The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: November 2004, Volume 3, Issue 7
Deciding to Outsource Your SEM: 3 Factors to Consider
by Sarah McCracken, Algorithmic Team Leader, iProspect
You don’t have to look far to find resources on how to optimize your website. You can walk into your local bookstore and pick up a book on search engine marketing, surf the Internet and find online marketing resource sites, or you can attend a search engine marketing conference or seminar – all of which will provide much of the information you need.
After gaining some education on the subject, you may initially feel that it would be more effective to manage your SEM initiative in-house, rather than incur the cost of outsourcing it. When weighing this decision, there are a number of important things to keep in mind. Here are three factors to consider that books, articles, and conferences typically don’t adequately address:
Industry Knowledge
Firms specializing in SEM have in-depth industry knowledge, along with the strategies and disciplines required to perform SEM successfully. For example, natural search engine optimization is complex and difficult to master because you must know how each of the major search engines works in order to tailor the characteristics of your website so it is recognized by each engine’s spider – so that it can subsequently be displayed in each search property’s search results.
Because of this, SEM firms maintain constant vigilance on changes taking place in the industry that could adversely affect your SEM campaign. These changes include both fluctuations in the search property landscape (which properties are growing in size and importance, etc.), as well as relationship changes between the different search properties (which properties owns which other properties, or which properties provide paid or natural search results to which other properties).
But probably the most important changes SEM firms monitor are those regularly made to the algorithms that search engines use to determine the relevance of your Web pages to the keywords used to search for your site. Your site could be in position one in the search results for your most important keyword one day, and position 20 the day after a change in the algorithm. Since this industry is so dynamic and fast-paced, staying abreast of these types of changes can be very time consuming.
Dedicated, Experienced Resources
Outsourcing an SEM campaign takes advantage of the knowledge and experience of people who are solely dedicated to performing search engine marketing. These people, their teams, and their firms can typically draw from a considerable historic knowledgebase of experience in solving a broad variety of website challenges for many different clients, representing many different industries. Chances are they have successfully overcome the same challenges that your site currently poses many times before – perhaps for a site a lot like yours, and perhaps for a client in your same vertical industry. Odds are they won’t be making “SEM 101-level” mistakes that new, less experienced SEM practitioners can make.
This knowledge and experience enables the team working on your campaign to more rapidly and expertly formulate recommendations for changes to your website that will increase your visibility in, and increase your traffic from, the major search properties, or to recommend adjustments so that only the smallest amount of visibility and traffic are compromised when changes like those discussed earlier occur.
When making your decision to outsource or to manage your campaign in-house, it is important to assess both the knowledge and experience at running an SEM campaign of the in-house staff you’re considering dedicating to search engine marketing, as well as the number of man-hours you plan to dedicate to it on an ongoing basis. In addition, if you choose to manage your campaign internally, it would be most beneficial to your company if your in-house SEM team focused solely on online marketing, and not be involved with print, radio, television or direct mail – especially if they are managing their first SEM campaign.
Proven Processes
The SEM firms that stay in business do so because over their histories they have developed tried and true processes for managing every aspect of a successful search marketing campaign. They know what steps have to take place in what order, how long each step takes, what deliverables and metrics need to be associated with each step – and how to align those deliverables and metrics with your campaign goals.
They’ve probably also become experts at devising workarounds – coming up with alternatives when clients are unable or unwilling to implement certain initial recommendations due to branding, timing, or resource constraints. Some of the larger SEM firms even employ dedicated technology, research and metrics groups – in addition to the specialists who run the actual campaigns – who provide their own specialized expertise at appropriate points in the process.
These processes – though they need to have some inherent flexibility to allow for differences in client types and client goals – are the rails on which efficient and effective SEM campaigns run. They ensure that time and resources are not wasted; that timelines and campaign benchmarks are met; and that quality control, client communication and approval are taking place every step of the way.
If you hire a staff to run your SEM campaign it is important that they have access to educational resources such as those found here: www.iprospect.com/about/sem-resources.htm. Helping your staff acquire more knowledge and stay informed on SEM is critical to pursuing an in-house approach. Deciding on whether to outsource your SEM campaign or to manage it in-house is an important decision, and one that will clearly affect the results you achieve. While keeping operations in-house may initially appear to provide you with greater control and cost savings, leveraging an SEM firm’s industry knowledge, dedicated resources, expertise, proven processes, and successful results are critical elements that should be carefully weighed in this decision.
