One of the greatest challenges for small businesses and startups is determining how to scale. It’s a good problem to have because success precedes growth. Another great thing is that you know where you want to go, which means now, you just have to figure out the way to get there.

There are many solutions but outsourcing your digital marketing and/or SEO marketing needs is quickly becoming one of the best ways to scale your business. If you clicked on the title, it means you know the value of outsourcing SEO and digital marketing services to agencies. However, if you just happened to land here because you’re curious to see if what the hype around outsourcing is all about and what it can do for you, then here’s a breakdown.

For a lot of companies, no matter the size — may it be a multi-billion dollar microchip manufacturer or a startup web design business — outsourcing is necessary for scaling a business because it addresses these two needs:

1. The need for an expert service that’s also affordable. For example, web development in the Philippines is booming because not only is the demand for responsive web design increasing, but the country is filled with talented designers and the cost is a lot cheaper compared to other countries. This is because the cost of living is cheaper if you compare it to its FVEY counterparts.

2. Outsourcing a service or a product fits a company business model that will allow them to scale faster. It may occur when the demand for a product increases and the company needs to outsource to be able to keep up or if a company aims to offer multiple services to clients. An example would be Apple buying some of their parts from Samsung. That’s in South Korea which is 6,600 miles away from the US. Yet, in order to scale faster (and since Samsung produces high quality and reliable products), they decided to add this strategy to their business model.

So, what about outsourcing SEO and other digital marketing efforts?

There’s no question that digital marketing is booming. With 5.11 billion unique mobile users in the world right now (that’s 65% of the world population!), more and more people are gaining access to the internet. Businesses are seeing this opportunity which is propelling them to focus their efforts in ecommerce stores. Just the amount of people looking up ‘how to open a Shopify website‘ is increasing daily. With this increase comes, competition. Everyone wants to be seen, everyone wants to appaear on top of search results. Why? Because according to research, the first page captures 71 percent of search traffic. Everyone wants all that attention, because attention translates to visits and if your ecommerce website is prepped to convert traffic into sales, then those visits will translate to revenue.

Now, let’s find out why the Philippines is the best place to outsource your SEO.

WHY YOU SHOULD OUTSOURCE SEO TO THE PHILIPPINES

What’s great about SEO is the fact that it is location-agnostic. Meaning, the tactics used by an SEO should not vary by location.

In fact, some of the best-known SEOs are scattered across the globe in countries like the United States, the UK, India, Russia and the Philippines.

1. It’s the third-largest English-speaking country in the world

The Philippines falls behind the US and the UK in that category. Surprised? In a nutshell, this means you get top-notch talent, at a winning price and you can communicate your vision with ease.

English is one of the most spoken languages in the world, falling behind Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. So If you and your customers are using English as a language in business, then outsourcing to the Philippines offers another huge plus. Not to mention, what makes the Philippines stand out is even though English isn’t the major language, it is a local language, and Filipinos speak it fluently close to your regular American accent.

A quick history lesson – the United States acquired the Philippines from Spain in 1898 and it remained a US colony until 1946. Since then, there has been a large US military and civilian presence in the country.

2. Cost-effective

The key to scaling successfully is maximizing your potential and minimizing your costs. Outsourcing your SEO is a much cheaper alternative to hiring in-house and if done properly, there will be no sacrifices made to accomplish the lower price – certainly not in terms of quality.

Due to the low cost of living, salaries in the Philippines are much lower than their western counterparts. Though this is true for the vast majority of countries which you might outsource to, I would suggest that there are sacrifices made in the cases of the other countries – specifically the last item in this section.

3. SAVES TIME

Save time and boost productivity. Aren’t these two what every entrepreneur wants to accomplish daily? Outsourcing saves time and boosts productivity which then pushes you to focus more on business matters and close more sales.

As a business owner or an entrepreneur, you have to let go of repetitive and monotonous tasks. This includes link building and cleanup as well as citations. Why? Because your focus should be on your clients, growing your business, overseeing results, and improving your business processes.

However, when choosing your digital marketing agency, make sure that not only can they do SEO well, they have to be able to do technical SEO well. Though there are some well-documented dangers associated with link building and cleanup, such as mistakenly removing a quality backlink. You should ensure that whoever you choose to outsource to has the necessary expertise.

Depending on the size of your business, outsourcing your SEO can either free up yourself or your team to work on other aspects of your business, hopefully winning more customers, or can free up your HR team to find candidates for aspects of your business that you are not outsourcing.

4. Technological Expertise

Technology has played a direct role in globalization, something the companies that choose to outsource have greatly benefited from. However, the countries to which these companies are outsourcing also benefit from the role technology plays in the process. Exposure to technology has allowed people to develop many different expertises. It’s true that the Philippines has lagged behind other popular outsourcing destinations in terms of technological expertise, such as India, but the gap is closing quickly.

In fact, according to the Harvard Business Review, “technology-enabled services are the backbone of this industry [in the Philippines], and the fastest-growing sectors have demand for high-end skills, such as mobile app development and data analytics, as well as middle-level skills, such as video production, copywriting, and financial analysis.”

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFOREHAND

Now that you understand that outsourcing to the Philippines can be a great way to help you scale your business, it’s time to discuss those caveats mentioned in the first section.

While it can be fairly easy to learn about SEO, that does not mean it’s easy to be an expert at SEO. That requires years of experience. That experience and expertise are two things you want in your future SEO. Here are some tips for finding the right SEO for your business.

1. Have the Right Goal

It’s important to determine what you want to get out of the partnership, specifically in terms of the actual SEO performed. You also want to ensure that the SEO, whether it’s an individual or a company, has the same mindset.

Is your goal to climb the rankings and take over the number one spot? That certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing to happen but it should be the effect of a properly executed strategy accomplished by creating a fantastic place on the internet for your customers or potential customers to learn about your business and how you can help them. It should not be the primary goal.

the Philippines is the best place to outsource your SEO needs

2. Research Extensively

The availability of information relating to the SEO and their work is the primary reason why an established agency or company is the preferred option for many businesses looking to outsource their SEO. Regardless of whether you choose a company or a freelancer, scour the web for reviews, both good and bad.

Additionally, when having any sort of preliminary conversation, ask for case studies, testimonials, and success stories. This should be an easily complied with the request. If not, it should raise a red flag.

3. Check Their Website

Once you established communication with an SEO, be sure to spend a great deal of time on their website. Find out which keywords they are targeting and see how well they rank for those keywords. If they can’t rank their own website, you shouldn’t expect that they can rank your website.

Check the content of their website. This is of particular importance if the tasks you are considering to outsource include content creation. Because you are outsourcing to a foreign country, check for perfect or near-perfect English. The quality of the content seen on the SEO’s website is the best indicator of the quality of content they will develop for your business.

Also check the services they’re offering. Do they offer digital marketing strategy services, web design and development services, or e-commerce SEO services? Social media advertising in the Philippines is huge, are they offering that too?

Look at their portfolio and the companies they’ve worked with. This will tell you the quality of their work, the level of their services, and the range of their experience. If they can do digital marketing for accounting firms, then e-commerce SEO for a clothing brand and can also do web design services for local institutions, then you know you’ve found the real deal.

4. Find An SEO Willing To Educate

SEO has a bad reputation of being secretive. The truth is that there aren’t many secrets when it comes to doing SEO properly and because this is true, the SEO you hire shouldn’t have anything to hide in terms of how they are going to help you.

Furthermore, in order to establish a well-founded business relationship, your SEO will want you to have a fairly developed understanding of SEO. Neither of you will have the time for one-on-one lessons but expecting in-depth explanations and subsequent website suggestions, at a minimum, is reasonable.

5. No Guarantees and No Deals

Google explicitly warns against guarantees as it is impossible to guarantee a spot in the rankings. There are 200 different signs that Google’s algorithm takes into consideration when determining the ranking. Not to mention that the algorithm itself is incredibly difficult to understand because, well, because it’s an algorithm.

On a related note, it’s recommended that you eliminate the cheapest options from your list of possible SEO outsourcing partners. Like many things, you get what you pay for. The implications of poorly executed SEO are dangerous and expensive.

6. Insist on Transparency

There should be a great deal of transparency between the SEO and their client. As a business, you should insist on this early in the relationship, not only because you want to be involved in the decision-making but also because you want to ensure that the tactics used are appropriate. Anything less than ethical SEO strategies could result in penalties from Google that can be extremely difficult to overcome.

However, as a business owner, you will need to accept a limited role. While this might seem like something to worry about, it’s exactly why you decided to outsource your SEO in the first place – to free yourself and your team from worrying about that aspect of your business.

Just remember to work with digital marketing agency who don’t just deliver SEO well, but can deliver technical SEO of the highest level. You can’t settle. In fact, you should never settle. SEO is in-demand, as such many companies are putting money and focus in the strategy. A sub-par SEO strategy won’t do your business any good. Whether it’s local SEO services or optimizing your content marketing strategy, partner with experts and people who are immersed in the craft. This way, they’ll be able to guide you from start, up to the future. An expert SEO company will be able to build a solid foundation that’s prepped to grow with your business.

If you follow the guidelines in this post, you likely made the right decision and have nothing to worry about. Best of luck with your new scalable operation!