Almost every company outsources some part of search work, and the ones who regret it have usually outsourced the wrong half. Execution travels well. Judgement about the business, access to the people who know the product, and ownership of the accounts do not, and losing any of the three turns the supplier into a single point of failure.
Keep the accounts, the analytics and the domain
Every credential should live in an account your company owns, with the supplier added as a user who can be removed. This sounds obvious and is the commonest failure in the market: agencies register the analytics property, the ads account or even the domain in their own name, and a relationship that ends then costs you the history as well as the supplier. Check who owns each before the first invoice, not after the last.
Outsource production, not the brief
Writing, technical implementation, outreach and reporting are all work an outside team can do well. What they cannot do is decide which customers matter, what the product actually does or what the company will not say. A brief written inside the business and executed outside it produces usable work. A brief written by the supplier produces plausible work aimed at nobody in particular.
The cheapest quote is usually a subcontracting chain
A large share of low-cost search work is resold: the agency you hired subcontracts to another firm, which subcontracts the writing again. Nothing is wrong with that in principle, but you should know it, because it explains slow turnarounds and answers that do not match your product. Ask directly who does the work and where, and ask to speak to that person.
Write the exit into the contract
Agree at the start what you receive if you leave: the content, the documentation, the keyword and link records, the access. Treat a refusal as the answer to your question. The same applies to the worker classification of any contractor placed inside your team, which is a matter the tax rules define rather than the invoice.
Questions people ask about outsourcing seo services
Is it cheaper to outsource than to hire?
Usually at low volume, rarely at high volume. A full-time specialist is cheaper per hour once you can keep them busy, and an agency is cheaper when the work is spiky or needs several disciplines at once.
Should I outsource offshore?
It can work for implementation and technical work. It works less well for anything that must sound like your company to your customers, which is a question about the writer rather than the country.
What should never be outsourced?
Ownership of the accounts, the decision about which customers you want, and anything the company would not be willing to say in its own name.
How do I keep knowledge in the business?
Require documentation as a deliverable rather than a courtesy, and have one internal person in every working session. The second is what actually retains it.