Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 Many business owners face a difficult decision when it comes to hiring a SEO company. Do they save money and look for an outsource option or do they pay the hefty price and work with a local SEO agency? There are several pros and cons associated with both options. According to Wikipedia’s definition of outsourcing, it is: …the contracting out of a business process to a third-party. The term ‘outsourcing’ became popular in the United States near the turn of the 21st century. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always. Outsourcing is also used to describe the practice of handing over control of public services to for-profit corporations. Let’s take a look at both options and review the pros and cons so you can determine which option is the best for your particular situation. Local SEO Agency Pros: They are physically located near your business and you can meet face-to-face to discuss the progress and strategy. Some business owners like the fact that they are working with a company that has a physical location that they can walk into and speak to the individuals that are handling the SEO. Using a local SEO firm to handle the search engine optimization will also give you the opportunity to speak to other local businesses that have used the firm. While it is not always possible to speak to other business owners, if you are in a small market there is a good chance you will know one of the other companies that the firm represents. The level of customer service will sometimes tend to be higher since the company is local. They are more likely to respond to your emails and phone calls since you are right down the street. This gives some business owners a higher level of comfort. Local SEO Agency Cons: The price. Let’s face it – SEO agencies can change an arm and a leg when compared to other SEO options. They have large staffs and large operating expenses, and guess who pays for that? The local businesses that use their service! They have to mark their work up to cover the high cost of operating. Many times SEO agencies are simply outsourcing their work and not doing it in-house as they claim. This results in the business owner paying thousands of dollars extra to just work with a middleman. Several SEO firms lock their clients into long term contracts. They will then do very slow link building and content distribution in order to spread the work over a long period of time. There are a lot of companies that are more interested in keeping their clients under contracts rather than focusing on the clients’ rankings. Outsourced SEO Pros: The cost is the most attractive aspect of outsourcing. Often times a business owner can get SEO services for a few hundred dollars that a SEO agency would charge several thousand dollars for. Often the agency is using the outsource company to do the work anyway. Many of the larger outsourcing companies work with some of the biggest SEO agencies and handle all of their work. This gives them a large portfolio of websites to gather data from and develop their SEO strategies around. If you are a business owner looking to buy SEO services that will produce solid results don’t you want to work with a company that handles several clients in multiple industries? No contracts. You will find that the majority of outsource providers do not lock you into long term contracts. If you are unhappy simply cancel your service with them. Outsourced SEO Cons: You need to do a lot of due diligence before selecting an outsource provider because there are several low quality providers that will do more harm than good to your site. Check out their website and try to find some reviews online. Often times the outsource providers will be working on the complete opposite time schedule of your business. This makes communication a bit difficult. It can take an entire day to receive responses to emails. As you can see, there are several pros and cons with both options. Businesses that are brand new and starting out on a very limited budget sometimes don’t have an option and need to use an outsource company to stay within their budget. Larger companies can often times afford to use a local agency, but it is still important to look into larger agencies to see if they do all of the work in-house or are simply outsourcing and reselling something that you could purchase yourself for a fraction of the cost. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on SEO Tribune and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: SEO Tribune Follow @SEOTribune SEO Tribune is an online marketing resource with the majority of content coming directly from the most experienced and influential individuals in the online marketing industry. This community based approach delivers the hottest SEO tips, breaking news, updates, interviews, and expertise available online. SEO Tribune provides a place for… View full profile ›More by this author:5 Attention Grabbing Landing Pages & Why They ConvertWhy Strong Social Media Benefits Your SEOHow to Determine if You Were Hit by Guest Blogging Update