The Power of Partnership: 7 Benefits of Hiring a B2B SEO Agency

In a room full of marketing managers, ask them about the challenges they’ve faced when building a business case for SEO benefits. You’ll see heads nodding in agreement. Truth is, you know the connection between SEO and tangible business results but are on the fence about persuading leadership.

Take, for example, the potential to attract up to 300 new customers per month from 1,800 leads generated by 470,000 website visits — all by using the right SEO strategies. You can also lead results like this with a B2B SEO agency that understands the ins and outs of SEO. 

If that’s you, choosing the right SEO agency can help your B2B company:

• Benefit from a full SEO team, each with different skill sets
• Hit KPIs like CAC and CAC:LTV ratio instead of just vanity metrics
• Save time and money and put it into other strategic growth areas
• Increase or decrease investment based on your budget and needs
• Spot long-term and short-term growth opportunities for the business
• Improve brand awareness and , brand sentiment while tackling dynamic search engine algorithms and improving search engine rankings

With the truth on the table, it’s time to turn potential clients into paying customers and increase revenue with B2B SEO. Let’s go! 

What does it take to generate revenue from B2B SEO?

A holistic B2B SEO strategy is key to beating the competition and reaching revenue goals—the keyword here being holistic. You can’t ignore your ideal customer persona or technical SEO issues and solely rely on keyword research and content creation and expect to win. You need a mix of specialist knowledge across different areas to meet increasing ARR goals with B2B SEO efforts. Let’s take a look at the lot: 

• Keyword research involves finding valuable search queries your target audience uses while researching or buying products and services on search engines. 
• Content creation and consistent optimization is the process of crafting and periodically refining content using those keywords and trend updates for ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Technical SEO optimization improves your website’s behind-the-scenes elements, such as Javascript, XML sitemaps, redirects, structured data, Hreflang, and canonical tags. It makes your web pages load faster and helps search engines crawl, index, and render them correctly. This one is one that so many businesses overlook. 
• Internal link optimization tactics like reducing click-depth and minimizing link bloat can improve organic traffic by up to 200%. 
• Collaboration with marketers and developers ensures a cohesive strategy across the board, and that you’re all working towards a better-performing site. 
• SEO performance monitoring and analysis can be a full-time job, especially when you want to find what’s working and what needs improvement amidst fluctuating search engine rankings. 
• Industry-specific expertise isn’t optional when it comes to creating content inline with what Google ranks: E-E-A-T.
• Knowledge of search engine algorithm updates is also crucial for not derailing your website with Google’s ever-changing algorithm updates and protecting search engine rankings. 
• Growth analysis and strategy initiatives like discovering low-hanging fruits, quick wins, and aiming for the right big bets are crucial for improving SEO ROI.
• Off-page SEO efforts often work alongside PR. This helps your website and key pages win quality backlinks, which in turn can help them rank higher and generate more business. It can also help to shape brand perception and generate demand using third party websites.

On top of everything, SEO success also demands you to know the ins and outs of your customer journey, competitor research, ROI modeling, growth experiments, and optimizing conversion rates. Taking a growth marketing approach to SEO allows you to figure out how to drive actual business revenue through your organic efforts by strategising, hypothesizing, measuring, analyzing, and iterating. 

Building an in-house team of experts in all these areas is challenging to say the least—especially in today’s economic winter. Budget restrictions, long hiring lead times,  training, and onboarding — they all add to your struggle of even entering the complex world of SEO, yet alone thriving in it at pace. Hiring freelancers can be tough, too, especially if you end up with ones who lack experience, resources, and industry knowledge. 

That’s precisely why you need a B2B SEO agency with specialized expertise. Think we’re stopping there? Oh no, keep reading, friend. 

7 Reasons to consider partnering with a B2B SEO agency

Now that you know what revenue-generating ideas you can try, let’s see what it means to team up with a B2B SEO agency. Keep reading to see what B2B SEO agencies can offer in terms of expertise, insights, and more.

1. Agencies provide specialized expertise and communication across the board

High-quality content and consistent publishing won’t bring you ROI without a solid SEO strategy. At the same time, a decent strategy on its own isn’t going anywhere fast. You need the full package. 

B2B SEO agencies have got you covered from all angles. Agency experts have insider knowledge and expertise to help you with different areas, such as link building, growth strategy, technical optimization, and content production. It’s a good idea to figure out the internal resources you’re lacking and knowledge gaps that need filling, and then align those with an agency that has them—some specialize in strategy, others in content creation, while others have got it all. And most agencies have niche markets that they serve. 

Skale, for example, is a great agency choice for those in the B2B SaaS industry. The experts at Skale bring a mix of SEO skills to the table: like content, growth, on-page, off-page, and technical search engine optimization—which it’s near impossible for one in-house SEO to possess. Plus, our team stays up-to-date with new tech, Google updates, and more. 

With Skale, you’ll essentially have five+ skill sets that you can tap into around the clock. The best of which are able to condense years worth of data points into a simple sentence and accurately communicate wins, losses, and actionable next steps for your business. 

2. Agency teams save your marketing team time and resources

You may not have time to implement something strategic like SEO, and that’s okay. Yet, you know you can’t ignore it, especially when 8.5 billion buyers use search engines like Google to search for their solutions.

Hiring a B2B SEO company makes implementing a responsive SEO strategy easier, smoother, and rapid – something that can take much longer with limited in-house team members. It can take huge amounts of time and costs to train and onboard in-house SEO specialists in a way that adds value to the business—which you likely won’t see an ROI from for five+ months.

Eric Doty, Content Lead at Dock, agrees, “If I were making the case to leadership for hiring an SEO agency, the biggest case in my favor would be the internal time savings. Most marketing teams have the capabilities to do SEO in-house (e.g. write content, optimize the website, do backlink outreach), but it’s normally not the best use of company time—especially for more strategy-focused employees.”

Agencies stick to tight deadlines, enabling you to engage audiences with consistent content delivery and optimizations. Eric continues, “If I needed to write content for 50+ landing pages for our website, that would pull my attention away from more strategic projects for months.”

Hiring a top B2B marketing agency gives you instant access to experts who know what’ll help your business, because they’ve done it before. They have dedicated teams to help you spot quick wins, implement long-term tactics, and provide ongoing support to your in-house team to fill in any knowledge gaps—minus the hefty training.

3. B2B SEO agencies are cost-effective and provide better ROI

Despite its reputation as an expensive channel, SEO delivers the highest content marketing ROI. Don’t take our word for it; look at the numbers yourself:

• 88% of marketers already investing in SEO allocated the same or more budget in 2023.
• Organic search accounts for 53% of trackable web traffic, while paid ads contribute only 27%. 
• Bottom-of-funnel keywords have a conversion rate of up to 8.43%, which is significantly higher than the average conversion rate of 3.75% from Google Ads.
• SEO is a compounding channel that offers more sustainable ROI then PPC – unlike paid ads, SEO can generate exponential returns when done correctly

Do these all convince you to say ‘yes’ to SEO, but you’re not sure about the cost? Read on.

Maintaining an in-house team requires paying for software, salaries, and other HR-related expenses: benefits, and sick leave, it doesn’t come cheap. According to Glassdoor, the average salary of a US-based SEO specialist goes up to $69,648 per year, with additional cash compensation of up to $6,140. Plus, subscribing to keyword research tools like Ahrefs or Semrush can hit you with a $500 monthly bill. It soon begins to add up.

Hiring a B2B SEO service provider means you don’t have to consider all these costs. Ultimately, you’ll spend less than what you’re spending on PPC and social ads but see greater SEO ROI and faster—two things any investor will love hearing. After you make an initial investment, an agency can help you drive more sales, decrease customer acquisition costs, and boost your CAC:LTV ratio.

4. Agencies can provide insights from other brands

Possibly one of the biggest benefits to hiring an SEO company is getting first-hand insights from pros who work with different brands and know what it takes to tackle specific situations. These experts monitor industry news, forums, and competitors to learn the latest in the business, and are most likely well-practiced in your industry. 

At Skale, we’ve worked with over 70 SaaS brands, each with unique challenges. This experience enables us to employ tried and tested recommendations and tactics, leverage industry insights, and so much more. We’ve got business cases in hand for every idea we generate—and these business cases can often help quell those off-the-bat ideas your manager thought up in the shower this morning, or secure buy-in for ambitious projects.

The data-driven insights we get from working with different companies help us implement holistic search engine optimization strategies that actually work. Check out these case studies if you need more proof in your pudding.

5. B2B SEO agencies offer flexibility in budget and planning

Going for cheap SEO can really hurt your business. Subscribe for a commodity like $99/month plan for SEO services, and you’ll soon realize your mistake. Plus, if Google penalizes you for using black hat techniques, your website could be completely wiped out. 

If you’re tight on budget for hiring an SEO agency, you must know that most agencies are happy to work with a flexible budget. 

For example, when new opportunities show up, you can invest more to generate more revenue. Whereas, if budgets need to be pulled back, you can also reduce or pause online marketing spending during an economic downturn and restart when you’re ready. With an SEO Agency, you’re met with that much more flexibility that’s near impossible with trying to build an in-house team. 

6. SEO agencies can offer both long-term and short-term growth

Any company investing in online marketing will experience both peaks and plateaus. SEO is a discipline that delivers short-term and long-term wins with the right expertise and consistency. Teams tend to take a foot off the gas when a strategy doesn’t work, whereas an agency keeps things in motion.

Hiring an agency means you invest in pursuing an SEO strategy that gets you results. For example, an SEO agency can help you stay updated on industry changes, analyze SEO metrics, and keep your website in great shape.

Working with an SEO company means compounding SEO efforts at every step in the customer journey until you see growth. They also make it easier to pivot within a strategy and create a flexible strategy responsive to business conditions, changing KPIs, and fluctuating markets.

7. B2B SEO agencies can boost brand awareness and visibility on SERPs

Did you know 46% of buyers begin with product searches on Google? You can’t turn a blind eye to these potential buyers. 

Working with a professional agency helps you realize these brand awareness opportunities, target high-value keywords, and beat niche competitors. Check out this case study to see how Skale helped Moonpay 256x its non-branded organic traffic and generate 7,000+ non-brand organic clicks per month. 

The best part of working with us is that we go beyond SEO to help you create a coordinated content strategy that supplements traditional and outbound marketing strategies with SEO content writing, on-page SEO, technical SEO, and link building. As a result, you improve your business’s online presence with better search engine rankings, online visibility, and brand sentiment. Sure, someone may not be a perfect-fit customer for you right now, but when their time comes, your brand will be top of the list.  

What’s it like working with a B2B SEO agency?

Any business-to-business SEO company helps you with effective marketing strategies and establishes a solid process to keep you in the loop and all that work flowing. At Skale, we believe in making SEO your #1 revenue-driving channel with:

• A dedicated Slack channel for async communication
• Consultancy from seasoned digital marketing professionals
• Regular meetings and updates on SEO strategy and performance
• SEO campaign performance analysis with respect to business objectives
• Consistent deliverables like new content briefs, technical audits, optimizations, and more
• Focus on SQLs, demos, and sign-ups instead of just vanity metrics like search rankings and traffic 
• Long-term strategy & 3-month sprint roadmaps with data-based KPI modeling for business growth 
• A team of full-funnel SEO specialists, including technical specialist, growth strategist, and content specialist

Like what you see? Here’s what our clients have to say. 

“In three months, we could double signups and triple visitors from non-branded SEO. We also increased the visit-to-signup conversion rates by up to 195% on some website sections. We scored high for competitive keywords such as “meeting minutes,” which has a global search volume of 46k, and we achieved position number four worldwide in less than 3 months. As a result, Slite validated SEO as a key channel for their unicorn growth path and is now investing heavily in it.“ — Arianna Lupi, previous SEO specialist @ Skale

Take Rezi, for instance. They were struggling with limited SEO resources, no guidance, and a low number of backlinks. Skale’s SEO experts helped them with a thorough technical audit, optimizing on-page content, and user journey CTAs. The website got twice as many signups from non-branded search and revenue went up by 176% in four months.

How to choose the right B2B SEO agency for your business

Now that you know the perks of hiring a B2B SEO agency, let’s talk about what to consider when choosing one for your business. 

• Budget: How much money can you spend on SEO and for how long? Businesses typically start seeing results in 2-6 months, depending on their SEO strategy. Make sure you’ve got the budget to commit to this timeframe. 
• Specialization: Are you choosing the agency that suits your niche the best? Take Skale, for example. We’re a great option for B2B SaaS companies but not for e-commerce—yet! 
• Experience: Has the SEO agency worked with other players in your industry? Otherwise, it may take them a while to grasp the basics and create content that resonates.  
• Online presence and recommendations: Do marketers recommend this agency? Does it have a solid online presence? Skale, for example, has testimonials from companies like Flodesk, Holded, Slite, and more. 
• Basic deliverables: What deliverables do you need from the agency? While nothing is set in stone, you should ask for assistance with keyword research, technical SEO audits, content briefs, implementation, and reporting. 

While you can save money with the DIY route, outsourcing SEO is often more efficient. Hiring a B2B SEO agency enables you to use expert knowledge to get faster results at a much lower investment risk. Whether you want to get more leads,  increase brand awareness, drive more traffic to your site, or increase sales, agencies can build you the ultimate strategy to get there. 

Ready to partner with Skale and boost MRR from SEO? Schedule a call today to chat with the team.