TL;DR: Outsource SEO when you need specialist skills you can’t justify hiring for, and you have one internal owner who can make decisions. Hand off technical SEO, content strategy, link building, digital PR, AI-search tracking and reporting. Keep your product knowledge, final approval of claims and ownership of every account. Agencies average about $3,209 a month across all industries. Our ongoing engagements run $3,500–$12,000 a month, with advisory from $1,000. Start with a three-month term, never a 12-month lock-in, and make sure the partner is building your capability rather than your dependence.
Most companies that come to us to outsource SEO have already tried something else first.
Sometimes they hired an in-house SEO specialist who knew keyword research and on-page changes but couldn’t pull technical SEO, content, commercial pages, internal linking and authority into one programme. Sometimes SEO sat with an overloaded marketing generalist and kept getting pushed aside by product launches, paid campaigns and sales requests. And often they’d paid a cheap freelancer or offshore agency that delivered the promised number of articles: thin, generic pages aimed at the wrong intent, plus a few backlinks that added risk rather than authority.
I’m Usman Tauqir, Founder and CEO at Top Search Agency. We’re the outsourced SEO team for B2B SaaS and AI companies. This guide is for brands deciding whether and how to outsource SEO, not for agencies looking for white-label suppliers. It covers what to hand off and what to keep, which outsourcing model fits your stage, what it really costs, what the contract must say, how to vet a partner, and what the first 90 days should look like.
Should you outsource SEO?
Outsource SEO when the work needs skills, tools or capacity you can’t justify hiring for, and you have someone in-house who can own the relationship. Don’t outsource it to avoid thinking about it.
Outsourcing is usually the right call when:
- You need several specialisms at once. SEO now spans technical work, content, commercial pages, digital PR, analytics and AI search. No single hire covers all of it.
- You don’t yet have enough work for a full-time senior hire, but you need senior judgement.
- Speed matters. A partner brings tools, process and relationships on day one. Recruiting and ramping a team takes months.
- You need an outside diagnosis. In-house teams get close to the product and stop seeing what’s holding organic growth back.
It’s usually the wrong call when:
- Nobody in-house can own it. Without one internal owner with authority, recommendations don’t get implemented.
- You haven’t decided what you want from search, or your positioning is still unclear.
- SEO is already your largest, most proven channel, and you’re ready to build it as a permanent internal function. More on that below.
What we usually find when a company first outsources SEO
When we review a site for a new client, the same problems show up again and again:
- No strategy or prioritised roadmap. Work was happening, but nobody had decided what mattered most.
- Thin or AI-generated pages written to a volume target rather than a buyer’s question.
- Orphaned articles with weak internal linking.
- No path from content to a product page, demo, trial or contact form.
- A weak backlink profile, sometimes with links of questionable quality from a previous provider.
A pattern we see often: a B2B SaaS or AI company has relied on a low-cost content provider and tried managing SEO through an internal hire. The site has plenty of content, but nothing connects technical SEO, content, commercial pages, internal links and conversions. The problem is rarely “we need more content.” So we don’t open with another batch of blog posts. We start with a technical audit, a Search Console and keyword-gap review, and a decision on which existing pages to rewrite, consolidate or link better. That becomes a prioritised 90-day roadmap.
What to hand off and what to keep in-house
Outsourcing SEO doesn’t mean outsourcing ownership. The client owns the product truth; the agency owns the SEO process.
Always keep in-house
- Product knowledge and technical accuracy. An outside team can research your market. It can’t be the final authority on what your product does.
- Final approval of claims. Product, customer, pricing, legal and performance claims are yours to sign off.
- One internal owner. A single person who coordinates the partner and stops decisions getting stuck between departments.
- Ownership of accounts and assets. Covered in detail below, because it’s where outsourcing most often hurts.
Hand off
These are the areas where specialist focus and a consistent process beat what most in-house teams can manage alongside everything else:
- Technical SEO audits and prioritisation
- Search Console analysis and opportunity identification
- Content strategy, topic mapping and content optimisation
- Internal-linking and site-architecture recommendations
- On-page SEO
- Link building, digital PR and authority-building. See our guide to SaaS link building services for what to buy and avoid.
- AI visibility tracking, reporting and performance analysis. Our comparison of the best AI SEO tools shows what’s involved if you’d rather run it in-house.
An outside team can see patterns across the site more clearly and connect technical work, content, links and commercial goals. That’s hard to do when SEO is one responsibility among many.
What we need from you
On a typical engagement we work with someone in product marketing and a product manager or technical subject-matter expert. We keep it to roughly one 30- to 60-minute call a month. That time goes on product details, positioning changes, technical questions, priorities and the first-hand context that generic research can’t supply.
Technical fixes are usually shared. We diagnose and write the specification, and your developers ship the change. Our guide to technical SEO services for SaaS explains how that handoff should work.
Where outsourced SEO breaks down
In my experience, outsourced SEO rarely fails on strategy. It fails on implementation and approvals. The usual bottlenecks are:
- Engineering tickets that sit for weeks
- Nobody available to approve product or technical claims
- Too many stakeholders and no clear decision-maker
- Content approvals that take several weeks
SEO recommendations only work once they’re live. No partner can make up for a client that can’t implement changes or make timely decisions.
Which SEO outsourcing model fits your stage?
There are four ways to outsource SEO: a freelancer, a consultant, an agency, or an offshore or white-label team. The right one depends on how complex your SEO problem is and how much you can execute yourself, not on your headcount or the cheapest monthly price.
| Model | What you get | Best for | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | One person, usually a single specialism | One clear priority on a fairly simple site, with someone in-house to direct and approve | Outgrown as soon as several workstreams need to run together |
| Consultant / advisory | Senior strategy and direction; your team executes | Founders or teams with execution capacity but no SEO direction | Advice that never gets implemented |
| Full agency | A team covering strategy and delivery | Sites needing technical, content, authority and conversion work at once, or several products, audiences or markets | Overkill for one narrow task or unclear positioning |
| Offshore / white-label | Lower-cost delivery, sometimes resold by your agency | Clearly defined, quality-controlled work | Writers who don’t understand the product; hidden subcontracting |
If you’re weighing a consultant against an agency, our guide to SEO consulting services covers that decision in detail.
A freelancer is the right choice when you have one clear SEO priority, such as a defined content project, on-page fixes or one technical issue, and someone in-house to give direction.
A consultant or advisory model suits a founder who needs strategic direction but can execute through their own writers, developers or marketers. It’s the wrong choice when nobody can implement the recommendations. A strategy document can’t improve rankings by itself.
A full agency makes sense when SEO needs technical work, content, authority-building and conversion improvements at the same time, or when organic search is already a meaningful growth channel. It’s excessive if you have one narrow task, unclear positioning, or nobody to give access, feedback and approvals.
The most common mismatch we see is a growing SaaS company still using a freelancer when it needs a coordinated team. Usually the freelancer isn’t the problem. The SEO problem has simply outgrown a one-person model.
Offshore and white-label SEO: location isn’t the problem
Offshore SEO can work, but only when expertise, accountability and quality control are clear. Location by itself isn’t the issue. A team anywhere can do excellent work if it understands your market, audience, product and commercial context. A local provider can still fail if it relies on templates, thin research and volume.
Offshore and white-label work usually goes wrong when the writers don’t understand the product or audience, when the process is built for volume rather than usefulness, or when communication and approvals are slow. A low price isn’t a saving if your team spends hours correcting inaccurate content.
The problem becomes serious when subcontracting is hidden, because you lose sight of quality and risk. Link building is the usual culprit. Google’s spam policies class buying links for ranking purposes as link spam, and cheap white-label link packages are a common source of exactly that. The numbers are stark: a 2026 analysis of 257,267 sites selling guest posts rated 96.2% of them low quality, one of the findings in our link building statistics.
Ask any provider: who is doing the work, who is accountable for quality, how will they learn our product, and who reviews it? And ask directly which parts of your work will be done by people outside their company. A good partner answers without hesitation.
How much does it cost to outsource SEO?
Outsourced SEO costs about $1,349 a month for a freelancer, $3,209 for an agency and $3,250 for a consultant on average, according to Ahrefs’ SEO pricing survey. Those averages cover all industries and company sizes. Specialist B2B and SaaS programmes cost more.
| Model | Typical monthly cost | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | About $1,349 on average | Defined tasks or a single specialism |
| Consultant / advisory | About $3,250 on average; published advisory retainers from $1,000 to $3,000 | Strategy, prioritisation, reviews; you execute |
| Agency (general) | About $3,209 on average | Strategy plus some delivery |
| Specialist B2B / SaaS agency | Published ranges of $3,000–$12,500 | Full programme: technical, content, authority, AI search, reporting |
| Enterprise | Published plans from $11,500 | Multi-market, large-site programmes |
What we charge
To be transparent about our own pricing:
- Advisory: $1,000 a month. For founders or internal teams who can execute but want ongoing direction, prioritisation, analysis, keyword and content-gap research, and expert review.
- Ongoing SEO: $3,500–$12,000 a month. At the lower end, a focused engagement: strategy, research, limited content or page optimisation, internal-linking recommendations, monthly reporting and a strategy call. At the higher end: several products, audiences, markets or languages, technically complex content, technical implementation with developer coordination, commercial, comparison, alternative and integration pages, link building and digital PR, AI-search prompt tracking and AI-referral measurement, and conversion recommendations.
The price rises because the work involves more pages, markets, specialists, implementation dependencies and measurement, not because someone is writing more words. AI-search work sits inside the same range. It isn’t a separate add-on with its own pricing model.
Compare scope, not price
At the cheap end, you’re often paying for hours or volume. That’s poor value when the result is thin content, weak links, generic strategy and rework. Outsourced SEO services at a few hundred dollars a month almost always mean automated reports, templated content or bought links.
Compare total cost, too. An in-house hire costs salary plus benefits, tools, management time and months of recruiting and ramp-up, and still covers only one or two specialisms.
Before comparing quotes, check that each one states:
- The strategy and audit scope
- The number and type of pages included
- Technical work, and who implements it
- The expert input required from your team
- Link-building, digital PR and authority work
- AI-search monitoring: prompts, platforms and reporting
- Reporting and meeting frequency
- Timeline and milestones
- What you must provide
- What’s explicitly excluded
If a provider can’t explain those points, comparing monthly prices won’t produce a meaningful decision.
For a full breakdown of what each budget buys and how to judge a quote, see our guide to SEO pricing.
How to protect yourself: what you must own
Give partners access, never ownership. The most damaging outsourcing stories aren’t about poor results. They’re about companies that lost control of their own domain, analytics history or content when a relationship ended.
- Domain and hosting. Registered and billed in your company’s name, not the agency’s.
- Website and CMS. You hold the admin account; partners get user roles you can remove.
- Search Console. You should be the verified owner. Google’s documentation on managing owners, users and permissions explains that owners have full control and can add or remove users. Add your partner as a user.
- Analytics and tag management. Your account, with partner access.
- Content and assets. The contract should state that you own everything produced for you.
- Links and outreach log. A full list of placements and how each was earned, so you can assess risk later.
- Reports and data. Keyword sets, AI prompt sets and dashboards you can export.
We never create or hold important client accounts in our own name. Your Search Console, GA4, CMS and analytics should be yours from day one. A provider should never make you dependent on an account you can’t control.
The test: could you switch partners in 30 days without losing access, data or content? If not, fix the gaps before you sign.
What an SEO outsourcing contract should cover
The contract is where ownership, scope and exit become enforceable. A proposal describes intentions; the contract is what you can rely on. Check for these points before you sign. (This is practical guidance, not legal advice. Have your own counsel review any agreement.)
| Clause | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Scope and deliverables | Named outputs each month, plus what’s explicitly excluded |
| Who does the work | Named roles, and disclosure of any subcontractors |
| Ownership | You own all content, links, reports, data and accounts created for you |
| Client responsibilities | Access, expert availability, approval times and one point of contact |
| Tactics | A commitment to follow Google’s guidelines, with paid links and automated content excluded unless you agree in writing |
| Reporting | What’s reported, how often, and which business measures are included |
| Term and notice | Initial term, renewal terms and notice period |
| Handover | The partner’s duty to return access, files and logs when the contract ends |
| Confidentiality | How your data, customer information and unreleased plans are protected |
How our contracts work
For full SEO engagements we recommend a three-month starting period, then month to month until either side cancels. That’s enough time to set the strategy, finish the audit and roadmap, ship priority work and see early signals. The advisory option runs month to month.
You own everything we create: content, on-page recommendations, backlinks and PR placements, and reports. In return, we ask for Search Console and analytics access, CMS or developer access where implementation is in scope, accurate product information, access to the right experts, timely approvals, and one named point of contact.
What we commit to is the agreed scope: the roadmap, the content and page work, technical recommendations or implementation, internal linking and authority-building.
What we deliberately don’t guarantee: specific rankings, a fixed amount of traffic, a set number of leads, trials or demos, revenue or pipeline, or visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google’s AI results. Those depend on competition, algorithm and model changes, implementation, approvals and market demand. A provider that guarantees them is promising control it doesn’t have.
The biggest contract red flag I see is a 12-month lock-in with no reasonable exit clause, especially when the work, deliverables and ownership aren’t clearly defined.
How to vet an SEO outsourcing partner
Before you outsource SEO services to anyone, vet for evidence, transparency and fit. Google’s guide to hiring an SEO recommends asking for examples of previous work, checking references, and being wary of anyone who guarantees a first-place ranking. If I were hiring an SEO provider myself, these are the four questions I’d ask.
1. “Can you show me a page or programme that contributed to leads, demos, trials or pipeline, not just rankings?”
A good answer includes the starting point, the work, the timeframe, the measurement source and the attribution limits. A weak answer is a traffic graph with no explanation of whether the traffic mattered.
2. “What would you do if our site doesn’t need more content?”
A good provider will say more content isn’t always the answer. They might suggest improving existing pages, fixing technical issues, consolidating overlapping articles, strengthening internal links or building commercial pages. A provider that always recommends another batch of blog posts may be serving its production model, not your growth.
3. “Which parts will you own, and which will you need us to implement?”
A good answer separates agency work from client dependencies. A vague one means you’ll discover the dependencies after you’ve signed.
4. “What do you report, and which outcomes do you refuse to guarantee?”
A credible provider reports more than rankings: impressions, clicks, qualified traffic, commercial-query visibility, and leads, demos, trials and pipeline where tracking allows. They should also explain clearly what they can’t guarantee and why.
Also ask who exactly will do the work, which parts happen outside their company, how they build links, and how they use AI and review its output.
The test I’d trust most
Pay for an audit that includes a sample of the real deliverable, and review pages the provider has actually written. A polished sales deck tells you very little. An audit shows how they think, what they prioritise and whether they understand your business. Their existing pages show whether they match search intent, explain things accurately, add original value and lead somewhere commercial.
Red flags
- Guaranteed rankings, traffic, leads or AI visibility
- A 12-month lock-in with no reasonable exit
- Private blog networks or undisclosed link networks
- “Guest post packages” sold by volume, with no word on relevance or editorial quality
- A senior person on the sales call and an unnamed junior team afterwards
- Reports that stop at rankings and traffic
- Requests to own your accounts
- No questions about your product
Questions that tell me a prospect has been burned
Some questions tell me straight away that a prospect has had a bad experience:
- “Will you actually write the content, or will it be outsourced again?” They’ve had generic or inaccurate work from a hidden subcontractor.
- “Who will work on our account after the strategy call?” They’ve seen the senior seller disappear and a junior team take over.
- “How quickly will we see results?” Someone promised too much, or never explained how progress is measured.
The right answer isn’t another promise. A good provider should be comfortable saying: “You may not need more content yet.” “We can’t guarantee a ranking or a number of leads.” “The first 90 days are for building the foundation and testing priorities.” That honesty is a positive signal, not a lack of confidence.
For a wider checklist of what a programme should contain, see our guide to what great B2B SEO services include, and for SaaS-specific selection, how to choose a SaaS SEO agency that drives pipeline.
How to make outsourced SEO work: the first 90 days
Outsourced SEO succeeds or fails on how the relationship is run, not just on who you hire. This is how our first 90 days actually work.
Weeks 1–2: access and kickoff. We request Search Console, analytics and CMS access, and review existing content calendars, keyword research and reports from previous agencies or internal teams. We speak with the founder, the marketing or growth lead and product or technical experts. Where possible, we also ask for sales or customer-success insight, because that’s where buyer language, objections and alternatives show up. Our kickoff questions always include:
- Who is the ideal customer?
- Which products, markets or use cases matter most?
- Which competitors or alternatives do buyers consider?
- What’s the commercial priority: leads, demos, trials, revenue or category awareness?
- What has already been tried?
- What must not be changed or published without approval?
- What technical or content resources can you provide?
Month 1: the roadmap. The first tangible deliverable combines a technical SEO audit, a Search Console and analytics review, keyword, content-gap and competitor analysis, a content strategy and topic map, internal-linking and architecture recommendations, and a prioritised 90-day roadmap. The roadmap doesn’t list every possible SEO task. It says what to fix, what to improve, what to create, and what you need to implement or approve.
Months 2–3: shipping. We start on the highest-priority work. That means fixing crawl, indexing and architecture problems, refreshing pages that already earn impressions but underperform, creating commercial, comparison, alternative and use-case pages, publishing supporting content, improving internal links and metadata, and building relevant links. We order the work by business impact, speed, existing impressions, commercial relevance, technical dependencies and how soon expert input is available. Often the fastest win is an existing page that already has visibility, not a new one.
Day 90: the review. We review how much of the roadmap is done, technical fixes shipped, pages published or refreshed, changes in impressions and clicks, rankings for priority and commercial queries, and any leads, demos, trials or assisted conversions. It’s on track when impressions and rankings are rising, commercial pages are gaining visibility, and early commercial signals start to appear.
Don’t judge early progress on total traffic alone. We’ve seen improved commercial pages produce leads, demos and trials within the first 90 days, and one qualified enquiry from the right page can be worth more than thousands of visits that never convert.
Four habits make the difference:
- One owner. A single named person inside your company who can make decisions and unblock work.
- A fixed rhythm. A regular call, a shared task list and agreed response times.
- Expert access. An hour of a subject-matter expert’s time each month is worth more than any tool.
- Honest measures. Agree leading indicators (pages indexed, fixes shipped, links earned, AI citations) as well as lagging ones (leads, pipeline), because results take months.
What fully outsourced SEO can achieve: Markaz
Markaz, a Y Combinator W22 company, grew to around 150,000 monthly organic visits over roughly 30 months, with 444 of its pages cited in AI answers and Top Search Agency as its outsourced SEO team.
The setup. Markaz had a marketing and growth contact in-house but very little dedicated SEO capacity. We owned the overall strategy, Search Console and keyword analysis, content-gap research, content strategy and production, technical recommendations and developer coordination, internal linking and site architecture, digital PR and link building, and commercial and product-led pages. We worked mainly with the founder and a marketing contact, with a monthly strategy call. Nobody on their side had to manage every SEO decision or write content.
Why it worked. The founder and subject-matter experts answered questions quickly, gave accurate product information and trusted us to own the SEO strategy. So work moved from research to content, technical fixes, internal links and authority without getting stuck in long approval loops.
It also shows that outsourcing SEO isn’t the same as buying a fixed number of blog posts. The growth came from running content, technical SEO, commercial pages, internal linking, developer coordination and authority-building as one connected programme. You can read the full Markaz case study.
When not to outsource SEO, or when to bring it in-house
Bring SEO in-house when you want it to become a permanent internal capability, and you can afford to hire, manage and keep an experienced SEO lead with the writers, developers and tools to support them. One specialist on their own is rarely enough.
Outsourcing is usually better when you need specialist expertise but don’t have enough work for a full-time senior hire, when technical, content, authority and conversion work all need to happen at once, or when you need an outside diagnosis.
The cost comparison isn’t a salary against a retainer. A retainer can give you several specialists for less than building the equivalent team, such as technical SEO, content strategy, writers and editors, digital PR, analytics and AI-search expertise. But an in-house lead can be better long-term value once SEO is a core, permanent growth function, because they live inside your product, organisation and market every day.
The hybrid model
A hybrid often works well: you own content and product expertise, and the agency handles technical and authority work. You provide product context, customer insight and final approval. The agency takes technical SEO, prioritisation, digital PR, link building and specialist strategy. It only works when responsibilities are explicit: who owns production, accuracy, publishing, approvals, development and reporting, and who the single internal owner is.
Handing SEO back
We’ve helped clients make a planned move towards bringing SEO in-house. A responsible handover shouldn’t leave the internal team starting from zero. It should include:
- The current strategy and priorities
- Technical audits and unresolved issues
- The content inventory and content map
- Keyword and Search Console opportunity data
- Internal-linking and architecture plans
- Reporting templates and dashboards
- Active authority-building work
- Account access and documentation
- Training for the internal owner
Bringing SEO in-house isn’t a failure of outsourcing. It means the engagement helped establish the channel and built the capability to run more of it internally.
“Outsourcing SEO should build internal capability, not create permanent dependence.”
The real question isn’t “agency or in-house?” It’s “where do we need specialist expertise, and where do we need permanent ownership?” And the answer will change as you grow.
How AI has changed SEO outsourcing in 2026
AI has made parts of SEO faster, but it has made specialist judgement, product knowledge and editorial review more valuable, not less.
Anyone can now generate a polished article in minutes. That doesn’t mean it targets the right intent, understands the product, adds anything original or moves a buyer closer to a decision. The risk is agencies reselling unedited AI output at agency prices, or using AI to churn out generic content with no expertise or accountability behind it.
Be cautious of any provider that mainly talks about how many articles it can produce, how fast, or how cheaply. AI assistance isn’t the problem. Paying for content that no human expert has improved is.
What AI should legitimately make faster: research, content-gap analysis, organising search queries, first outlines, summarising client material, structural suggestions and editing for clarity, plus analysing more data than a person could by hand.
What AI should never do on its own: decide what your product does, invent features or customer results, set your point of view, make unsupported claims or publish without review.
Should AI search be in scope?
AI search and GEO should be part of any 2026 SEO conversation, but you don’t need to buy them as a separate service. They rest on the same foundations: clear product and category pages, useful commercial content, technical access, internal linking, entity clarity, authoritative references and first-hand expertise. If your buyers already compare software in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google’s AI results, dedicated prompt tracking and AI-referral analysis may be worth it. Otherwise, build the SEO foundation first. Whatever the label, ask what will change, how it will be measured and why it matters. Our guide to generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization explains the terms.
SEO outsourcing partners to consider
These providers publish a clear offer for companies outsourcing SEO. Facts come from each provider’s own website. Disclosure: Top Search Agency is one of the providers listed.
| # | Provider | Best for | Model | Pricing signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Omniscient Digital | B2B software wanting a full organic team | Full-service agency | From $10,000/mo |
| 2 | Victorious | Enterprise and technical SEO, migrations | Agency | Not published |
| 3 | Top Search Agency | B2B SaaS & AI companies wanting senior-led SEO and AI search | Agency, with advisory option | $3,500–$12,000/mo; advisory $1,000/mo |
| 4 | Optimist | B2B SaaS teams wanting advisory or full service | Advisory and agency | Advisory from $3,000/mo |
| 5 | WebFX | Companies wanting a large team and proprietary reporting | Large agency | Consulting from $3,000/mo; enterprise from $11,500/mo |
| 6 | Page One Power | Outsourcing link building and digital PR | Specialist agency | Not published |
| 7 | Editorial.Link | Outsourcing links at a fixed price | Per-link specialist | From $375 per link |
1. Omniscient Digital: best for a full organic team
Omniscient Digital runs SEO strategy, GEO, technical and programmatic SEO, link building, digital PR and content for B2B software companies, with full-service engagements from $10,000 a month.
2. Victorious: best for enterprise and technical SEO
Victorious describes itself as innovating in enterprise and technical SEO since 2013, with work spanning complex site migrations to answer engine optimization, and a dedicated route for RFPs.
3. Top Search Agency: best for senior-led SEO and AI search for B2B SaaS
Top Search Agency is an SEO, content and AI-search agency for B2B SaaS and AI companies, led directly by Usman Tauqir (organic search strategy, 13+ years) and Bilal Ahmed Malik (content, 14+ years). The people who plan the work are accountable for delivering it.
- What you can hand off: strategy and roadmap, technical audits and developer coordination, commercial, comparison and alternative pages, content, internal linking, digital PR and links, AI-search tracking, and reporting tied to pipeline.
- What stays with you: product truth, approval of claims, one internal owner, and ownership of every account and asset.
- Pricing: advisory at $1,000 a month; ongoing SEO at $3,500–$12,000 a month; three months, then month to month.
- Proof: Y Combinator–backed Markaz grew to around 150,000 monthly organic visits with Top Search Agency as its outsourced SEO team; a YC-backed AI startup grew from zero to 15K monthly organic visits in 18 months.
- Watch-out: a compact senior team, so not the fit if you need a large dedicated pod.
4. Optimist: best for flexible advisory or full service
Optimist works with B2B SaaS and tech companies on SEO and AI search, offering an Advisory model from $3,000 a month on a month-to-month retainer, alongside fuller engagements.
5. WebFX: best for scale and reporting technology
WebFX is a large agency with its own reporting platform. It lists custom SEO plans from $3,000 a month and enterprise SEO plans from $11,500 a month.
6. Page One Power: best for outsourcing link building
Page One Power focuses on custom link building, digital PR and linkable assets, with a named account manager and a “no spam, no shortcuts” position.
7. Editorial.Link: best for fixed-price links
Editorial.Link publishes per-link pricing from $375, lets clients approve prospects before outreach, and says it avoids sites that sell links.
Outsourcing at enterprise scale? Compare enterprise SEO agencies. For AI search specifically, see the best AI SEO agencies.
Thinking of outsourcing to us? How we work walks through the process step by step, and our pricing page shows what each plan includes.
Frequently asked questions
Should I outsource SEO or do it in-house?
Outsource SEO when you need several specialist skills but don’t have enough work for a full-time senior hire, or need an outside diagnosis. Bring it in-house when SEO is a core, permanent growth function and you can support an SEO lead with writers, developers and tools. Many growing companies use a hybrid.
How much does it cost to outsource SEO?
According to Ahrefs’ SEO pricing survey, freelancers average about $1,349 a month, agencies $3,209 and consultants $3,250. At Top Search Agency, advisory costs $1,000 a month and ongoing SEO $3,500–$12,000 a month, depending on scope.
What SEO tasks should be outsourced?
Technical SEO audits, Search Console analysis, content strategy and optimisation, internal linking, link building and digital PR, AI-search tracking and reporting. Keep product knowledge, final approval of claims, one internal owner and ownership of every account in-house.
What are the risks of outsourcing SEO?
The main risks are thin or inaccurate content, bought or network links, hidden subcontracting, junior delivery after a senior pitch, long lock-ins, and losing control of accounts and content. Clear contracts, your own account ownership and a named internal owner reduce all of them.
How do I choose an SEO outsourcing company?
Ask for a programme that drove leads or pipeline, not just rankings. Ask what they’d do if you don’t need more content, what they’ll own versus what you must implement, and what they won’t guarantee. Then pay for an audit with a real sample deliverable and review pages they’ve written.
Outsource the work, not the ownership
If you’re about to outsource SEO, the one thing I’d tell you is this: don’t outsource your product truth or your ownership of the channel, but do insist the provider takes responsibility for a clear strategy, specialist execution and honest measurement. Keep your website, accounts, data, product knowledge and final approval. Expect your partner to understand the business, find the real constraint, do the agreed work and report honestly on progress, and to leave you with better documentation, clearer priorities and more knowledge than you started with.
Want to understand what’s holding your organic growth back before you outsource SEO? Book a search visibility strategy call with Top Search Agency. We’ll identify your highest-priority SEO, content, technical and AI-search opportunities first. The right next step might be outsourced execution, an advisory engagement, a hybrid model, or building the capability in-house. The answer should follow the diagnosis, not a sales target. If expert-led content is your biggest gap, see how we approach content that depends on your own expertise.
Usman founded Top Search Agency in 2024 and leads strategy on every engagement, from the first AI visibility baseline to the quarterly roadmap, for B2B SaaS and AI companies including Y Combinator-backed Markaz (around 150K monthly organic visits and 444 pages cited in AI answers).
Before that he ran the marketing agency ConvertBunny for more than 20 clients and led digital marketing at nTask, where organic traffic grew from 20K to 280K monthly visitors in 18 months.
He has spent more than a decade in growth and marketing roles, and writes about what actually moves B2B buyers in Google and AI search, based on the programmes his team runs every week.
Connect with Usman on LinkedIn · Meet the team
