By Richard Conn
It comes with a bit of a reputation in the minds of business leaders, but outsourcing is a phenomenon that isn’t going away any time soon. With 30 percent of businesses predicting they’ll outsource more over the coming years. From virtual telephone services to writing agencies, the practice of off-loading elements of your business to other companies is always an option.
Making these integrations powerful and efficient is an increasingly crucial element of modern digital business.
In general, outsourcing is most prevalent in the financial and manufacturing industries. It remains a key feature of some businesses’ customer service strategies too, alongside things like vishing. It can have its uses in the SEO, marketing, and digital business worlds as well.
Throughout this article, we’ll discuss some of the reasons why and the tell-tale signs that you should move toward outsourcing.
What Does Outsourcing Link Building Involve?
But before we do that, we want to make sure we all understand what’s meant by link building and what outsourcing the practice involves. Understanding key concepts in the SEO world, such as “what is churn” or “what is a KPI”, means avoiding a lot of unnecessary confusion and/or hesitance.
Put simply, link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites to your own. In an SEO world, this is done to boost traffic between sites and bolster your ranking on search engines such as Google.
It’s worth stating that every time you see a link online, it doesn’t mean it’s being done for this purpose. Journalists use them to add relevant context to digital stories, and non-sponsored advertising may also take advantage.
Getting to a stage where you’re acquiring links without asking for them is the ideal. However, achieving this requires some groundwork, through the process of manual link building. This is a time-sensitive process, but it does have real and tangible benefits for a website’s fortunes.
But perfecting this, if you’re not an expert or part of a team of experts, can take up crucial resources better used elsewhere. Because of this, the option to outsource this process exists. If any of the signs below ring true of your situation, it may be time to consider exploring this.
Sign 1: Internal Link Builders Are Proving to Be Bad Value
It may well be the case that you have specialist link builders in-house already. If this is the case, and they’re meeting the targets you’ve set, then great – you’re probably not in need of outsourcing your SEO link building efforts.
On the other hand, if you find you can achieve the same or better results through outsourcing – and at a cheaper rate – it may be an option worth exploring. Services like this are all about their respective value for money and return on investment.
So, if you find that this metric might be higher elsewhere, it could be a telltale sign that outsourcing is for you.
Sign 2: Your Team Aren’t Educated on Link Building
If you find that internal expertise in this area is lacking, let’s say, you are a group of small business phone service providers, then link building is not a common skill among your employees, this could speak to an even more immediate need to explore outsourcing. It’s fair to say that if you have a decent-sized team but no experts in this field, you may also want to look into your hiring procedures.
In addition, policy vs procedure disputes in this area can cause unnecessary baggage that you can’t afford. With link building being such a crucial element of SEO nowadays, much like keyword search and SEO reports, it’s not conducive to have a team in which this isn’t a specialist skill.
If you do find yourself in this scenario, outsourcing to the right link building company like Getmentioned agency offers an easy out. A great agency like this knows how difficult some rankings can be. And they don’t overpromise. It’s bound to be better value – and deliver better results – than you’re experiencing at present. But don’t take the first offer that comes along. If this sign speaks to your position, shop around to find the outsourcer that is best able to meet your requirements.
Sign 3: You’re Looking to Scale Your Current Link-Building Efforts
Perhaps you do have experts in-house, but your business forecasts require more. You’ve set yourself a target that’s achievable in most areas. You even have a SaaS SEO marketing plan. But your link building needs to be scaled to ensure you can meet your goals.
The specialist expertise of outsourced link builders can help you here. Any reputable enterprise should be able to deliver consistent results at scale. Remember, their entire operation revolves around being better than any in-house service you can get. Scaling efforts in this area is a crucial part of what they should be able to offer.
Sign 4: You’re Stressed About the Links You’ve Made – and the Ones You Haven’t
This is a sign that may feed into the one about internal expertise not coming up to scratch, but it speaks to an acute difference. This sign is more to do with understanding your trajectory and the future of your link-building operation.
Being secure in which links to say no to as well as the ones to include is vital. Clogging up your content with unnecessary links or buggy scheduling software is counterintuitive to your entire operation.
Outsourcing can give you peace of mind in this regard. To reiterate a point made before, the best outsourcing firms will be experts in their field. Their grasp on link relevance to your project should be second to none. If you can introduce this into your content, at scale and for better value than doing it yourself, you’re onto a winner.
Sign 5: You Have an Immediate Need to Get Links
In a previous part of this post, we spoke about how link building is a time-sensitive element of your operation. Here, we should explain why. Digital business depends a lot on timing. As the internet has become a fuller and louder space, getting your message out there, without significant budget or sheer luck, can prove impossible. It’s like trying to push water up a hill.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Starting from a place of confidence is always good. If you try to link build unsuccessfully for a decent period, people will have an impression of your operation that can be hard to disprove, and no amount of enhancing account-based selling will pull you out of it.
So, go hard at it early on. Introduce yourself to experts from the offset and ensure your operation looks and feels professional from the word go.
Conclusion
At the start of this article, we set out to explain why link building is a crucial element of your business operation and digital marketing, and how the use of a decent link-building outsourcer can enhance your growth and progress.
If any of the signs in the above piece speak to the position you find yourself in as a business, it is a route worth considering. We can’t guarantee it will be successful, but it is something to explore. And, if you find the right outsourcer and it turns your fortunes around, be sure to thank us later.
About the Author
Richard Conn is the Senior Director for Demand Generation at 8×8 Call Center Outsourcing Services, a leading communication platform with integrated contact center, voice, video, and chat functionality. Richard is an analytical & results-driven digital marketing leader with a track record of achieving major ROI improvements in fast-paced, competitive B2B environments. Here is his LinkedIn.