At that stage, you can’t just outsource to anyone who offers SEO services. You need an agency with national SEO experience that knows how to build visibility in markets where customers don’t know your name yet.

Below, we’ll break down what national SEO is, how it differs from local SEO, five signs its time for outside help, and how to hire the right agency.

What is a national SEO agency, and what does it do?

A national SEO agency improves a company’s organic visibility in search across an entire country, rather than one city or region. National search engine optimization focuses on reaching customers through searches tied to what the company sells, rather than relying primarily on location-specific searches.

A national SEO agency typically handles:

• Keyword and content strategy for non-branded, national-intent searches
• Technical SEO that scales, including site architecture, crawlability, and how service and location pages work together
• Authority building through backlinks, digital PR, and customer reviews where relevant
• Reporting by market, so a strong national number doesn’t hide a stalling region
• AI visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode

National SEO vs. local SEO: what’s the difference?

Local SEO focuses on customers in a specific area, often through Google Business Profile listings and “near me” searches. National SEO has to work beyond any single area, which changes the keywords, authority signals, and reporting you rely on. A business with multiple locations can use local SEO in each market while also competing nationally.

The same fundamentals are at play here: keyword research, high-quality content, relevant links, and technical SEO. National SEO applies them beyond a single market.

Start with the searches your customers have in common, then look for regional differences that matter. An article that targets the keyword “best mattresses for hot sleepers” could address humid Southern summers or dry Western summers if customer research supports those differences.

Where customer needs or competition differ by region, relevant regional coverage and customer reviews can help buyers assess your business.

Break up reporting by market, too. A healthy national traffic number can hide a region that’s stalling, so track rankings and conversions for each market where geographic differences affect your business.

AI search adds another layer to this. Buyers now ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for recommendations, and they see AI Overviews at the top of many Google searches. Your content should clearly explain what you offer, who it serves, and the questions buyers need answered. Useful content and credible third-party coverage can support AI visibility and improve your chances of being one of the brands those answers mention.

Five signs it’s time to invest in a national SEO agency

So, how do you know when your growth calls for outside national SEO expertise? These signs can help you identify where your SEO needs attention. An agency becomes worth considering when the work exceeds your team’s capacity or experience.

1. Your visibility stops at your home market

If customers outside your home market can’t find you through non-branded searches, your SEO isn’t supporting your expansion.

When a company starts selling in a new market, branded search often picks up first. People hear about you through word of mouth and look you up by name, so it feels like SEO is working. That’s a great sign, but it’s only half the picture. At home, you have years of reviews and people who already know you. In a new market, you’re earning that trust through content and authority, so it’s worth planning for it like a fresh build rather than an extension of what you have.

For example, let’s say you operate a woodworking supply store in Peoria and ship nationwide. Check whether enthusiasts in central Illinois or Chicago can find your business when they search “woodworking supplies”. As you expand to a nationally competitive company, the same test applies for other major metros, like New York City, Atlanta, or Portland.

If you want to know if you’re showing up in other markets, identify five to 10 relevant non-branded queries you rank for in your local market. Then, use a rank tracker tool like Semrush that offers position tracking to run those same queries in other major markets where you want to rank. If you don’t show up in the search results for those queries, that’s a sign your SEO isn’t reaching those markets yet.

Relevance helped Gabb Wireless reach more parents searching for safe phones for their kids through search-focused content and relevant media coverage. Monthly organic traffic increased 198% over 10 months. For a specialized brand competing with larger companies, content built around those searches gives parents who haven’t heard of Gabb a way to find it.

2. Organic traffic has plateaued or dropped

One lagging indicator that SEO isn’t keeping up with your growth is organic traffic that stays flat while the business expands.

You can see if this is happening by checking two things: 

• Pull up Google Search Console and review your non-branded clicks over the last 12 months. Use the non-branded query filter if it’s available, or exclude searches containing your brand name and common variations. Compare the same months year over year to account for seasonality. Impressions aren’t enough. Where are you getting high impressions but low click-through? If that’s happening for searches tied to your core offerings, it needs a closer look.
• Use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to check organic search traffic by location. To use the previous example, filter to Organic Search and review Chicago at the city level to see whether visits and conversions are growing or shrinking. Use your rank tracker to check rankings there.

If organic traffic is flat, check your organic conversions and revenue before drawing conclusions. If conversions and revenue are flat too, look at shifts in search demand, technical issues, and conversion problems. A national SEO agency can help diagnose the causes and build a long-term strategy around your growth.

3. Your organic leads are getting more expensive

If you’re spending more on marketing every month and getting less back, look closely at which channels are driving your leads. A falling return on investment (ROI) can mean your messages aren’t reaching the audience you’re growing into, or they’re reaching it without converting.

Organic cost per lead shows how efficiently SEO turns spend into leads. Add up your SEO costs across expenses like internal payroll, content creation, tech stack, and contractors. Then divide that total by the number of leads attributed to organic search over the same period.

Run the same math for paid search and compare the two. Include ad spend and related management, creative, and tool costs. Use the same definition of a lead and consistent attribution rules, and check how many leads become customers. A lower cost per lead doesn’t necessarily mean a lower cost to acquire a customer.

If organic cost per lead is rising while paid holds steady, find out why: higher SEO costs, lost traffic, lower conversion rates, or recent SEO spend that hasn’t paid off yet. If you’re leaning harder on paid ads to make up the gap, remember that paid search requires ongoing spending to keep bringing in new traffic.

If organic cost per lead keeps climbing while you’re trying to grow into new markets, your SEO may not be reaching the customers you’re trying to win there. That’s a gap national SEO expertise can help close.

Relevance helped the telehealth brand Nurx reduce its reliance on paid acquisition. Nurx relied heavily on paid advertising, and organic search drove just 4.8% of its user acquisition. After Relevance built out its keyword and content strategy, organic search grew to 28.7% of acquisition, nearly six times its starting share, while organic traffic rose 49.7% year over year.

4. Your online reputation trails your real one

Sometimes, you can see a gap between stellar word-of-mouth marketing and a weak online perception of your brand. If that gap is making it harder to establish credibility in new markets, it’s a good sign you need a national SEO agency.

Even if your reputation is strong in your local market, online content can tell a different tale. If you’ve ever read a terrible review of a restaurant online only to have a close friend contradict it, you know exactly what this looks like. Buyers in a new market usually don’t have a friend to ask, so they go by what they find in search results, reviews, and AI tools like ChatGPT.

Start by searching your brand name and reading through the review sites in your industry. Check whether there’s credible coverage or content that shows your expertise, too. If what you find doesn’t match what your customers would say about you, that’s the gap to close.

A national SEO agency can help strengthen credible coverage and make evidence of expertise easier to find. It can bring your product or service to the attention of the customers you’re seeking through digital PR and social proof, like customer reviews and mentions. Together, these can create a similar word-of-mouth effect online, boosting SEO across multi-regional markets.

5. You’re launching, redesigning, or expanding

A launch, redesign, or expansion is a good time to bring in a national SEO agency when you’re preparing to shift from local to regional or national offerings. Strategies that worked locally early on often need a bigger-picture approach as your customer base grows.

As you make that shift, don’t let SEO get overlooked. A redesign that changes URLs or drops old pages can disrupt rankings you spent years building, so plan SEO into the project from the start.

For example, if a product category page moves to a new URL, redirecting the old URL to the new one helps keep the rankings and links that page has earned.

How to hire a national SEO agency

If you decide it’s time to go national with your SEO strategy, look for an agency that can show case studies of growing visibility across multiple markets, not just general SEO support. Before you hire someone, here are five questions to ask the agency:

1. What will our first 90 days look like? A good agency should be able to tell you which markets they’ll start with, what they’ll fix first, and what deliverables you should expect to see by the end of month three. If the answer is vague, the scope probably is too.
2. What does the scope include? Look for deliverables, target markets, milestones, and AI visibility. Also ask how the agency earns links and evaluates their relevance and quality.
3. Who will do the work, and what will you need from our team?
4. How will you report results by market, and will we keep access to our Search Console and GA4 accounts?
5. How does your pricing work, and what falls outside the agreed scope?

Be wary of guaranteed rankings or an agency that won’t let you keep access to your accounts. Google itself warns that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking.

If you’re looking for a national SEO partner with a proven track record, book a free strategy assessment with Relevance. Ask us the questions, hear our ideas around your brand, and together, we’ll assess the opportunities in the markets you want to reach and walk you through a clear approach for getting there

FAQ

How do I know if I need a national SEO agency?

You likely need national SEO expertise if you sell beyond your home market but don’t show up for non-branded searches there. An agency makes sense when your team doesn’t have the time or experience to close that gap on its own.

How long does national SEO take to show results?

The timeline depends on your starting point, competition, and the work involved. Fixing a technical issue and building visibility for competitive searches are different tasks. Ask what the agency will deliver in the first 90 days, which improvements may appear early, and when it will assess progress toward leads and sales.

How much does a national SEO agency cost?

Pricing depends on strategy depth, the number of target markets, technical complexity, timelines, and internal support. Agencies may charge fixed project fees, retainers, or hourly rates. Ask what’s included in the fee and which services or expenses are billed separately.

How do I know if my national SEO agency is working?

Always make sure you have clear metrics and goals in place at the start of the relationship. Track organic leads, sales, or other meaningful conversions alongside search performance in each target market. If AI visibility is included, report mentions, citations, and referral traffic from AI tools separately. Ask for consistent reports against those goals.

The post When Should You Invest In A National SEO Agency? appeared first on Relevance.

In this article, we’ll discuss several growth marketing ideas that you can use to boost your business along with examples of companies that have successfully implemented these strategies.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engine results pages like Google’s. This is accomplished through techniques such as keyword research, meta tags, and link building. SEO is an extremely powerful way to drive traffic to your website and grow your business. While this is a long-term strategy that requires a lot of effort and dedication, the payoff can be significant. 

In 2023 every business needs a website, and SEO is the way to get it in front of the right people. Improving your website’s ranking in search engine results pages can increase visibility, drive more traffic, and ultimately grow your business. There are a variety of businesses that really benefit from SEO, but to see who’s really coming out on top, just take a look at who’s sitting in Google’s number one spot. 

Onsite Content

An SEO strategy is essential for modern businesses, but it’s not really worth much without quality onsite content. Audiences can’t search for content that doesn’t exist, so without it, you’re practically invisible online. Put simply, your content signals to search engines and your audience that you know what you’re talking about. When prioritizing onsite content, you want to make sure your business’s website has relevant material. Types of content may include blogs, infographics, and/or videos, but you have to choose what’s best for your business. 

Leveraging your online content allows your business to showcase your expertise, which can help you earn your audience’s trust and gently move them through your sales funnel. Canva is a popular design tool, and they are killing it when it comes to onsite content. They offer users thousands of design tutorials through their design school. It teaches people how to use their product while also showcasing  the features their service has to offer.

Digital PR

Digital PR is a powerful tool to help businesses build their online reputation and brand authority. With time, it can help you become a reputable industry leader. When done successfully, a digital PR campaign will result in brand mentions and backlinks from sites with quality domains, which increases a brand’s authority both in the eyes of search engines and human readers.

Any current industry leader is most likely benefiting from digital PR. Think about businesses positively mentioned on sites like The New York Times, Forbes, or Entrepreneur. Once those mentions are obtained, it heightens a company’s level of authority. So much so, it’s common practice to see “as featured in” sections on their website. Those sections speak to a level of authority and convince your audience by providing social proof. Strengthening the relationship your business has with the public is important, and digital PR does just that.

Influencer Marketing

Almost everyone is familiar with who influencers are and how they contribute to the marketing space. But to define for those who don’t know, influencer marketing describes a partnership with individuals who have a large social media presence to promote their products or services. Partnering with these individuals can be an effective way to reach a large and engaged audience that is likely to be interested in your products.

With this marketing strategy, you’re able to leverage influencer connections to promote your business. An example of a company that has had great success partnering with influencers is Fashion Nova. They’ve partnered with celebrities like Cardi B and Amber Rose to promote their brand on Instagram. The company made a million dollars on the first day that Cardi B’s line dropped — and that’s largely due to her dedicated fan base. 

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing encourages existing customers to refer their friends and family to your business. To incentivise these referrals, companies often offer rewards and additional perks to these existing customers. This can be an effective way to acquire new customers at a lower cost than traditional marketing methods.

Dropbox is a great example of a company who benefited from referral marketing. They grew their user base by offering more storage space to users who refer their friends to the service. Their company grew 3900% (not a typo!) in just 15 months. That’s wild, but it speaks to how capitalizing on your customer’s connections can really benefit your business.

Mobile Optimization

Optimizing your website, products, and services for use on mobile devices is crucial if you want to grow your business. According to Think with Google, “Almost half (46%) of consumers prefer to use their smartphone to complete the entire process from researching to buying.” This means that having a mobile-friendly website and making sure your products and services are easily accessible on smartphones is crucial to reach customers. Through optimization, you can increase visibility, drive more traffic, and ultimately grow your business.

Personalization

Personalization has become more and more important over the years as audiences expect to be treated as individuals rather than statistics — and rightfully so. However, it can make some marketing efforts more difficult. Personalization as a marketing strategy tailors messages and experiences to individual users based on their behavior and preferences. This can be a powerful way to increase customer engagement and retention.

Netflix is known for its personalized recommendations, which have been successful in keeping users engaged with the platform. According to the company, over 75% of the content that users watch on Netflix comes from its recommendation system. This highlights how effective personalization can be, especially as it keeps users engaged.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of testing two or more variations of a marketing campaign, website, or product feature to see which performs better. This allows you to make data-driven decisions about which changes will have the biggest impact on your business.

If you’re familiar with the meal kit delivery service HelloFresh, they provide a nice example of A/B testing with their menu display update. When they redesigned their menu to create a seamless user experience while also promoting upselling opportunities, they compared their original design to the update. They found the final version contributed to a 7% increase in upselling, proving the second variation performed better.

Remarketing

Remarketing is a strategy in which advertisements are targeted to users who have previously interacted with your business. This can be a powerful way to increase sales and customer retention. Studies show that retargeting can increase conversion rates by as much as 150%. It also helps re-engage the 98% of visitors who leave a website without making a purchase.

Amazon’s retargeting ads, which show products that a user previously viewed on the website, have been very effective in driving sales. Just think about how your social media pages look after you’ve been scrolling on their product page. Those great finds sitting in your cart almost immediately end up on your newsfeed. If you’re not remarketing already, it’s an idea worth considering.

Deciding What Strategies Are Right For Your Business

It’s important to note that a single method may not necessarily drive the growth of your business. It is important to use a combination of multiple strategies and methods to achieve the best results possible. But you may also find some strategies aren’t worth the resources they will cost your company.

Growth marketing will look different for every business because not all approaches will help you reach particular goals. Continuously testing and refining your approach can help you identify what works best for your unique audience. The above-discussed growth marketing ideas are just a starting point, and you should continuously experiment with new strategies to find what works best for your business.

The post Growth Marketing Ideas: Boost Your Business with These Proven Strategies appeared first on Relevance.

Consequently, the internal costs associated with social media marketing, marketing automation, email marketing, or any other marketing function are why many companies opt to outsource content marketing for enhanced success.

With nearly 5 billion people online and more than 4.5 billion using social media, it’s no wonder most companies use content marketing to reach their prospective customers. Harnessing the expertise of a marketing agency for outsourced marketing is becoming more of a necessity than a “nice-to-have.”

The internet has empowered today’s consumers to conduct their own research on products and brands they want to patronize. As a result, they’re more discerning in their solutions to their problems. They know what professional content looks like when they see it. A one-shot blog post no longer cuts the mustard. An effective marketing plan has become absolutely essential and outsourcing content creation has become commonplace.

However, outsourcing content writing and content marketing allow companies to hire a writer to create tailored articles directed at specific audiences to ensure a higher likelihood of conversions.

But marketing agencies are really expensive, right? Well, not necessarily. Outsourcing marketing can actually save your company money even as it leads to an increase in sales. Keep reading to learn why, when, and how small businesses, SaaS companies, and companies of all sizes should outsource content development and content marketing to make the most of this impactful digital strategy.

Key Takeaways

• Outsourcing content marketing allows you to benefit from the content creation expertise of a third-party marketing firm while freeing you up to focus on other aspects of your business.
• From saving you money to increasing productivity, there are many benefits to outsourcing your content marketing to an agency or other content partner to create quality content.
• When you’re ready to outsource your content marketing, you can do so by following five simple steps that will help to ensure overall outsource marketing success.

What Does it Mean to Outsource Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves writing and publishing relevant, useful, and engaging content that resonates with an audience’s needs. Businesses employ a content writer or content writing services to create blog content, attract a certain following, generate interest in a brand and its products, and convince people to convert to customers.

However, to create meaningful content, companies must know who their audience is, what their needs are, and how those people prefer to receive information. Delivering the right message to the right people at the right time is key to content marketing success. It represents the ultimate marketing goal for any marketing department.

Content outsourcing can include any of the following online marketing staples:

• email campaigns;
• social media posts;
• blog articles;
• website content;
• infographics; and
• white papers.

While many companies choose to write their content, most businesses prefer to outsource their content marketing to content agencies and freelancers. They must trust an external freelance writer, marketer, or content marketing agency to create material for their brand.

This company, writer, freelancer, or another marketing team will learn about your business. Any digital marketing agency worth its salt will seek to gain an understanding of your goals.

The marketing professional will then write content that resonates with your audience and helps drive marketing strategy success. Additionally, by outsourcing content marketing to an agency, companies can benefit from the expertise of a third-party team. Outsourcing marketing frees you up to focus on other aspects of your business.

The video linked directly below provides further detail about how to go about outsourcing your content marketing.

4 Reasons to Outsource Content Marketing

Size, budget, and marketing needs determine whether outsourcing your content marketing is right for your business.

It’s important for any business owner to identify particular challenges that third-party agency writers can solve. Here are four reasons to outsource content marketing and how to recognize when it’s time to consider making the move to an external marketing expert, agency, or another marketing firm for outsourced content.

1. Save money.

Growing a business requires significant expenses. That’s why 70% of companies outsource tasks to reduce overall costs. By delegating your content marketing to a third-party company, you save the cost of hiring a full-time employee to write your blog post. Through outsourced marketing, you can focus more attention on your sales team. Content outsourcing and marketing also eliminates visible and hidden onboarding costs that average $4,425 per employee.

If you don’t have the resources to hire a full-time staff member, it’s time to consider outsourcing your content marketing to an agency or other external marketing department. Step one, then, is to compare the cost of hiring a full-time employee against that of engaging with an outsource content writing team. Outsourcing digital marketing is not something you ought to do on a whim.

2. Save time.

Maybe you have several terrific ideas for effective content, but you simply don’t have the time to put everything into action. Perhaps writing isn’t in your wheelhouse or you don’t want to add marketing responsibilities to your work week. This is just one example of where outsourced marketing can represent a solid investment.

Hiring an outside writer or agency to take over your digital marketing services reduces your workload and frees up your time to focus on other job responsibilities. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or having trouble getting everything done, you may need to outsource your content marketing.

3. Gain access to more talent.

If you don’t have enough people in your marketing department to write your content, or you simply don’t have a qualified writer to effectively communicate your ideas to your audience, outsourcing to an agency may be a viable option. Outsourcing content creation gives you access to a wider agency talent pool with various skills, training, expertise, and experience. Oftentimes marketing dollars can even be reallocated to outsourced sales, further improving your bottom line.

Choosing an agency with the necessary background to write meaningful and relevant content for your specific audience cuts down on project completion time. It allows your outsourced marketing team to publish expert content that is effective and efficient.

4. Increase productivity.

When your marketing department must multi-task, their stress levels rise. Distractions actually impair brain function.

Not only does this diminish efficiency, but it also impedes your marketing campaign productivity. When you outsource content writing, you relieve your staff’s workload and allow them to give undivided attention to specific tasks.

Outsourcing to a digital marketing service helps your team complete projects sooner. They can tackle new projects more quickly, boosting overall business productivity. If workers are spread too thin, outsourced content creation is a viable solution. In fact, an outsourced marketing department might positively reshape the way you do business.

Outsource Content Marketing in 5 Steps

You can make the shift to outsourced marketing in five easy steps if you feel content outsourcing is right for you.

Step 1: Identify tasks to outsource.

Assess your content marketing plan and determine what projects you should outsource. Maybe all content writing needs to be delegated to a third-party writer. Or maybe you have in-house experts who could tackle some of your topics. Whether it’s individual assignments, social media posts, or content marketing in general, you must first identify which tasks you want to outsource.

Step 2: Consider ROI.

Identify which areas of your content marketing efforts are costing your business money, time, and resources. This step alone might help you make your marketing outsource evaluation.

You can resource any part of your strategy with low ROI to a professional writer who can quickly and easily complete the task. Make the most of your outsource content writing investment by ensuring your content marketing plans are full of high ROI tasks.

Step 3: Give clear instructions for content creation.

When you assign content creation to a third-party marketing service, it’s imperative that you give clear instructions to your content creator about what you want and what goals you’re trying to achieve with your marketing effort.

If you’re unclear, the writer at that marketing firm may deliver content irrelevant to your audience and must be rewritten. This takes more agency time and may cost more money, negating the benefits of outsourcing to a content writing agency in the first place. Avoid confusion by providing clear expectations to your content agency for outsourcing marketing from the get-go.

Step 4: Supply helpful content writing resources.

An outsourced marketing writer armed with plenty of helpful resources is more likely to succeed at their inbound marketing task, whether that’s blog writing, visual content, or other high quality content.

Prior to beginning content production, supply your agency writing team with any information that would be useful in broadening their knowledge of your company, your audience, or the topic of the assignment. The less an agency writer has to research on their own, the lower the chances of the designated content team delivering erroneous or mistaken information as part of your outsourced marketing package.

Step 5: Track progress.

It’s important to know whether your hired writers are hitting the mark with great content for your audience. This is where marketing technology (such as Google Analytics) can lend a hand as you make an outsourced marketing decision. Marketing agencies will be quick to ask you for these numbers at your first meeting. Don’t attempt to build your marketing plan or brand awareness strategy without them!

Track the progress of your outsourced content with metrics that reveal click-through rates, engagement, and how long people remain on your blog post or web pages to read your content. From these results, you’ll be able to tell whether your readers are finding your content useful, which marketing materials are resonating, and what areas need improvement.

Outsource Your Content Marketing Strategy

Outsourcing your content marketing strategy can be difficult at first. Any outsourced marketing should not be viewed as a cure-all. Marketing agencies will need your advice and partnership to generate quality content. However, once you start the outsourced marketing process, you’ll see content is just another piece of your marketing activity puzzle to solve.

Struggling to start with your own content strategy? Thinking you might benefit from outsourced marketing services? Outsourcing content creation might be a solid first step in the right direction. Maybe you do need to look into a growth marketing agency to help pick up some of your public relations slack. We’re here to help!

Image Credit: Lukas; Pexels. Video Credit: Jason Whaling. (2019, September 23). Stop Working So Hard To Make Content! (How To Outsource Content Creation) [Video]. YouTube.

The post Why, When, and How to Outsource Content Marketing for Small Business appeared first on Relevance.