Sunday 15 January 2012

Outsourcing SEO. Bane or Boost?

Offshore SEO outsourcing is gaining increasing popularity as a practical alternative for businesses in the red. SEO entities based in India and the Philippines are destinations of choice from where SEO is outsourced. This comes as no surprise considering that both countries have an abundance of skilled workers in the field of information technology.

Consequently, business opportunities afforded to SEO companies in Europe and North America have significantly declined forcing some to go out of business entirely, while the opposite happens in Asia and the Pacific. Unfortunately, some western SEO businesses responded by maligning the quality of SEO services provided by offshore companies. While their sentiments are understandable, one needs to pay a close attention to their logic only to realize just how self-serving it is.

Offshore SEO Outsourcing Equals Mediocrity - a familiar attack from western SEO companies. Somehow true, but it is the same instance that it is also applies in the west. Plainly speaking, not all offshore SEO companies give lousy services and not all SEO businesses in the west are popular.

In contrast, offshore SEO entities are in fact better than their counterparts in the west. In Eurpoe and North America, SEO is mostly done as a part-time, home-based job. In India and the Philippines, SEOs work full-time in a firm where SEO is their core business, and these are not housewives with minimal SEO training but highly skilled professionals with in-depth knowledge of SEO that has been acquired from intensive education or vocational training.

Filipino SEO professionals, for one, have to stay on top of their game. A lot of training (often dedicated to BPO general operations), seminars, workshops and the like, they have to undergo to enable them an edge over their peers, subsequently letting them acquire other skills like web and graphic designing, website development, programming, etc. More of a must if they want to keep working. Competition is fierce, with a lot of skilled SEOs but few positions to fill. Essentially, when you work with SEO businesses from both countries, you are working with the best.

One of the biggest hurdles that SEO companies in the Philippines and India face is a perceived language barrier. With most clientele coming from the US, UK, Canada and Australia, English usage in their SEO campaign is a foremost need. Since English is not their first language, one would expect grammatical and sentence construction problems. But fortunately, this is not the case for all offshore businesses. A large number of SEO affiliates in India and the Philippines employ professional SEO writers or content providers for their needs. In extent, some western companies resorted to providing their own content to SEO outsourcing entities to ensure correctness in grammar. One doesn't need to be an English speaker to understand that businesses operate for the same reason - to make profit. Proper realignment of one's SEO strategies to achieve a client's goals and objectives do not depend on English language comprehension.

Business cost-cutting is a primary selling proposition of offshore SEO outsourcing entities, which is made possible considering offshore companies relatively operate at much cheaper cost. Employees have a much lower salary grade, almost a third of what an SEO professsional in the west is compensated.

To juxtapose two SEO professionals from two countries based on their salary without taking into account their country's standard of living is unfairly uncalled for. Similarly, saying that SEOs in India are exploited for receiving just a third or quarter of the salary paid to an SEO expert in the US is foolish. Living costs in India are much cheaper compared to the US, which means even if their salary is smaller, their relatively lower purchasing power compensates for this.

There are a lot of clear misgivings about offshore SEO companies. Problems have been identified which are mutually exclusive to SEO companies elsewhere. Results from one's SEO campaign is not correlated to whether one outsourced their SEO offshore or not. It's more of choosing their SEO company. Outsourcing one's SEO offshore is not a bad company decision, in fact, it can provide lots of benefits to their business.

Several SEO professionals and businesses who operate out of Asia have gained a reputation for quality SEO services, effective management practices, etc. and can be attested to by their commitment to quality service and the multitudes of satisfied customers in the west.

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