEO campaigns? How are these problems dealt with? If you lack communication and transparency with your local SEO outsourcing provider, you can experience misunderstandings, missed deadlines, subpar results, and a loss of trust.
- Solve flexibility and scalability issues by choosing a competent provider. Freelancers and other contractors are great. But they can limit your local SEO growth because of their lack of flexibility and scalability. SEO agencies like Marketer’s Center and SEO software platforms like Ahrefs are better suited for long-term growth. Such agencies and platforms have the expertise, manpower, and tools to scale SEO operations. They also have customizable and flexible packages to suit a business’s ever-changing needs.
Outsource local SEO and grow your business today
Local SEO is crucial if you want a strong local online presence. But it can cost so much money and time on your part. Try outsourcing your local SEO to SEO agencies, SEO software platforms, or even freelancers.
Outsourcing is just more cost-effective and time-efficient. It also allows you to focus on other important aspects of your business, like product development and customer service. Whether you are a local business trying to boost your local presence or an SEO agency looking for a white label local SEO provider, outsourcing is a good choice.
