When Should You Hire An SEO Agency? Key Stages For Business Growth

From startups to established businesses that want to scale, accessing highly experienced SEO professionals can make a huge difference to the trajectory of a business with a strong product to market fit. The converse of this is that hiring poor quality old fashioned SEO ‘experts’ can have an equally negative effect.

While some companies may attempt to handle their SEO in-house, there are specific situations where hiring an experienced SEO agency is essential, as not doing so comes with the risk of damage to your business. I’ll talk through some of these critical junctures below and explain why hiring an SEO agency can often make the difference between a healthy growing business, stagnation or worse.

SEO For Startups: Laying the Foundation for Organic Growth

For startups, establishing a solid online presence from the beginning is vital. Remember that any platform you intend to have a digital presence on with a search function, be it Social Media, App Stores or as a 3rd party seller on an e-commerce platform like Amazon, can be optimised towards gaining the most organic visibility by SEO professionals. This is known as search everywhere optimisation.

When developing a new website, it’s crucial to get your SEO essentials right otherwise your key digital presence simply won’t be found by your audience when they search for what you offer.

Engaging a highly experienced SEO agency at this stage can be a game-changer, setting your business up to be discovered from an early stage and reducing the need to invest in PPC over the longer term as your organic traffic grows.

Building a Strong SEO Foundation

Competent SEO agencies can help startups create a robust SEO strategy from the ground up. This includes:

• Conducting comprehensive market and keyword research to understand exactly how your audience searches for what you offer
• Developing an optimised website information architecture that makes your content discoverable for both Search Engines and users
• Guiding your internal content teams (the subject matter experts which search engines want to promote in results) towards creating SEO-friendly content
• Implementing technical SEO best practices site wide to give all elements the best possible visibility in Search results

By starting with a solid SEO foundation, startups can position themselves for long-term organic discoverability, success and importantly: avoid costly SEO mistakes.

Gaining a Competitive Edge

In the crowded startup landscape, gaining visibility as an authority on your subject matter is crucial. An SEO agency can help startups to:

• Identify and target niche keywords. Ideally lower competition areas in search where your fledgling website has a chance to rank
• Develop a content production strategy that resonates with their target audience, educating them and guiding them towards becoming a customer
• Build SEO authority through authoritative, sector relevant strategic link-building achieved through digital PR, sponsorships and more

This approach can help startups gain that crucial initial visibility in Search Engines and start to compete with more established players in their industry, if they exist.

Maximising Limited Resources

Startups often operate with limited resources. An experienced SEO agency can help make the most of them by helping to:

• Prioritise SEO efforts for maximum impact
• Provide expertise without the need for a full-time in-house SEO team
• Offer scalable solutions as the startup grows
• This allows startups to focus on their core business while ensuring their online presence is optimised for growth

SEO For Business Growth: Scaling and Optimising

For established businesses, that have perhaps already enjoyed some SEO success but find that they’re not making further progress, bringing in a fresh perspective from a skilled external SEO agency can be invaluable:

Overcoming Plateaus

When organic traffic growth stagnates, an SEO agency can:

• Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit
• Identify new opportunities for growth
• Implement advanced SEO techniques to break through plateaus
• Help you adapt to both algorithm changes in traditional Search Engines and help your business take advantage of AI Search as it develops

Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving. SEO agencies stay up-to-date with these changes and can:

• Adjust strategies to align with new ranking factors
• Protect businesses from potential penalties (these are often the result of past low cost / quality SEO advice)
• Capitalise on new opportunities arising from algorithm and AI Search updates

Expanding to New Markets

For businesses looking to expand their reach into new markets internationally, an SEO agency can:

• Develop localised SEO strategies for new target markets
• Optimise for international search engines
• Create multilingual content strategies

Website Redesign or Domain Change: Navigating Transitions

One of the most critical times to hire an SEO agency is when a business is undergoing significant website changes such as launching a new website design or any changes to their domain:

Preserving SEO Value

During a website redesign or domain change, there’s a risk of losing hard-earned SEO value and your established organic traffic. An SEO agency can:

• Implement proper 301 redirects to preserve your existing gained authority in Search
• Ensure your content migration preserves crucial SEO elements
• Update internal linking structures to highlight your crucial pages both for users and Search Engines

Minimising Traffic Loss

A poorly executed website migration can result in significant organic traffic loss. We’ve seen many failures to properly consider SEO in a site move, costing revenues and ultimately jobs. SEO agencies can:

• Develop a comprehensive migration strategy to protect your rankings
• Monitor rankings and traffic during and after the transition to ensure everything has been done correctly
• Quickly identify and address any issues that may arise during the move

Capitalising on New Opportunities

A website redesign (which should be guided by a skilled User Experience (UX) design team or domain change can also be an opportunity for SEO improvement. Agencies can:

• Implement improved site information architecture both for users and Search Engines
• Enhance page speed and mobile responsiveness which are both UX signals used in Google’s algorithm for ranking web pages
• Optimise for new keywords and content opportunities

While SEO is an ongoing process for any business, there are key stages where professional SEO guidance becomes invaluable. Whether you’re a startup laying the groundwork for success, an established business looking to scale, or a company undergoing significant website changes, partnering with an SEO agency can provide the expertise and resources needed to navigate these critical junctures successfully.

By recognising the important role that discoverability and visibility in Search Engines plays in your business and leveraging professional SEO support, businesses can not only survive but thrive in the competitive digital landscape, delivering long-term growth and success.

Ready to elevate your business with expert SEO strategies? Contact our SEO team today!