• All Things SEM , Thursday, February 21, 2008 5:30 PM

So your search firm isn't quite enterprise-sized, but it's no longer a fledgling start-up either. How do you keep on growing? According to Marios Alexandrou, successfully scaling out takes a combination of new hires, outsourcing and automation.

The new hires come in to fulfill the more junior or entry-level roles; this way, the "experienced employees are able to increase the number of projects they can handle by delegating tasks to more junior employees," Alexandrou says. Keep in mind that the senior-level team member should still have enough time to be involved in his own project work--and not just be managing the junior staffers.

Outsourcing to less-costly regions (both national and international) can be another way to boost productivity and cut costs at the same time. Delegating things like link-building or site design efforts to a freelancer can be a time and money-saver, but Alexandrou notes that sometimes shipping work out on the cheap can net cheap results.

Meanwhile, automation is one of the best ways to get tedious tasks off of the agenda--leaving time for strategic development and brainstorming. "Extracting tags from web pages, initial link target gathering, checking redirects, reporting, and implementation verification are all good candidates for automation," Alexandrou says.

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