White Label SEO: What It Is and How to Choose the Right Partner

For digital marketing agencies, white label SEO enables one to provide their clients with SEO services without forming an SEO team in house. It’s win-win for both parties, your clients receive their results in their own names while your agency benefits from expanded service offerings; your white label SEO partner does all the dirty work.

A good white label SEO business practice, it can become the basis for a successful agency service offering or a nightmare in client management and reputation building.

Here’s how it works, and what to look for when choosing your white label SEO partner.

Table of Contents

What Is White Label SEO?

White label SEO refers to where an agency or freelancer buys SEO services from another service provider and sells the same to customers on their own terms.

The end user is oblivious of the existence of any third party in the process. All outputs, audits, reports, contents, links, among other things, are attributed to the rebranding agency.

The word “white label” emanates from a marketing phenomenon whereby unbranded goods are sold for rebranding by retailers. The rebranding looks like a store brand produced by the third party.

Who Uses White Label SEO?

Web Design Agencies

The website designing agency creates websites but lacks knowledge in SEO. They offer SEO services on a retained basis using white label SEO firms.

PPC-Focused Agencies

Pay-per-click agencies whose clients require organic SEO support. Instead of responding that “that is not within our range,” the PPC agency uses white label SEO to add to their service list.

Marketing Consultants and Freelancers

Independent marketers requiring holistic digital marketing services yet cannot cope with all the specializations.

Startups Building Agency Models

Businesses forming service companies that require SEO expertise prior to developing an internal team.

How White Label SEO Works

The Basic Workflow

The reseller agency enters into an agreement with the white label SEO company
The agency markets its SEO services to its client at an appropriate markup
The agency gives access to the client’s website, GBPs, and relevant logins to the white label partner
The white label partner carries out the SEO tasks (technical auditing, content production, linking and reporting)
The white label partner delivers the results in branded form to the reseller agency
The reseller agency delivers the deliverables as their own work to the client

The reselling agency oversees the client side.

The white label partner handles execution.

What White Label SEO Typically Includes

The services included in most White Label SEO Packages include:

Technical SEO Audits and Fixes

Site Crawls, Technical Issue Identification, and Recommendations.

Better packages can fix these issues in the CMS itself.

On-Page Optimization

Optimization of Title Tag and Meta Description.
Improving Header Structure.
Internal Linking.
Schema Markup Implementation

Content Creation

Optimized blog posts, landing pages, location pages targeting specific keywords.

Link Building

Acquisition of links through outreach activities, guest blogging, digital PR, or citations.

Usually the hardest part and usually the most valuable service provided by any SEO company.

Monthly Reporting

Providing reports using the branding of the agency, including ranking of keywords and traffic generated.

Local SEO

Optimizing Google business profile, citations, and reviews for any business with a physical location.

Pricing Models for White Label SEO

White labeling agencies generally charge according to one of three models.

Monthly Retainer

An all-inclusive monthly fee for each client within the terms of a set agreement.

The most common model.

Generally runs from $300-$1,500 per month per client at the agency end, which is then marked up by 50-150%.

Project-Based

One-time payments for a deliverable, an audit, link building campaign, content package.

Suitable for agencies where their clients do not want to be on retainer.

Per-Unit Pricing

Costs based on deliverable, backlink gained, article produced.

More flexible; however, it is difficult to forecast costs.

Profit Margins in White Label SEO

In white label SEO, your margin for reselling will be anywhere from 50 to 100 percent more than what your provider charges you.

Example

What you pay to the provider: $500/month/client
What you charge the client: $1,000-$1,500/month
Margin per month per client: $500-$1,000

With 20 SEO clients paying $1,000/month, your revenue will be $20,000/month and costs will be $10,000/month from

How to Choose a White Label SEO Partner

This is going to be the most critical decision that you will make in the context of white label SEO.

Bad providers can hurt your client relations.

Good providers can make you shine.

Check out how providers measure up in terms of:

Results and Case Studies

Providing you with detailed examples and actual results:

Rankings pre- and post- campaign
Growth in traffic
Timing

Vague reviews (“Our customers love us!”) won’t do.

You want to see:

Start point
What actions were taken
What results were achieved

Ask Directly

“Can you provide a client like me, and the work done for them, along with the results they achieved in six and twelve months?”

Reporting Quality

The reports will be made for your own branding when presenting them to your customers.

A bad report means that you are a bad service provider.

Request a Sample Report

This report should cover the following items:

Ranking of keywords in the search engine results
Trends of organic traffic
List of achievements this month
Work plan for the following month
Explanations in simple words understandable to your non-SEO customer

Communication and Responsiveness

Your ability to obtain answers to questions from your clients is essential.

Evaluate how responsive the service provider is prior to signing the contract, as they will be less responsive once they become your client.

Ask

How do you handle urgent client questions?
How long does it usually take for your account managers to provide a response?

Transparency About Methods

Be specific in your inquiry concerning backlink building:

How do you generate backlinks?
Which kinds of websites are targeted?
What is their average DR score?

Red Flags

Ambiguous answers regarding link building techniques
Reference to “backlink networks” or “DA 20+ guaranteed”
Extremely low-cost backlink packages (true link building is costly)
Guaranteed fast results

The white-hat service providers get links through legitimate means of networking and content development.

Any firm offering “50 backlinks within 30 days” at $200 a month will only give your customers bad links.

Scalability

Can the provider cope with your growth?

If your goal is to expand to 50 clients, ensure that the provider is capable of coping with this number of clients without compromising on quality.

Pricing Structure and Contracts

It is important to note:

Minimum contract period
Inclusions/Exclusions
How they deal with cancelled clients
If there is room for volume discounting

Managing the Client Relationship

As a reseller, you own the relationship with the client.

This entails:

Set Realistic Expectations

Using SEO forecasting to demonstrate what clients can expect from your services over six to twelve months ahead.

Avoid overpromising.

For instance, when the white label partner makes promises like “get page 1 rankings within 30 days,” then it is problematic.

Stay Across the Work

Monthly reports need to be reviewed first before being sent to the clients.

Get It:

What has been done
What is planned to be done
If what’s being done makes sense for your client’s business

Be the Strategic Layer

That’s what your white label partner does.

You give strategy, business perspective, and client knowledge.

Good resellers don’t just deliver deliverables; they deliver value.

Maintain Access to All Assets

The following must be available to you:

Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Ahrefs

Do not let your provider control your client assets.

You will have to shift between providers easily in case of switching providers.

White Label SEO vs. Building an In-House Team

Build In-House If:

You have enough SEO clients to warrant hiring someone full time (8-12 monthly SEO retainers per month at >$1,000 each
SEO is a key differentiator for your agency
You require highly specialized knowledge for a particular niche (technical SEO for an enterprise SaaS company, for example)

Stay White Label If:

SEO is only one of many services you provide, not your main service
Your client numbers do not warrant hiring someone full time at this point
You wish to test the demand for your SEO service first

Conclusion

The white label SEO approach is one that could prove to be profitable and sustainable for providing SEO services.

However, it involves choosing the right partner, maintaining complete transparency with the clients, and staying involved in ensuring quality.

Do not pick an SEO company purely based on cost considerations.

Consider performance, reporting, communication, and tactics used.

Test it on a smaller account before rolling out the strategy to your best clients.

When you get white label SEO right, you’ll accelerate growth, better service clients, and focus on your core competency.