Many business owners underestimate the power of SEO and instead opt for other marketing channels like paid ads and social media to sell their products and services.
However, what they tend to ignore is that if done right, SEO can transform their business’ bottom line which can far outweigh the leads and sales they get from other channels.
In such a scenario, it becomes incredibly important to hire an SEO expert who can optimise your website and help it rank on search engines for various keywords.
In this article, we take a look at the benefits of hiring an SEO expert, when you should hire one and most importantly, whom should you hire to set up your website for SEO success.
Do I need to hire someone for SEO or do it myself?
To answer this question, you need to ask yourself, ‘Do I have the time and energy to give for SEO or do I have the required budget to hire an SEO expert?’
If you’ve time, you can do SEO yourself as you’ll find plenty of useful resources online where you can learn more about SEO.
A benefit of doing this is that you’ll learn SEO inside out and see how it affects your website practically. On the basis of this, you’ll be able to better understand if your business needs to hire an SEO professional in future.
Moreover, when you hire an SEO expert in future, you can fully understand what they’re doing every step of the way.
Majority of the business owners blindly hire an SEO expert without knowing anything about SEO and set the wrong expectations which hamper their project.
On the contrary, SEO is a time-consuming process. It’s a long-term game and you need to continuously stay updated with the latest algorithm changes if you do it yourself.
This also means taking time off the other valuable things in your business.
However, if you have the budget, you can hire an SEO expert to take care of your website.
While doing so, we recommend hiring someone who has years of experience in your domain as opposed to hiring someone inexperienced for a cheap rate.
A major benefit of hiring an experienced SEO expert as opposed to doing it yourself is that they’ll be able to optimise your website for SEO and get leads and sales in a relatively quicker time than you do.
So you’ll be able to make more money in a shorter span of time which can also offset the costs of the SEO expert’s salary in the long run.
The only con of outsourcing your website’s SEO to an expert is that you may not be aware of what they’re doing and hence, set unrealistic expectations which may hamper the project.
Moreover, as SEO experts don’t come cheap, you’ll have a hard time justifying their costs in the short run as SEO is a long-term game.
Another thing to note is that anyone can call themselves an SEO expert these days, be it an agency or a freelancer. As a business owner, you need to carefully vet and hire the right SEO expert for your business.
Benefits of hiring SEO Professionals
If you do plan to hire an SEO expert, the following are the top 3 benefits your business will receive:
Save money with SEO
If you hire an experienced SEO professional for your website, not only will they help you make more revenue through SEO but they’ll also help you save costs by relying less on paid ads.
As you start getting organic traffic which is essentially free, you can reduce your dependency on paid ads and reduce the budget you allocate for the same.
Save time and effort
Learning SEO, implementing the same on your website and seeing the results take a lot of time and effort.
Moreover, SEO is a continuous process that involves producing regular content, optimizing your website and building links over a period of time.
Hence, if you decide to hire an SEO expert who has years of relevant experience in your domain, they’ll not only save you a lot of time but will also help your business make money through their SEO efforts.
Skyrocket your sales and revenue
Did you know that 40% of all online revenue comes through search engines? The majority of the consumers who shop for various products/services search on Google first before going elsewhere.
As a business owner, if your website is not optimised for SEO, you’re missing out on huge sales and revenue.
More importantly, once you start ranking your website for various keywords, you’ll get consistent leads and sales for your business which may not be possible by relying on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
When should your business hire an SEO Expert?
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of hiring an SEO expert, it’s also essential that you hire one at the right time for your business so that you can get the best results. Given below are the 5 signs when you must consider hiring an SEO expert:
Your business has a demand
It only makes sense to opt for SEO if your business has demand in the market. You can do so by checking out the frequently searched queries for your services and checking their demand using a free tool like the Ahrefs Keyword Generator.
You want to save time
Time is money for any business. Hence, if you plan to do SEO yourself, a major disadvantage is that you’ll be spending a lot of time and energy on SEO which takes away your valuable time from the business.
In such a scenario, hiring an SEO expert can help you focus on your business while they care of your website’s SEO.
You’re refreshing your website design
While redesigning a website can improve its user experience, it’ll affect your SEO significantly if adequate care is not taken. Hence, you must have an SEO expert in place who can adapt your website’s SEO strategies according to the new design.
You’re using a generalist rather than a specialist
If you have an in-house marketing employee who may know SEO apart from the core skills you hired them for, it’s time to hire an SEO expert.
It’s always beneficial to hire a dedicated SEO expert for your website rather than overwhelm your team members and make costly mistakes.
You have set aside a budget
Hiring an SEO expert will not be cheap but at the same time, it’ll help your business massively in the long run in terms of its revenue, thereby offsetting your costs.
Hence, rather than hiring a relatively inexperienced SEO expert for a cheap rate, we recommend you hire an SEO expert and set aside a budget for the same.
Should I outsource SEO or hire an in-house employee?
Once you’ve made the decision to hire an SEO expert, you have two options: hire an in-house SEO expert or outsource your SEO efforts to a freelancer/agency.
If you’re confused about which one to choose, let’s make it easier for you by comparing the above options:
SEO freelancer
With an SEO freelancer, you can outsource your website’s SEO efforts and pay them per project/hour depending on your agreement.
Compared to hiring an in-house SEO expert, an SEO freelancer will be cheaper and you have the additional flexibility of hiring them online from anywhere in the world thanks to platforms like Upwork and Fiverr.
On the flip side, an SEO freelancer may not be fully immersed in your project as they’ll be handling other clients as well and they may also not be well-versed in English, especially if you plan to hire from lesser-developed regions like Eastern Europe and Asia.
SEO agency
If you want a dedicated team handling your website’s SEO efforts, an SEO agency can be a better option compared to an SEO freelancer. An SEO agency work as a team with various members handling different roles and hence, your website can get a wholesome makeover.
Do keep in mind that hiring an SEO agency will be more expensive than hiring an SEO freelancer. Moreover, you’ll need to carefully vet SEO agencies to see their previous case studies and testimonials as some of them promise guarantees that seem too good to be true.
In-house SEO Expert
If you want an SEO expert who works dedicatedly with your marketing team with complete transparency on your project, hiring an in-house SEO expert makes the most sense.
You’ll be able to assign work to your employee as per your business needs and they’ll also be fully invested in your business’ vision, mission and scope of work.
Hiring an in-house SEO expert in your own country is costly though as you’ll need to provide them with paid tools like Ahrefs, workstation, health insurance, full-time salary, perks and benefits, etc. Getting results will also take time as they’ll look after the project themselves.
Hire remote talent from InCommon
Build a fully remote SEO team at a 40% lesser cost with InCommon, a headhunter agency in India that helps you source, vet and hire talents according to your needs.
With InCommon, you get the following benefits:
1. InCommon sources from its existing pool of pre-vetted SEO experts so you don’t have to.
2. Accelerate your hiring cycle by shortlisting 3 SEO experts in 3 days as per your needs.
3. Ensure smooth delivery of your work with talents that are well-versed in English.
4. End-to-end compliance (EOR) and payroll management
5. Talent replacement guarantee
When to expect the first results after hiring an SEO Expert?
One of the biggest problems an SEO expert faces after being hired is that they get the wrong expectations from business owners which hinder the entire project and their working relationship.
For example, many business owners expect their websites to start ranking at the top of search results for various keywords in a quick span of time (for example, a month).
You need to understand that SEO is a continuous process and the growth you see here will be compounded, unlike social media where you see the results instantly.
When you keep creating content and optimise your website’s SEO, you’re creating a moat for your business which gives you a competitive edge over your competitors.
For example, brands like Grammarly and Hubspot are successful examples of websites that were built on their SEO efforts which they’ve been doing for years.
As a rule of thumb, understand that it may take anywhere between 3-6 months to start ranking your website on search engines for various keywords, depending on your niche.
Patience is the key here as SEO is a long-term strategy and you’ll reap the rewards eventually if you’re able to maintain the same.
Conclusion
Justifying your decision to hire an SEO expert may be challenging in the short term but when you start seeing the results eventually, you’ll realise how important it was for your business to have hired an SEO expert.
The benefits of hiring an SEO expert are aplenty but ensure that you’re hiring at the right stage of your business as we’ve discussed above.
Also, depending on your business needs and requirements, you can hire an SEO freelancer, agency or an in-house employee as you see fit.
Alternatively, you can hire us if you want to save time and money and focus on your business growth instead. As a headhunter agency, we help you build a fully remote SEO team at a 40% lesser cost.
