SEO and Translations: Independent professional versus Agency

What does “Agency for SEO” and “Translation Agency” mean?

The term « Agency » can have several commercial meanings, as explains the french dictionary Larousse  : an administrative unity ; a commercial establishment that treats a specific problem, a company that acts as middleman between a client and skilled workers, or the physical office of an agency.

Even a self-employed person without employees and without a bureau for the reception of clients can call himself an « agency » if he wants to.  

Nevertheless, the understanding of the designation « agency »  by the general public goes into the following direction : a steady physical place, where you can meet the CEO of a company, where there is a secretary and staff. This « physical place for appointments » can be a Coworking Space too, shared by several startups.

An « Agency » can function as well in a full-remote-mode, without an office for meetings with clients, prospects and employees. The personnel of an agency is rather imagined to be employees, but there can be partially or entirely freelancers too.  

Similar to the word « agency » are the terms « consultancy «  or « consulting firm », especially with regard to the business sectors finance and marketing. The simple mention of the term « management consultancy » does not allow to know the company size : it can be as well a freelancer in his homeoffice as a big company with international offices and hundreds of employees.   

What does “SEO Freelancer” mean?

This term is vague too. Concerning the legal status of « freelancers », there are offical definitions, i.e for self-employed persons and contractors , or for limited companies.     

The general public understands a « freelancer » as a person that is working alone and without employees, and who is rather in a homeoffice than in a rented bureau.

There are some astonishing aspects too concerning the term « freelancing » :

On the one hand, there are freelancers who consider this term to be less attractive, and who prefer to call themselves «  Solopreneur » or « Infopreneur ». One important reason for this : some intermediary agencies that work with freelancer-pools to which they give more or less regularly missions, apply very low fees, which pushes the concerned freelancers in a precarious situation.

On the other hand, on some freelancer platforms, there are profiles of persons that are no « classical freelancers » in the sense of the general public, but CEOs of marketing or translation agencies with regular employees. And sometimes especially these « fake freelancers » are the ones that show a very high number of realized missions on the platform. This observation leads to a central question of the whole subject : Who is the concrete author of the service ?

Who does the job? The master, the apprentice, or an outsourced freelancer?

Top quality work is always done by a master : A trained expert with relevant experience in his field.   

Generally, the personal contact with the expert is a key aspect for a satisfying collaboration.  

When you need a doctor, you don’t go to the first guy you find in the telephone directory. You will carefully choose a physician in who you trust.  

When you need a craftsman, you’ll mandate a company, whose owner has convinced you of his quality. Of course, the owner cannot work on all construction sites himself, but he’ll guarantee you, that his workers apply the quality standard he stands for. And if you pay some extra money, it will even be the master craftsman in person that will realize the work for you.

Thus, the question « Who does the job ? » is of paramount importance when choosing your service provider.  

When you take an « agency », it is often difficult to know the executing person.  When choosing a freelancer for your mission, with who you have spoken personally, then you avoid this problem.  

Let’s have a look on an example : You need a translation of product files from English to Spanish. You can either place an order with a translation agency, which will not even give you the name of the translator. Or you can go to the website of a freelance translator, check his diplomas, read his blog articles, maybe even watch some Youtube videos – and get by this means a precise impression of the competences of the freelancer.  

A project can be pluridisciplinary. Example : You want to launch a website with SEO-articles : Here we have two missions : the design of the homepage (a task of rather technical nature), and the elaboration of SEO-texts (an editorial or literary task). In order to get the best result possible, you should know both experts. Concerning this example, both agencies and freelancers can be a good choice for you, as I will explain later in this article.  

Who does the job? An Artificial Intelligence or a Human Expert?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more and more used as a working tool, from all parties :  Freelancers and agencies.

AI is capable to do constantly more tasks that where done by human beings until now. The business sectors that are discussed in this article are concerned too by this technological evolution : translation, copywriting (articles, social media posts etc), creation of photos etc.

The quality of AI-creations can vary strongly. The client’s concrete needs are to be considered in this respect : If the client is satisfied with a moderate blog article concerning a simple subject, then an AI can do a good job for him. The reader won’t be able afterwards to understand, if the author was a person or an AI. But, if the client requests high quality (in terms of creativity, precise analysis etc), then he should privilege a human expert.

Today (February 2024) the following assessment is to be given : The quality of AI is steadily improving. The replacement of human labour by AI and ChatGPT is intensifying. But: a client that desires the best possible quality on the market, needs a human expert.   

AI is a central sociological and philosophical subject. The question, if and to which extent the natural intelligence of humans will still be required in the future, will be analyzed by me in further articles.   

In order to get transparency, I invite each customer to ask his service partner, if he works with artificial or organic intelligence. The answer of the conversational partner will not necessarily be the truth, and the client will not always be capable of detecting the real origin of the creation. Nevertheless, this question should be asked – because it’s a nice one ! 

The advantages of an agency

The first advantage of an agency is the realization of complex projects, which require expensive ressources (i.e. high priced software tools or databases) and/ or the management of teams – for example a big SEO project in several languages, or the management of a team of copywriters for a press portal.  

For pluridisciplinary missions an agency can often provide a polyvalent team that covers several tasks. For a webmarketing project for instance, an agency can propose a full-package-solution with a team of inhouse experts : a webdesigner for the creation of the homepage, a graphic designer for the pictures and videos, a web copywriter for the SEO-articles.  

Attention concerning the question « Who does the job ? The master, apprentice, or an externalised freelancer ? «. If you order for example high quality blog articles, you should check, who in the agency will do them : The Senior Copywriter with 20 years of professional experience ? Or the intern who is only 20 years old, and for who you will be the « test client » ?

There is nothing bad about employing interns, on the contrary : this is even very decent. Nevertheless: As a paying customer you have the right to know who in the agency will realize the service. It would be illogical if you pay a higher fee for an intern in an agency, who does not have his degree yet, than for a freelancer with a diploma and longterm business experience.

A serious agency will always present its collaborators to you.  

The advantages of a freelancer

The first advantage is the cheaper fee of the freelancer. In most of the cases he doesn’t have an office with a secretary. Avoiding the fees for an office rent and wage costs for employees, the freelancer can propose more advantageous fees than an agency.   

The second advantage is the good verifiability of the freelancer’s quality : He is almost totally transparent for the clients. His website is the primary information place for all prospects. Nowadays, each decent freelancer can have his own website. There he presents : his degrees, his experiences, a list of his services, ideally a blog. Some freelancers even run a small Youtube channel with a couple of videos. If there is no own homepage, the Linkedin- and Malt-Profile will give the key infos on the competences of the freelancer.  A free phone call of the freelancer and the prospect allows to clarify further questions.

Stay considerate with your check of the freelancer : The site of a virtual assistant does not require a design on the level of a Hollywood production. But, if the homepage of a webdesigner loads for an eternity, before the first letters appear, and/ or if the site contains non-functional subpages, then these are red flags ! And when you search a copywriter, then you should prefer freelancers with blogs in correct English to those that have texts full of « grama misstakes ».

The third advantage of the freelancer is his network. The network can be of various nature : fellow graduates from university, professional associations, infogroups on Linkedin or Facebook etc. Example : Personally, I’m doing translations for three languages. But, if necessary, I can immediately propose freelance translators for ten more languages.    

Even a cross-disciplinary mission can be realized by a Freelancer: In project mode, together with other freelancers that have complementary faculties. Example : A client asks me to do a website with SEO enhancement. I’ll recommend a talented webdesigner of my network, who will do the site, and subsequently I’ll do the SEO optimisation work. The customer will get two invoices, which is not complicated neither in terms of accoutancy.   

Last but not least : The network of a freelancer generally contains agencies too, with which he works more or less frequently.   

Alternative: Malt and other freelancing platforms

These platforms are « virtual agencies » that connect customers with freelancers. The self-employed present themselves by a profile on the platform.   

Malt guarantees, that the freelancer is correctly registered in his residence country. When placing an order, the client pays immediately the invoice amount to Malt. When the mission is finished, the customer authorizes the money transfer to the freelancer.  

A Malt client always pays one single invoice, but it covers two services : the service by the freelancer, plus a provision for the platform (the freelancer has to give a certain percentage of the invoice amount to the platform, for the connection with the client).

I hold a Malt profile too, with positive evaluations of the clients for which I have realized missions. Of course I do my Malt missions with the same diligence and professionalism as my missions outside of the platform. But, logically, my fees on Malt are always higher than the fees on my homepage – because of the commission for Malt.  

Advice: If you want to benefit from cheaper fees for my services, then make your reservation directly by my website !

The advantages of a collaboration with Leopold Stoeger

Cheaper fees than with an agency :  Working in my homeoffice, I have no costs for an office rent, a secretary or an accountant.   

Services by the master : I hold a Master Degree in International Sales and Marketing, 20 years of professional experience, and I am perfectly trilingual.    

All my services are realized by me in person, and not by any third parties. My homepage and my other digital contents provide you with all the necessary infos to evaluate my competences.   

Services Made in France : All of my services represent european quality standards.   

I hope that you like the information given in this article. If you want to discuss a project with me, I’d be happy to make a free 20 minutes phone call with you.

The following articles are surely interesting too for you:

How to find the best SEO Consultant?