Semalt: How Does Inhouse SEO Work With An SEO Agency?

Many companies decide to hire an SEO specialist who will be responsible for the increase of the visibility of its brand's website on Google. Does this mean that the SEO agent will be able to do all the work without an outside help? Cooperation between Inhouse SEO and the agency is often necessary. To what extent?

An entrepreneur who hires an SEO specialist may seem like to be at the end of the expenses related to the activities aimed at improving the visibility of the site on Google. The business owner, instead of relying on an agency, can delegate the responsibility for the search engines' traffic to a specialist. Unfortunately, such an employee will be self-sufficient rarely - a lot depends on what duties will be entrusted to him.

SEO is an area that requires a constant testing and analysis - there are no specialists who know everything. It is worth remembering that the agency employs professionals who differ mainly in experience and level of knowledge. They can jointly draw the conclusions from their tests and do not share the results publicly.

Inhouse SEO is alone in this respect. There is often no time during the business hours to test the changes to the algorithm. In addition, the agencies most often manage a very large number of pages, so in the event of any changes to the algorithm, the agencies can quickly determine what has been modified. An inhouse specialist often relies mainly on the external analyzes and makes the decisions based on that.

Inhouse SEO may not need help with an on-site optimization, but will more often expect support, e.g. with the link building. Here are some of the areas of the activity in which inhouse SEO can work with an agency if needed:

Sponsored articles: To get the links is a costly and time-consuming task. A company that employs an inhouse SEO may entrust him with building a back office, but it is a job that usually takes a long time to obtain the results. Hardly any entrepreneur can afford it. A link building specialist can use the resources of such portals as Whitepress or Linkhouse, but certainly should not be limited to it. He must work out the best possible results with a given budget, which means that he should look for the sources where he will obtain many high-quality links at an attractive price. 

Often, a way to save money can be direct contact with the service providers that offer the links on the mentioned portals. In this way, many of these providers can offer a better price. Another way is to rely on the resources of the SEO companies - some offer the option of publishing the links on its sites. Often these will be the websites with very good SEO parameters, but costing much less than the links on the popular portals. Unfortunately, only the selected brands may be willing to share its resources - mainly the small agencies.

Forums, comments, announcements and more: is another long-term task that requires, among others the creation of the accounts on the forums. The agency may already have some that have been around for years and tons of posts have been added from those accounts. Meanwhile, some websites even block the possibility of the new registrations, even though you can still get the links on it. Therefore, these websites cannot be used if you have not already had an account. 

Another issue is the address databases on which you can get the links. Its construction also continues. Often on the web you can come across the offers of the ready-made databases from the freelancers, or from the small agencies. If the inhouse SEO agent uses such lists, he more often buys those offers from smaller or larger companies. And then he does not get the links on his own, but he prepares a linking strategy, determines which URLs need to get the links.

Copywriting: the content creation is necessary to obtain the links, even from sponsored articles. Some inhouse SEOs also commission the copywriters to prepare the contents of the posts and the comments - they only agree to publication after reading. Such orders can go to the companies dealing strictly with the copywriting, but often it is also the SEO agency, e.g. when you are ordering the sponsored articles at a price or for an additional fee, offer the preparation of this content. As a rule, in this case, inhouse SEO resigns from looking for a contractor on its own, because it requires a comparison of the offers and a subsequent verification of the quality of work - it is more profitable to use the services of an agency.

The link building tasks are not all that an inhouse SEO specialist can use as part of cooperation with an agency. In the case of the large businesses, the company may hire an SEO specialist, among other things, to coordinate and verify the tasks carried out by the agency. In such situations, the task of inhouse SEO may include:

Verification of what links the agency is acquiring: it should supervise whether the linking strategy is appropriate and can bring results. With a large scale of the activities, even the verification of these works may take a long time. Importantly, the agency's reports should include a list of the obtained links.

Supervising the development of content: an important element of SEO is to acquire a valuable content on the website and the internal linking. The specialist should check whether the proposed content is actually the best solution in a given case. It is worth analyzing whether the keywords and the internal links have been properly selected. A job well done will be of a great importance in the increase of the visibility of the website in Google's organic results.

As a business owner, are you able to oversee all the elements of the SEO process yourself? Unfortunately, it is not possible as it requires a specialist's knowledge. If you have time to obtain the information on SEO, then perhaps such supervision on your part will be possible, but only on a small scale. It is important to understand that a month to implement a modification is too short; it also means a time for the investment to start paying off, but after a longer period these results may be satisfactory. It will certainly be easier for an SEO specialist to assess the quality and the effectiveness of the introduced changes.