Brought to you by 5Tales, the leading Australian digital marketing agency for service businesses

Brisbane SEO Agency or Freelancer?

by | Apr 24, 2019 | SEO

Getting The Choice Right To Stand Out.

 

Did you know there are over 1.8 billion websites all now competing for your eyeballs and attention?

In today’s marketing world it is important to get attention to survive.

There are now a plethora of options when it comes to choosing a Brisbane SEO Agency.

There are also thousands of freelancers who claim to be SEO experts.

In this post, we ask the question, which one is right for your business?

 

Why Is SEO Important To My Business?

 

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is one of the powerful pillars that supports any digital marketing campaign.

 

In today’s competitive world SEO is as important as ever.

 

If you think about it, search engines ( Google, Yahoo etc ) are serving billions of search queries every day for people looking for answers.

 

Google alone handles 100 billion enquires every month.

 

Search engine optimization or SEO is a way to improve your website so it appears closer to the top positions on Google, Yahoo and other leading search engines. And when talking about SEO in Australia, we are pretty much only talking about Google as they have about a 97% share of the market.

SEO, is not instant though, it takes time.

 

SEO is a long term investment and as a business you should consider it as crucial to your online success.

Many businesses struggle on how best to spend their investment dollar when it comes to SEO.

 

The options are usually between creating an in house SEO team, hiring an agency or plugging for a freelancer.

Having an in house SEO team is usually out of reach of most businesses.

The costs of hiring a ready-made SEO team is costly and hard to make it a good return on investment.

 

These leaves us with the two options of hiring an agency or freelancer.

A freelancer is an person who is self-employed and are out to sell their services to clients.

An agency is a group of people who are specialists in the many aspects of SEO.

Most SEO agencies usually have a team of experts from social media, link building to content creators.

Using an SEO Agency is a great way of handing over your work.

 

The people in an agency will know what they are doing and are specialists in the work you are looking for.

 

One of the advantages is that agencies will have worked with many other clients with needs like your own.

They will have faced many of the same problems you may be encountering in relation to SEO issues.

 

The other benefit of an agency is that you can access a range of services under the same roof.

 

Although an agency will have a range of different people who are handling your business.

 

You might have one contact who gets to know your business inside out.

 

Depending on your budget, it might be that a freelancer may be the answer.

They are usually cheaper than an agency, but as the saying goes sometimes you pay peanuts and get monkeys.

 

A freelancer may advertise that they can handle all your SEO needs, but will not have all the skills you are looking for.

 

The Pros & Cons of Hiring A Freelancer

 

Cost

As stated earlier cost will be a major factor.

A freelancer will not have the overheads of an agency so will be able to charge out less.

Yet, bear in mind that if you have to hire several freelancers to complete your project the cost goes up.

 

Specialisms

 

A freelancer will only be able to concentrate on one area of expertise.

For example a web designer will only focus on web design.

 

Another problem with using a freelancer is that they will often charge just for specific tasks.

Such things as x amount of links, or writing x amount of articles.

 

There is not a focus on building a coherent strategy for your business to achieve better ranking results.

 

You might also have to watch out for what is ‘black hat techniques’.

 

As they are independent they have less accountability. They may achieve a spike in your rankings short term. However, googles algorithms will catch up with them and your rankings could fall or you could get blacklisted.

 

Flexibility

 

Once hired, a freelancer can schedule around your priorities, which may include working outside of normal hours which maybe attractive for you.

 

Skills

 

New freelancers may exaggerate their skill levels and experience to get projects.

You will have to carry out more due diligence to make sure you know what you are hiring.

 

Pros & Cons of Hiring An Agency

 

When you hire an agency you have a team of people you can turn too.

 

They will have a talented team of experienced individuals who are well qualified.

You will also get a project that has been well polished and of a better standard than a freelancer.

 

For SEO work, agencies typically have staff that can handle both on site and off-site services.

 

On-site means changes or edits to your website, to optimize what you can control on your website.

Offsite means external activities such as link building, guest posting etc.

On the whole agencies tend to use ‘white hat techniques’.

White hat techniques will help you increase and maintain sustainable traffic to your website over a period of time.

 

Cost

 

Cost will be the biggest drawbacks of using an agency compared to a freelancer.

As they have overheads to service they will be more costly.

 

Talk to the agency though about keeping costs within your budget, they can be flexible and willing to compromise.

 

The agency will more than likely also provide you with regular reports and updates.

 

You will also be able to hold them to account in relation to your ranking performance which tends to help in the execution of your SEO strategy.

 

As with any service there are good agencies and bad agencies out there.

 

SEO is both a science and an art, and experience in your particularly industry is less important than having in depth knowledge and experience in the SEO world.

 

The choice between a freelancer and agency are laid bare.

 

It will come down to your budget and being clear about your SEO aspirations.

About Author

5tales

Share

About Author

5tales

Share