Using a Local SEO Firm in Perth VS Online Freelancers
Many businesses considering whether to invest in SEO services to increase their online visibility through search engines, often weigh up the pros and cons of using a local SEO firm in Perth or simply outsourcing their SEO to an independent freelancer online.
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Most businesses understand when they hear the term SEO that this kind of digital marketing service does not come cheap but are also aware of the potential value this type of digital marketing might offer their company.
It’s a common consideration when weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of these two options that businesses will first tend to lean towards the cheaper option of hiring an online freelancer rather than forking out bigger bucks and coping with more expensive fees which a local agency or firm might charge.
However, SEO is an extremely high energy and resource consuming process.
This is why it’s typically a smart idea to outsource the task to someone else so that you can focus on the running and operations of your actual business in the first place.
A high quality, local SEO firm in Perth won’t charge ‘too good to be true fees’ which you might see offered by an online freelancer.
If you are hunting for a bargain SEO deal online, the chances are you’ll end up with a freelancer who cuts corners and hurts your site and business’ performance in the long run.
SEO efforts rarely end upon the completion of a business’ website.
Constant tweaking and reporting are usually required to stay ahead of both your competition and the rapidly evolving landscape of search engine algorithms which decide how they rank your business.
Summit Web is a local SEO firm in Perth where we face this question a lot from many of our potential clients.
We have compiled a number of reasons why we feel opting to enlist a larger agency’s services over a freelancer is usually a wiser idea.
Understanding and capitalising off local market’s characteristics:
Typically an online SEO freelancer will often be based internationally and will require a far greater amount of time and effort trying to learn about the location you do business from (if they bother at all).
A local SEO firm in Perth or who operates in the same region as your business is able to more effectively increase your own brand’s reach through a greater understanding and higher engagement of local cultural and community traits.
Living and operating out of a city such as Perth, local SEO firm staff are constantly aware of locally relevant news and events to capitalise off through content marketing.
Operating from the same location as your own company, a local SEO firm in Perth will have also been cultivating an extensive base of local web directories and relationships with nearby businesses and organisations which can help to increase your business’ online visibility through the creation of effective and high-quality backlinks.
Some Popular Local Online General Business Directories Include:
Why Is This Important?
This is unlike an SEO freelancer’s reliance on non-local and low-quality backlinks which can be automated and are commonly used for spam link building strategies.
You might have come across these types of offers on websites such as Fiver and Upwork where you can buy thousands of poor backlinks for $5 or $10.
These backlinks come from untrusted and unrelated source websites which Google and other engines tend to not favour.
These types of backlinks will hurt your business in the long run as you will be picked up and penalised in your ranking when the engines they realise they are all from spam sites.
“One high quality backlink is undoubtedly worth over 1000 spammy ones.”
Local Experience:
Any local SEO firm in Perth is also highly experienced in the immediate nearby market, having carried out their own research and having dealt with businesses in similar industries to form a greater understanding of what will be effective to you and your company.
An online SEO freelancer will often not understand these intricacies nor be paying attention to what’s going on in Perth. If they are based in locations such as India or Eastern Europe where there is a high concentration of freelance SEO services.
Proximity and Convenient Communication:
When someone is working on the most important facet of your business in the modern age -your website, you want the piece of mind they are nearby and only a simple phone call or quick drive away should any issues arise.
This is a far more attractive prospect than trying to adequately communicate back and forth over email to someone who may not even be an English native speaker in a different time zone to you.
What happens if disaster strikes or your SEO freelancer simply becomes non-responsive by email for months at a time which is something we seem to encounter often when talking with our clients.
Most local SEO firms in Perth have a number of contacts each with their own phone numbers and emails who are happy to discuss any crisis with you in or out of business hours.
They will also have a local address where you can rock up and scream at the company handling your SEO for not responding although this is highly unlikely if you choose a professional business.
Local Reputation:
It is all too easy for an online freelancer to delete their online profile, or any negative client history and pick up where they left off under a new identity should things go badly.
A local SEO firm in Perth will have a stronger reliance on their local profile and will be more concerned with their reputation which in turn will mean better quality results for their clients.
Human Connection:
Many people working with others online too easily overlook the value which comes in being able to personally meet with someone you plan to do business with.
Being able to assess their character and how easy or difficult it may be to work with them is a crucial aspect of finding effective business partnerships.
You want to select people to perform this important task for your business which you ultimately find trustworthy and right for the job based off first impressions and an ongoing personal relationship with.
Native language speakers:
As mentioned earlier, many online SEO freelancers operate internationally and it is possible you will end up working with someone who’s not a native English speaker or they use a different style.
Employing a native speaker is actually quite crucial when it comes to the creation of your site’s content as Google and other engines’ algorithms can easily pick up the discrepancies even between the US and Australian English grammar and penalise your site’s ranking for inconsistencies within this.
Typical Perth sayings, colloquialisms and familiar slang also come into play as another aspect which a local SEO firm in Perth is able to work with to improve your business’ outreach efforts.
For example, Perth SEO firms made up of local staff have an expert insight into locally shared suburb nicknames such as calling Subiaco ‘Subi’ and other things only locals would know or think to capitalise off.
Well Established Professionals:
Making such a big and important investment into the success of your business, you want to feel secure and in safer hands with an established firm with a proven track record, referrals and charted growth in their industry.
For effective SEO you need to be able to track your site’s progress and potentially identify exactly where a problem might be arising from in an instant.
Google provides a piece of software known as Google Analytics which can be installed into the backend of websites to accurately monitor traffic and browsing and provide reporting.
Typically, any local SEO firm in Perth will provide regular in-person reports using detailed information gathered from off Google Analytics as many business owners do not understand this technology effectively.
Man-power:
Performing effective SEO involves a lot of time-consuming and delicate back-end maintenance to your website such as web page design, regular keyword research, link building, reporting and analysis.
SEO freelancers taking on this huge workload by themselves will often struggle to tend to all these tasks or provide their best efforts towards them on a regular basis for even just one client.
If they somehow manage to complete all these tasks on deadline you can be sure the quality of each task will have been compromised.
Typically, a local SEO firm in Perth will have a number of staff on hand who are available to help complete each different task and share the heavy workload which is required performing high-quality SEO.
If a personal problem or crisis occurs, only a larger SEO firm will have the manpower to be able to still comfortably meet the deadlines which you set.
Available Resources:
A Freelancer’s budget constraints result in them navigating their SEO work by using the many free online tools which are available on the web such as SEMrush Keyword Research tool and Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
Although these free tools are still somewhat effective and will get the job done, freelancers are often are unable to afford more expensive higher performance technologies and professional software which will result in a more premium service.
Extra Bonuses of Using a Local SEO Firm in Perth:
As a local business themselves, any SEO firm in Perth has the opportunity of partnering with other complementary companies to provide a more comprehensive package of services to any prospective clients.
Any Local SEO firm in Perth also has more free time and resources to keep up to date with the latest in search engine trends unlike individual freelancers solely focused on meeting their client’s deadlines as best they can.
A fantastic example of both these things is Summit Web’s recent expansion into providing video based content marketing and other services to our clients.
Video is rapidly taking over in the SEO industry as Youtube has quickly become the second most used search engine and users are wanting their inquiries solved and explained in a video format.
In Summary:
Many online SEO freelancers and lower quality SEO firms will advertise their ability to make your site more visible and improve your online ranking for a particular search query or keyword.
At Summit Web, we primarily focus on bringing in high quality leads into your website with a greater chance of actually converting into paying clients rather than simply bringing you more traffic.
You should always remember that the most effective and reliable SEO results come through a long-term commitment, patience and perseverance.
With a steady and stable base of growth, eventually, comes an exponential rise in your return on investment, however, this is not an overnight process and typically takes at least a few months to begin seeing amazing results.
In conclusion, before you make your decision on who to invest your SEO in you should weigh up the pros and cons of the factors which we have outlined above.
Should you decide to opt for our services or another SEO company, know that you’re paying for higher quality, fewer hazards and a more effective return on investment.