How to Outsource SEO: A Step-by-Step Guide

34% of B2B marketers say SEO drives the majority of their leads and sales.

Yet for fast-moving startups and lean teams, building and executing a strong SEO strategy is easier said than done. It demands time, consistency, and expertise. And results don’t show up overnight. In most cases, it takes 3-6 months before you start seeing measurable gains.

That’s why many businesses choose to outsource their SEO efforts to specialized agencies. It’s a practical, cost-effective way to tap into proven expertise without spreading your internal team too thin.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to outsource SEO.

What is SEO Outsourcing?

Depending on the scale of your website and marketing strategies, you might end up spending a lot of time and resources on strengthening your SEO performance. 

To help navigate this, many businesses decide to outsource SEO, which involves hiring an external agency or professional to carry out all the SEO-related tasks on their behalf.

Whether you lack the skills to create and implement an SEO strategy or are too busy managing your business operations, you will need an external agency to help you manage your SEO tasks. 

The right SaaS SEO agency or partner will help you with every step of your SEO strategy, starting from planning your content to optimizing your website for better performance on the SERPs.

4 Types of Outsourced SEO Services

With the above definition and overview of SEO outsourcing in mind, let us look at some of the major types of SEO services that are most often outsourced by businesses:

Content Marketing & Writing

While content marketing is different from SEO, the two strategies go hand in hand when boosting a website’s performance on search engines. 

Content marketing involves creating and promoting various types of content, such as whitepapers, research reports, and ultimate guides, to boost a brand’s visibility on search and social. 

The specific type of content strategy that you need to implement will depend on your goals and the nature of your business. 

Once that part is figured out, agencies work on creating SEO-focused content, which involves activities like keyword research, SERP analysis, topic research, and creation of SEO and content briefs.

Once the content is created, agencies optimize the content by updating the meta tags, headings, URLs, and more, so it performs well on the SERPs. To sum up, the content marketing and writing service includes activities such as:

• Content strategy
• Content creation
• Content optimization
• Content distribution

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO encompasses all the activities that an SEO professional must carry out, outside of your website, for boosting its search engine performance. Off-page SEO can help build high-quality backlinks and enhance the credibility of your website to improve its rankings. 

Off-page SEO activities also include:

• Link building
• Guest posting
• Digital PR

Most off-page SEO services, however, are targeted at building high-quality backlinks for the website, and most companies outsource SEO link building.

Technical SEO

The staging area of your website is referred to as the technical backend, and tweaking this area to boost your website’s SEO performance is known as technical SEO. Some of the most common SaaS technical SEO activities include:

• Mobile-friendliness
• Site speed
• Structured data implementation
• Creating XML maps
• Website crawlability fixtures
• Website indexability improvements
• EEAT audit and improvements

Most businesses opt to outsource this part of their SEO strategy as it requires a decent amount of technical expertise and experience. These technical tweaks will ultimately make it easier for search engine bots to crawl and index your web pages.

Local SEO

A local SEO strategy is essential for businesses with a physical presence or office that want to target customers from a specific geographical location.

Some of the most common local SEO activities include:

• Local keyword research and integration
• Optimization of Google Business Profile (GBP)
• Online reputation management
• Citation building

Local SEO strategies are trickier to navigate, making it a popular service provided by SEO agencies. Many companies also outsource local SEO because it requires a lot of consistent time and effort.

3 Key Benefits of Outsourcing SEO

Now that you have a clearer idea of the different types of SEO outsourcing services you can utilize for your business, let us look at the key benefits you can enjoy by outsourcing your SEO strategy to an adept agency or freelancing professional:

#1 Access to More Expertise and Experience

Even if you have an in-house SEO team, you might need extra expertise if you are targeting ambitious marketing goals such as securing a spot at the top of the SERP as a featured snippet or maintaining your rankings for head keywords.

At this point, you must consider that over 96.55% of web pages get no traffic from Google. 

Hence, if SEO tasks get too complex for your team to handle or require you to bring in more expertise, do not hesitate to outsource your SEO strategy to an agency or consultant with proven experience in getting websites and pages to rank.

SEO agencies usually bring considerable expertise and years of accumulated experience to the table. Plus, they have a lot of practice and stay up-to-date with the recent SEO trends, putting them in the perfect position to level up SEO strategies. 

These agencies and their teams can truly understand your SEO goals and come up with tailored activities to help achieve them.

#2 Increased Efficiency & Scalability

Implementing comprehensive SEO and content strategies can be time-consuming, requiring you to tweak and optimize your content very often. If you have a small business with limited team members, you probably already have your hands full with operational tasks.

In such cases, implementing and managing SEO tasks can get quite hectic and frustrating, making outsourcing a great choice. 

An adept SEO outsourcing company can take most complex SEO tasks and activities off your plate and make your overall marketing processes more efficient.

Additionally, when your business is scaling up, your in-house team may no longer be equipped to handle your growing SEO and marketing needs. Outsourcing SEO to a reputable agency eliminates the need for hiring resources when you’re scaling up, without compromising your search engine performance. 

Let us consider the example of a popular bakery that is setting up multiple franchisees. 

The bakery owner may have fulfilled the basic SEO requirements so far for its single location, but now, ensuring consistent SEO performance for all locations would be challenging.

This is a great time to bring in an experienced SEO agency that can take over the SEO strategy and use it to promote the new franchisees and hit the revenue goals.

White-Label SEO Services: A Scalable Solution for Agencies

White-label SEO services are especially useful for marketing agencies looking to expand their service offerings without expanding their internal team.

By partnering with a white-label SEO provider, agencies can deliver expert-level SEO under their own brand while the actual work is handled by a backend team. This allows for quick scalability, improved turnaround times, and seamless integration into existing client relationships, all without sacrificing quality or control. It’s an ideal option when you’re serving multiple clients and need consistent SEO execution at scale.

#3 Cost-Effectiveness

Contrary to popular opinion, outsourcing your SEO strategy to an agency as opposed to managing it in-house is not the more expensive choice. 

Most businesses spend around $500 to $5000 every month on SEO. However, with the right SEO partner or agency on your side, you can optimize these SEO costs and focus only on activities that generate the most output.

The overall cost of managing SEO through an in-house team, including hiring costs, salaries, and training costs, can be a lot more than the cost of outsourcing it.

Whereas the average cost of outsourcing SEO to an agency might be around $1500 per month, smaller businesses may even pay less than $1000 for outsourcing SEO. The best part is that when you outsource SEO, you can scale your strategy up or down to align with your budget.

5-step Process to Outsourcing SEO in 2025

You have an overview of SEO outsourcing and all that it entails. The important thing is to come up with an SEO outsourcing process that will help you maximize the benefits and minimize the risks associated with it. 

With these concepts in mind, let us look at the step-by-step process you can follow to outsource SEO projects to an experienced agency:

#1 Define Your SEO Goals & KPIs

Any project or strategy must start with setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) goals to help you drive the process forward. 

This essentially means understanding any specific goals you want to achieve for your website’s SEO and marketing performance. 

You can then define specific KPIs based on these goals that will help you track the progress of your strategy over time and assess the impact of your SEO activities. 

You must also ensure that your goals focus specifically on search intent so all your activities are tailored to users’ requirements.

For instance, when Mind The Graph approached us for partnering up on their SEO strategy, they had already set goals like increasing their website’s organic traffic, creating an organized content calendar to streamline and publish more content on their website, and optimizing their content assets so that they perform better for the brand.

#2 Find and Select the Right SEO Partner for Your Business

Deciding to outsource SEO services or partner up with an agency is only the first step, and you will have a plethora of agencies and services to choose from. 

To ensure you benefit from this decision, look for agencies that have a proven track record and can present positive customer reviews and testimonials. Vet them thoroughly to learn whether they have the necessary skill sets and, more importantly, if they have experience in your industry and niche.

Mind The Graph was running its marketing campaigns in-house and considered partnering with several agencies to outsource its SEO needs. 

However, Mind The Graph finally decided to approach Growfusely because of our proven SaaS expertise and prowess in combining content marketing and SEO strategies to drive sustainable results.

#3 Decide the Scope of Work

Once you decide to outsource SEO work and have defined your goals, the next step is to decide the scope of work. Scope of Work (SoW) can help you prevent potential misunderstandings and conflicts by establishing a clear understanding of the requirements between you and your service provider.

Your SoW should also help you outline SEO tasks such as strategizing, keyword research, writing, and optimizing your content or other specific aspects of your website. 

To understand this in the context of Mind The Graph’s case, Growfusely came up with a few tailored solutions to meet the goals and timelines that Mind The Graph wanted to achieve. 

The final Scope of Work decided between the two companies included revamping the website’s SEO from scratch, developing a content production plan, optimizing existing content, and acquiring relevant backlinks and mentions.

#4 Set Rules for Collaboration

The rules you set down before you start collaborating with an agency will set the tone for that working relationship and ensure that things run smoothly once the association begins. 

Since SEO is a time-consuming and collaborative process, you must set clear policies for communication and ensure that you remain informed about the progress. You may also want to lay down rules about privacy and intellectual property rights. 

Before the project started, Mind The Graph and Growfusely set down a bunch of rules to manage the project seamlessly. Important parameters such as content ownership, access controls, and stakeholders involved in the project were decided beforehand to avoid confusion at a later stage.

As such, it’s essential to formalize the engagement with a clearly defined contract. The SEO agency contract should outline:

• Scope of work (e.g., audits, link building, content creation)
• Deliverables and timelines
• KPIs and reporting cadence
• Payment terms and renewal clauses
• Confidentiality and data handling agreements
• Termination clauses

Having this documentation in place reduces ambiguity, protects your interests, and ensures everyone is accountable from day one.

Moreover, if your outsourced SEO team is remote—whether overseas or across time zones—establish structured workflows early on. Use shared dashboards and collaborative tools (like Trello, Asana, or Notion) to manage tasks, deadlines, and revisions. Set expectations around:

• Meeting schedules and availability
• Response time on Slack or email
• Centralized file sharing and version control
• Ownership of tasks and approvals

Treat your SEO partner like an extension of your team with clear roles, mutual respect, and transparent processes. This way, you’ll set up a strong foundation for long-term success.

#5 Monitor, Evaluate, and Adjust Performance

A process or strategy is only as effective as its performance on pre-established KPIs. 

Monitoring and measuring performance regularly will let you know if everything is going as planned or if you need to tweak the process.

A typical SEO strategy can involve a plethora of tasks from keyword research to building a strong backlink profile. 

Verify and ensure that the SEO agency you choose can deliver results across the board and has the expertise necessary to carry out all steps of the strategy effectively.

To ensure a consistent SEO performance, you want to set down proper KPIs and metrics that can measure the impact of all the activities and tasks carried out by the chosen SEO agency. 

Upon the completion of the project, Growfusely reported on the results of the campaign—Mind The Graph’s organic traffic had gone up by over 200%, its referring domains had increased by over 100%, and there was a 40% increase in the keywords that the brand ranked for.

Check out the detailed case study of the work done by Growfusely for Mind The Graph here.

Concluding Remarks

For SaaS businesses that rely heavily on their online presence and search engine performance to generate business and revenue, SEO is not optional. 

That said, even with an in-house SEO team, you may not be equipped to design and implement complex SEO strategies. In such cases, you must consider partnering with an adept and experienced SEO agency that can help you navigate the many SEO tasks and activities along with your day-to-day operations.

Looking for one? You’re in the right place—get in touch with us to learn how our team of experienced content marketing experts can help you achieve your SEO goals.

FAQs

How to outsource SEO?

Start by defining your goals, budget, and KPIs. Then vet SEO agencies or freelancers based on their experience, portfolio, and reviews. Set clear expectations and maintain ongoing communication. Align on scope, timelines, and reporting frequency to ensure a smooth collaboration.

Why outsource SEO?

Outsourcing gives you access to expert skills, tools, and up-to-date strategies without the overhead of hiring a full-time in-house team.

When should you outsource SEO?

If you’re short on time, lack in-house expertise, or your SEO results have plateaued, it’s a good time to consider outsourcing.

Author

Pratik Dholakiya

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.