SEO Reselling: Outsourcing SEO Services for Agencies

Your agency has become the GOAT of pay-per-click (PPC), search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing (SMM), or another digital marketing service.

Now you want to step into the world of SEO.

To provide SEO services to your clients, you need a strong team. After all, as Google’s algorithm grows increasingly complex, so does SEO.

Luckily, there’s a way you can offer SEO services without having all the expertise.

The answer is an SEO reseller.

Reseller SEO services can help your agency with every aspect of optimization. Simply put, SEO resellers handle your clients’ SEO campaigns on your behalf. That way, you can add to the range of services your agency already provides without the cost of building a team of SEO experts.

I know you’ve got big goals. Using reseller SEO services for agencies can help you reach them.

Let’s get you started with SEO reselling and discuss its advantages.

Why Are Reseller SEO Services for Agencies Needed?

Competition among SEO agencies is fierce. An SEO reseller will help you keep up.

Having industry-leading experts in your corner is key. You’ll be able to tap into a whole range of reseller SEO services, including:

Link building: The big money for SEO resellers comes from this. Outsourcing backlinking efforts to a reseller has major advantages, as link building is a labor-intensive process. Resellers use a variety of strategies—everything from outreach and guest posts to correcting broken links.

A screenshot of Buffer's homepage.
Text that reads, "All individuals featured in this article are members of Dreamers & Doers, an award-winning community and diverse ecosystem amplifying extraordinary entrepreneurial women through PR opportunities, authentic connection, and high-impact resources. Learn more about Dreamers & Doers and subscribe to its monthly The Digest for top entrepreneurial and career resources."

Website analysis and SEO audits: A fresh campaign often starts with an on-page SEO evaluation. SEO resellers can identify prospects for quick wins by assessing a site’s SEO health.

Keyword research: Allow SEO resellers to identify profitable keywords on your agency’s behalf rather than try to make sense of data from SEO tools on your own.

Content creation: To assist you in producing content at scale, several businesses additionally employ in-house copywriting expertise or vetted contractors.

Local and international SEO: SEO resellers frequently assist with the detailed, manual aspects of local and international SEO, such as Google Business Profile page optimization.

Joining forces with an SEO reseller from the best SEO agency can propel your business to the next level. A successful long-term partnership is a great source of extra income. Sometimes, two agencies combine to form a larger agency that can handle all services in-house.

Using reseller SEO services for agencies enables you to:

  1. Concentrate on what you’re good at while meeting your clients’ needs.
  2. Increase brand recognition and revenue
  3. Bring on more clients
  4. Gain new skills to support enterprise-level clients with specialty services
  5. Build trustworthy partnerships with other agencies

This type of SEO outsourcing, which you may also know as white labeling, allows marketing agencies to sell an SEO reseller’s packages as if they were the agency’s own. You can either offer the service monthly or set your own terms.

There’s a stark difference between this version and private label SEO services. The latter is packaged depending upon the specifications of the reseller, whereas the former can be customized.

Alternatives for Reseller SEO Services

SEO reselling isn’t the end-all, be-all option for agencies. You can deliver on your clients’ goals with resources outside of reseller SEO services. Alternatives include creating an in-house team or working with freelancers.

Creating an In-House Team

Rather expand your in-house expertise? Hire out to build your own SEO dream team. You can simultaneously keep your core competencies and enhance your offerings this way. You’ll need a mix of SEO strategists, data analysts, editors, and writers to deliver desired results for high-ranking pages and high-quality backlinks.

After forming your team of trusted experts, ensure they understand the clients’ needs and pain points to pull off SEO results that are a win-win for everyone.

Working With Freelancers


You can get the equivalent of on-demand reseller SEO services through quality SEO freelancers. They are your go-to niche experts.

Freelancers can help serve numerous clients, allowing you to have SEO experts on hand. A team of freelancers in your corner for technical SEO consulting can help increase your profitability.

A screenshot of Upwork's job search page with "seo reseller" in the search bar.

Reseller SEO Services: Pros and Cons

You can outsource your clientele’s SEO work to an SEO reseller that can also handle all your marketing requirements. Using a reseller’s private label SEO services means that the best technology and tools drive your SEO campaigns. However, working with a reseller comes with positives and downsides.

Pros

Partnering with an SEO reseller can:

1. Help You Scale Business

SEO reseller packages help expand your service offerings. It allows you to scale your business without having to do the work yourself.

As a result, you may take huge projects from major brands and businesses without worrying about how you’ll complete them. This is a big win for your agency, as SEO projects can take six months to a year to yield winning results. Plus, you won’t have to take on the huge expense of hiring an in-house team.

2. Enhance Campaign Performance

By leveraging SEO resellers for their expertise, you’re working with individuals who know your clients’ needs and work accordingly to meet their goals. With results-oriented private label SEO services, you can better communicate clear campaign results to your clients and pivot strategies if needed.

3. Give You Access to Paid SEO Tools and Platforms

To run the most effective campaigns, you need data and insights that only certain SEO tools can provide. You gain access to premium tools and platforms by working with an SEO reseller. When running data-driven initiatives, you must gauge the effectiveness of SEO KPIs ranging from conversions to bounce rate and everything in between.

Carefully selecting reseller hosting plans plays a big role in site management and reporting data on KPIs. Additionally, access to SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and Google Analytics can help measure these metrics effectively.

Screenshot of the free SEO tool, Ubersuggest.

If you can’t afford costly software and tools, you can navigate Ubersuggest for free as you figure things out. However, this does show why an SEO reseller is so valuable: They handle all this for you.

Cons

On the other hand, you can avoid the downsides of working with SEO resellers by keeping an eye out for:

  1. Unreasonable Projected Results

If an SEO reseller makes far-fetched promises, that’s a sign you should consider working with someone else. An example would be promising that a client will rank between positions 1 and 3 within a week. Every client’s SEO needs are unique, and it can be challenging to forecast how fast results will set in.

  1. No Onboarding

Trustworthy SEO companies want to be certain that their work is correctly portrayed and that they are collaborating with true experts. As a result, most SEO resellers, at the very least, include an onboarding procedure. It’s a bad sign if an SEO reseller doesn’t perform due diligence during the sign-up process.

  1. Lack of Measurable Outcomes

Your SEO partner should have results to show for their work. They offer a ton of case studies that showcase their skills and the outcomes they achieved for previous clients. It’s also crucial to pay attention to testimonials. If the SEO resellers you’re vetting fall short in these areas, it’s probably best to seek out a different agency.

How to Get Started with Reseller SEO Services for Agencies

A partner that aligns with you and your client’s goals is essential.

Some pointers for choosing a reliable SEO reseller start with researching their past work.

Fact check the data because it says everything you need to know about your partner’s track record.

Verify whether they provide the services you require and how effective they are at executing them. Find ratings and recommendations at Capterra and on Google Business Profiles.

A screenshot of Google Business Profile's webpage.

Analyze the metrics they use to assess their performance. Research what they measure as successful to see if their metrics also meet your value standards.

With a full-service digital marketing agency, you will likely get more out of the partnership than just SEO services and their knowledge in your niche.

Picking the Right SEO Reseller for You

An SEO reseller will serve as an extended department of your agency.

To get the job done right for your clients, consider the following when picking an SEO reseller:

  1. Seek testimonials and references from actual individuals: Research reviews from businesses who have used their services. The insights you glean from those companies offer a sneak peek at what you’ll likely experience.
Screenshot of Neil Patel Digital's website with individual testimonials of clients who have positive reviews of their SEO reseller.
  1. Years of expertise: Longevity helps when it comes to the SEO game. A company that has had time to understand and adapt to the changes in the industry knows what it takes to run campaigns.
  2. Trial of services: Get a trial run of their services—kind of like a test drive. See how things perform so you can verify the quality of what the reseller has to offer.

During the vetting process, note how resellers communicate and how knowledgeable their teams are on your niche. Asking for everything upfront will save you time, money, and unwanted surprises.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is SEO reselling?

SEO reselling provides private label SEO services to an agency for their clients’ SEO projects. These services are outsourced on behalf of an agency to benefit their clients with marketing, development, and design.

Who can use SEO reselling services?

Anyone can use SEO reselling services to help them flourish in their niche. However, I highly recommend SEO reselling services for small agencies, agencies that don’t specialize in SEO, or if you’re struggling to deliver heavy-hitting SEO services to your clients.

Can one agency use another agency for SEO work?

Yes, this is kind of how the process works. If an agency needs to strengthen its SEO offerings, it can seek out a full-service agency with more SEO experts or years of experience to get quality results for its clients.

How to pick an SEO reseller?

When picking an SEO reseller, I recommend you start by:

  1. Gathering testimonials and references from companies who have worked with the reseller you’re interested in.
  2. Taking note of years of business to see how they’ve grown in expertise over time.
  3. Asking for a trial period of their services to ensure they’ll meet your clients’ needs.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What is SEO reselling?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

SEO reselling provides private label SEO services to an agency for their clients’ SEO projects. These services are outsourced on behalf of an agency to benefit their clients with marketing, development, and design.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Who can use SEO reselling services?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

Anyone can use SEO reselling services to help them flourish in their niche. However, I highly recommend SEO reselling services for small agencies, agencies that don’t specialize in SEO, or if you’re struggling to deliver heavy-hitting SEO services to your clients.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Can one agency use another agency for SEO work?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

Yes, this is kind of how the process works. If an agency needs to strengthen its SEO offerings, it can seek out a full-service agency with more SEO experts or years of experience to get quality results for its clients.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How to pick an SEO reseller?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

When picking an SEO reseller, I recommend you start by:

  1. Gathering testimonials and references from companies who have worked with the reseller you’re interested in.
  2. Taking note of years of business to see how they’ve grown in expertise over time.
  3. Asking for a trial period of their services to ensure they’ll meet your clients’ needs.


}
}
]
}

Conclusion

As you grow your business, reseller SEO services can yield success for you and your clients.

Providing cutting-edge SEO services requires collaborating with a dependable partner.

Find an SEO reseller with experience in your niche and results to back up their work. Doing the homework before you lock into the agreement is worth the research.

Working with real experts will help you get your clients where they want to be with campaign performance.

Offloading SEO tasks will make sure you don’t spread yourself thin. With the help of a partnering agency, you can grow SEO as another area of expertise.

As you gradually get stronger in SEO work, you will be able to sign more clients and earn more money for both of you.

If you’ve been planning to work with an SEO reseller, what are some things your clients need? Is SEO a new area of expertise for you?

How the Best Agencies Use Ubersuggest to Deliver Better SEO Reports to Their Clients

Your digital marketing agency can only perform as well as its suite of tools allows.

If you create bad client SEO reports, you can’t offer the latest and greatest recommendations to improve their websites.

That’s where Ubersuggest comes in.

As an SEO and website analysis tool, Ubersuggest offers the optimal suite of reports to its users. You can then use these reports to advise your clients and make optimizations.

In this post, we’ll explore why agencies love Ubersuggest and take an in-depth look at the various uses for its reports and tools.

Why Agencies Love Ubersuggest For Client SEO Reporting

Ubersuggest is an SEO and website auditing tool that offers both free and paid plans to individuals and agencies alike. Its popularity has grown in recent years, now boasting over 50,000 users!

When it comes to digital marketing agencies, Ubersuggest is an invaluable tool for evaluating client websites. It offers a suite of reports and tools including keyword research and analysis, technical SEO, and even site speed.

Its breadth of reports makes it a great tool for agencies when first evaluating a client’s website. However, don’t be fooled by the variety of reports. These reports also offer significant depth that enables agencies to really dig into the data so they can offer invaluable insights to their clients.

8 Ways Agencies Use Ubersuggest

While we can discuss Ubersuggest’s various reports and tools, it’s most helpful to understand agency use cases. Below are eight ways agencies use Ubersuggest for their marketing clientele.

1. They Create Multiple Projects Per Account

Agency analysts are constantly juggling a handful of client SEO projects at a time. With Ubersuggest, your agency can create one project per client per account. This means you can manage up to 15 clients at one time within your agency account.

To create a new project is simple:

  1. In the Dashboard section of the tool, click on “New Project” in the top right.
  2. Enter a domain and website name.
  3. Select the language/country for tracking purposes.
  4. Add keywords to rank tracking either by manually entering them, copying and pasting, or uploading a CSV file.
  5. Type in your client’s top competitors or choose from the pre-populated list.
  6. Choose your tracking preferences and decide how much hands-on help you’d like from Ubersuggest’s team of specialists.

You’re all done!

Once you’ve created multiple client SEO projects, you can toggle between them for easy tracking.

2. Run Technical Audits

Did you know only 15 percent of websites operate at an acceptable page speed? While there’s more to technical audits than site speed, it plays a big part.

A technical SEO audit is an easy way to find low-hanging fruit for your client. Each audit will call out various technical SEO elements, including header and title tag duplicates, SSL certificate errors, lack of meta description, and poorly formatted URLs.

The best news of all is that you can run an SEO audit in as little as three minutes with Ubersuggest. Here’s how.

Go to our SEO site-auditor or select “Site Audit” from the left side of the Ubersuggest tool:

How the Best Agencies Use Ubersuggest to Deliver Better SEO Reports to Their Clients - Run Technical Audit

Enter the URL to be audited and then select “Domain” for a full site audit or “URL” for a page-level audit.

Click “Search.”

You’ll notice the audit is split into three sections:

  • Overview
  • Site Health
  • Site Speed

The Overview section will cover on-site SEO elements, search traffic, keywords, and backlinks.

Site Health is a highly actionable section that breaks down your domain by page level. This will run you through the various issues and errors present on your client’s website so you can action them immediately:

site health for client seo report

This section provides key takeaways you can provide to your client so you can provide value upfront. This will improve their website as well as increase their trust in your services.

The Site Speed section is self-explanatory. It provides a loading time for both desktop and mobile, as well as a breakdown of the time it took to load each page element:

How the Best Agencies Use Ubersuggest to Deliver Better SEO Reports to Their Clients - Check Site Speed

A technical audit is a great tool that gives you and your client actionable items to impact their overall site performance.

This has been proven to be an invaluable resource to agencies and their clients alike.

3. Complete Keyword Research

With a tool like Ubersuggest, you can ensure you’re targeting the right keywords for your client’s SEO.

Don’t believe us? Take the word of NinjaCat, a digital marketing performance management platform, which saw a 124 percent increase in its keywords ranking on page one.

Most marketing agencies understand the importance of well-researched and targeted keywords. As is so often the case with clients, though, keyword research is not a top priority. As such, your clients may be sticking with just a handful of keywords that aren’t fully optimized or ideal for targeting.

How can you help? With Ubersuggest, you can become the expert in your client’s SEO needs in minutes. Just ask your client for their list of current keywords and plug them into the Keyword Ideas report:

How the Best Agencies Use Ubersuggest to Deliver Better SEO Reports to Their Clients - Keyword Ideas Report

This Ubersuggest client SEO report offers all manner of keyword optimization angles, from new keyword ideas to related keywords to target to questions your client should aim to answer when writing a blog post. This will help you to narrow down high-traffic, low-competition keywords for your client to target.

The initial keyword audit isn’t all, though.

You can also sign up for notifications so you can know when keywords are growing in popularity and when it’s best to target them in your organic and paid campaigns.

4. Competitive Analysis

E-commerce sales in the U.S. grew 14.2 percent in 2021. Without a proper analysis of the competitive landscape, though, how can you be sure you’re capturing (and will continue to capture) your share of this growth?

The importance of your client’s SEO competitive analysis, therefore, cannot be overstated.

The more your client knows about their competitors, the greater understanding they can get of their strengths and weaknesses. Only with this information can your clients then work to carve out their industry niche.

Where should you begin? With Ubersuggest’s Similar Websites report.

The Similar Websites report will show you which keywords competitors are currently ranking for. It will also provide a list of similar keywords that your client shares with their competitors, as well as keyword gaps, estimated traffic, and the number of backlinks to your client’s competitors.

With this information, you can build out a full one-to-one comparison of your client to their top competitors.

  • Where do they fall short?
  • Where do they excel?
  • What steps can they take to see improvement in their rankings, traffic, and conversions?

5. Rank Tracking

If you want your client’s website to be found, it has to rank on the first page of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Why?

Only 0.78 percent of Google searchers click on results from the 2nd page and the CTR only worsens as you go deeper.

To improve your client’s SEO, you need rank tracking.

Rank tracking enables you to keep a pulse on your client’s website rankings so you can track and react accordingly. Once your client has begun to implement changes to their website and their keyword strategy, it’s more important than ever to keep track of site performance and ranking.

Ubersuggest’s Rank Tracking report will provide an overview of performance changes, including:

  1. The number of keywords that have moved up in rankings over time.
  2. The number of keywords that have moved down.
  3. The total number of keywords changed.
  4. A graph of the average position.
  5. Current search results rankings for your tracked keywords.
  6. Detailed information on your tracked keywords for each client.

For optimal performance tracking, you can also have this report emailed to you and your client on a weekly basis.

To use this report, select the client dashboard and then select “Rank Tracking” from the left-side menu. You can then track ranking based on custom date ranges, region, and selected keywords:

How the Best Agencies Use Ubersuggest to Deliver Better SEO Reports to Their Clients - Rank Tracking

The best thing about this report is you can keep a tab on overall site performance as well as keyword-level performance so you can identify your client’s SEO drivers and draggers.

6. Link Building

According to an analysis of 11.8 million Google search results performed by Backlinko, the #1 result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions two through ten.

In simplest terms, the more high-quality backlinks to your website the higher your site will rank above similar websites with fewer backlinks.

Link building is no longer about quantity, but quality—and it’s an important part of client SEO reports.

The higher the domain authority of the backlinks to your site, the greater bump in SERP rankings your site will see. This is why a solid link building strategy is key to success.

Where can you begin to advise your clients? With Ubersuggest’s Backlinks Opportunities report:

How the Best Agencies Use Ubersuggest to Deliver Better SEO Reports to Their Clients - Link Building

This report will give you an idea of what sites are currently linking to competitor websites.

With this information, you can gain an understanding of the types of content high-quality sites are looking to link to. In some cases, your client may need to create such content for this strategy to work.

As your client works to build their backlink profile, you can run the Backlinks Overview report. This will show them:

  • your clients’ domain authority
  • how many domains are linking back to them
  • number of backlinks to your client’s website
  • change in backlinks and referring domains over time
  • new and lost referring domains and more

As clients typically rely heavily on marketing agencies for backlink support and opportunities, both of these Ubersuggest reports are crucial to your decision-making process and goal completion analysis.

7. They Use the Chrome Extension

The Ubersuggest Chrome extension has over 300,000 users.

As busy as agencies can get, they’re more likely to use the tools that are most readily available. That’s why so many agencies love Ubersuggest for client SEO reports, especially when it comes to the Chrome Extension.

The Ubersuggest Chrome Extension enables you to make the most of your research time.

That’s because you can learn key information while performing live searches on Google, YouTube, and Amazon, including:

  • paid and organic analytics
  • mobile and desktop search numbers
  • related keyword suggestions

Beyond the search results, you can also perform an SEO analysis of your client’s website and their competitors in real-time. This information can then supplement the reports you pull from Ubersuggest to provide even greater insight to your clients.

8. They Use the Google Analytics Integration

Google Analytics is used by 85.9 percent of all websites whose traffic analysis tool is known. With that in mind, Ubersuggest has been optimized to integrate directly with the analysis powerhouse.

Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for client websites of every type. With Ubersuggest, you can connect your clients’ Google Analytics accounts to their ongoing SEO reports.

Alongside the other data provided by Ubersuggest and its various dashboard modules, you can also see:

  • organic visitors
  • historical traffic data
  • data for mobile and desktop browsers

You will also have the ability to see the data for the day, week, or month so you can truly tailor it to your analysis needs for any given moment in time.

Using the Google Analytics integration is easy:

  1. From your client’s dashboard, click “Connect with Google.”
  2. Select the account to sign in with, or select “Use another account” if the account you need isn’t listed.
  3. Select the property and click “Connect.”

From here, you will see additional modules added to the dashboard with that property’s Google Analytics data.

How Agencies Use Ubersuggest Frequently Asked Questions

Where does Ubersuggest get its data?

Ubersuggest gets its data from various sources, most notably the Google Ads API and Google Suggest. Its integration with Google Analytics also provides an additional source of data for analysis. This makes it a great tool for conducting client SEO reports.

What is the main use for Ubersuggest?

As an SEO tool, Ubersuggest offers brands and agencies the opportunity to reverse engineer the SEO techniques of their competitors. You can see what works for your competitors using the suite of reporting tools and make educated decisions based on the data.

Can I use Ubersuggest for free?

There is a free version of Ubersuggest that allows users to perform three searches per day for keyword analysis, competitor analysis, and site performance. For agencies managing multiple client SEO projects, you will need the paid version.

Is Ubersuggest software?

Ubersuggest is a web-based SEO tool. You can access it on any computer as long as you have internet and your account login details.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Where does Ubersuggest get its data?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

Ubersuggest gets its data from various sources, most notably the Google Ads API and Google Suggest. Its integration with Google Analytics also provides an additional source of data for analysis. This makes it a great tool for conducting client SEO reports.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What is the main use for Ubersuggest?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

As an SEO tool, Ubersuggest offers brands and agencies the opportunity to reverse engineer the SEO techniques of their competitors. You can see what works for your competitors using the suite of reporting tools and make educated decisions based on the data.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Can I use Ubersuggest for free?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

There is a free version of Ubersuggest that allows users to perform three searches per day for keyword analysis, competitor analysis, and site performance. For agencies managing multiple client SEO projects, you will need the paid version.


}
}
, {
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Is Ubersuggest software?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: ”

Ubersuggest is a web-based SEO tool. You can access it on any computer as long as you have internet and your account login details.


}
}
]
}

Conclusion: How Agencies Use Ubersuggest For Client SEO Reporting

Ubersuggest is an easy-to-use tool with in-depth reports which enable you to offer a best-in-class client SEO report.

When you use Ubersuggest as an agency, you can manage multiple clients’ websites with just a few clicks.

Best of all, you can see how your recommendations are affecting your clients’ websites in real-time.

While client SEO changes can take time to have a huge impact on rankings, there are plenty of other metrics to track, including traffic, backlinks, and site speed.

Which of the above reports are you most excited to run?

What Digital Agencies Need to Know about ADA Compliance: Paper.li Blogs & More

Are you digital providing marketing services? Is usability and ADA compliance part of your auditing process? If not, you are missing out… Here’s why: What is ADA Compliance? ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for … The post What Digital Agencies Need to Know about ADA Compliance: Paper.li Blogs & More appeared first on Paper.li … Continue reading What Digital Agencies Need to Know about ADA Compliance: Paper.li Blogs & More

What Digital Agencies Need to Know about ADA Compliance: Paper.li Blogs & More

Are you digital providing marketing services? Is usability and ADA compliance part of your auditing process? If not, you are missing out… Here’s why: What is ADA Compliance? ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for …

The post What Digital Agencies Need to Know about ADA Compliance: Paper.li Blogs & More appeared first on Paper.li blog.

Are There More Than 3 Business Credit Reporting Agencies?

There Are More than 3 Business Credit Reporting Agencies, but it All Comes Back to the Big Three

When most people think of business credit reporting agencies, they think if Dun & Bradstreet.  It’s true, the Dun & Bradstreet PAYDEX is one of the scores most commonly used by lenders.  In addition to D&B however, there is Experian and Equifax that are fairly commonly used.

Those aren’t the only three however.  The FICO SBSS score is gaining popularity in the business credit world as an option for business credit scoring.  There are actually a lot more business credit reporting agencies than that, but the one most commonly used outside of the big three of D & B, Experian, and Equifax, is the FICO SBSS.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

Dun & Bradstreet is the Biggest of the Business Credit Reporting Agencies

There are six different Dun & Bradstreet reporting options, all measuring different areas of credit worthiness.   The most commonly used and simplest to understand is the PAYDEX.   Generally speaking, this is the most like the consumer FICO score.  It measures the speed of payment.  It ranges from 1 to 100.  A 70 or higher is “good.” For example, a score of 100 means that the company makes payments in advance, and a score of 1 indicates that they pay 120 days late, or more.

What Other Scores Does Dun & Bradstreet Offer?

In addition to the PAYDEX, these other reporting options are available                   .

●        Delinquency Predictor Score

The delinquency predictor score measures the likelihood the company will not pay, will be late paying, or will fall into bankruptcy.  The scale is 1 to 5, and a 2 is considered good.

●        Financial Stress Score

The financial stress score is a measurement of the pressure on a company’s balance sheet.  That is, it indicates the likelihood of a shutdown within a year.  It measures on a scale of 1 to 5,  with a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 1.  A business with a score of 2  is in good shape.

●        Supplier Evaluation Risk Rating

This rating ranks the odds of a company making it for the next 12 months.  The minimum score is 9 and the maximum is 1.  A company with a score of 5 is good is doing okay.

●        Credit Limit Recommendation

The credit limit recommendation shows a business’s borrowing capacity.  It is a dollar amount recommendation for how much debt a company can handle. Typically, it is used by creditors to determine how much credit to extend.

●        D&B Credit Rating

The credit rating is an estimation of overall business risk on a scale of 4 to 1.  A two is good.  It’s important to note, the rating is given in conjunction with letters.  The combination of the letters and numbers relay the company’s net worth.

Even if there isn’t enough information on a business to assign a regular rating, Dun and Bradstreet will assign what they call a Credit Appraisal Score.  Unlike a full credit score, this is based on number of employees. In addition, there is an alternative rating based on what data is actually available.

The letter portion of this rating cannot be assigned as good or bad since net worth is not necessarily an indicator of how stable a business is.

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

Experian Business Credit Score

Experian offers a number of different scores as well.  Lenders can choose to use any or all of them. Of course, each one tells them something different.  Consequently, it takes all the scores put together to get a complete credit picture from this business credit bureau.  Still, not all lenders look at all the scores that are available.

Intelliscore Plus

The Intelliscore Plus credit score shows credit risk based on statistics.  It is a highly predictive score.  As such, its main purpose is to assist users in making well informed credit decisions.

The Intelliscore scores range from 1 to 100.  The higher your score, the lower your risk class. The opposite is true as well, meaning the lower your score, the higher your risk class.

Score Range Risk Class

76 – 100 Low

51 – 752 Low – Medium

26 – 503 Medium

11 – 254 High – Medium

1 – 105 High

How Does Experian Business Credit Calculate the Intelliscore Plus Score?

One of the things Intelliscore is most known for is the identification of key factors that can indicate how likely a business is to pay their debt.  There are over 800 commercial and owner variables used to calculate an Intelliscore Plus credit score.  Here’s the breakdown:

●        Payment History

This is just your current payment status. It’s how many times accounts have become delinquent.  Additionally, It also shows how many accounts are currently delinquent, as well as your overall trade balance.

●        Frequency

This one shows how many times your accounts have been sent to collections.  It also notes the number of liens and judgments you may have.  Bankruptcies related to your business or personal accounts are included as well.

Frequency can also incorporate information regarding your payment patterns. Were you regularly slow or late with payment? Did you decrease the number of late payments over time? That affects your score.

●        Monetary

This specific factor focuses on how you make use of credit. For example, how much of your available credit are you using right now? Do you have a high ratio of late balances when compared with your credit limits?

Of course, if you are a new business owner, a lot of this information will not exist yet. Intelliscore Plus handles this by using a “blended model” to identify your score. That means that they take your personal consumer credit score into account when determining your business’s credit score.

The Experian Financial Stability Risk Score (FSR)

FSR predicts the potential of a business going bankrupt or not paying its debts.  The score identifies the highest risk businesses by making use of payment and public records. These records include all of the following and more.

  • high use of credit lines
  • severely late payments
  • tax liens
  • judgments
  • collection accounts
  • risk industries
  • length of time in business

business CRAs Credit Suite2

Experian’s Blended Score

This is a one-page report that provides a summary of the business and its owner.  A combined business-owner credit scoring model is more comprehensive than a business or consumer only model.  Blended scores have been found to outperform consumer or business alone by 10 – 20%.

Equifax is Another One of the Bigger Business Credit Reporting Agencies

Equifax shows three distinct business determinations on its business credit reports. These are the Equifax payment index, your business’s credit risk score, and its business failure score.

Similar to the PAYDEX score, Equifax’s payment index, which is a measurement on a scale of 100, shows how many of your small business’s payments were made on time. These include both data from creditors and vendors.

Equifax Credit Risk Score

Equifax’s credit risk score checks how likely it is that your company will become severely delinquent on payments. Scores range from 101 to 992, and they evaluate:

  • Available credit limit on revolving credit accounts, which includes credit cards
  • Your company’s size
  • Proof of any non-financial transactions (such as merchant invoices) which are late or were charged off for two or more billing cycles
  • Length of time since the opening of the earliest financial account

Equifax Business Failure Score

Lastly, Equifax’s business failure score takes a look at the risk of your business shutting down. It runs from 1,000 to 1,600. And it judges these factors:

  • Total balance to total current credit limit average utilization in the past three months
  • The amount of time since the opening of the oldest financial account
  • Your small business’s worst payment status on all trades in the last 24 months
  • Documentation of any non-financial transactions (such as merchant invoices) which are late or are on a charge off for two or more billing cycles

For the credit risk and the business failure scores, a rating of 0 means bankruptcy.

Equifax Scores

A good Equifax score for your business is as follows:

  • Payment Index 0 to 10
  • Credit Risk score 892 to 992
  • Business Failure score 1400 to 1600

Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring.

FICO SBSS

The FICO SBSS, or FICO Liquid Credit Small Business Scoring Service, is the business version of your personal FICO credit score. It was becoming more and more common for lenders to use this score, rather than the Experian or even the D&B Paydex business credit score.

Unlike your personal FICO, the SBSS reports on a scale of 0 to 300. Of course, the higher the better.  However, most lenders require a score of at least 160.

There are few reasons lenders favor this score.  First, FICO uses business credit information from Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax in their business credit score calculation.  Second,they also take into account personal credit score.  Lastly, they consider the lenders preferences for which factors are most important.

Why Rely on Other Credit Reporting Agencies, and How Do Lender Preferences Affect Your Score?

This is a huge difference from other business credit scoring models. The SBSS uses your business credit score from other business credit reporting agencies.  They also use your personal credit score and other financial information such as business assets and revenue. The big change however, is they let the lender decide how much each factor actually affects the score. It is a total global financial picture rolled into one score, and the lender gets to choose which factors have the most impact.

This means you almost always go  into a lender totally blind as to what your FICO SBSS credit score may be. Here is how it works.

How Lenders Get Your FICO SBSS Business Credit Score

  1. You turn in your application and all necessary financial documentation to the lender.

 

  1. The lender processes this information and sends it to FICO with a request for your SBSS score.

 

2.5. This is where it gets interesting. The lender can weight certain factors that make up your SBSS score. Your score can vary depending on how a lender weights each factor. For example, a lender can put more weight on your personal credit score or your business credit. It is their choice. This means your FICO SBSS can change from lender to lender even if you haven’t done anything to change it.

 

  1. FICO then searches business credit information from business credit agencies including D&B, Experian, and Equifax. Since these business credit reporting agencies have already scored the business side of things, the FICO SBSS just used the data from them for that piece of their calculation. If they cannot pull enough scoring information from one, they move on to the next. If there is not enough information from any of them, then it uses personal credit and business financials only.

 

  1. Using the lender’s weighting preferences, personal credit, business credit, and business financial data the system calculates the FICO SBSS score.

 

  1. You get either approval or denial based on your score.

SBA Credit Scoring

In 2012 the SBA began using credit scoring in the loan approval process. Since 2014, they have used it on all loans up to $350,000, not including the SBA Express and Export Express.

They use the FICO SBSS out of all the business credit reporting agencies for their scoring needs.  This is likely because by doing so, they get information from the other major business credit reporting agencies plus some.

The information they receive from FICO SBSS helps them to expedite credit decisions. In fact, overall statistics on the $60 billion-plus portfolio at the Small Business Administration show that those businesses with scores at or above the 140 cut-off have had very good payment history.

While the minimum required credit score is 140, the SBA usually will not approve applications until the borrower’s score is 160 or higher.  Some lenders would rather see even higher scores.  An ideal minimum is 180.

There Are More Than Three Business Credit Reporting Agencies

The truth is, there are definitely more than three business credit reporting agencies. The FICO SBSS is just one that many do not know about.  However, like many of the other business credit reporting agencies, they use information from the big three, D&B, Experian, and Equifax, in their calculations.   What does this mean for your business?  Pretty much regardless of which of the business credit reporting agencies your lender uses, the big three are likely still going to impact your score in some way. Also, it means you cannot ignore your personal credit score.  It can make a difference on your ability to get funding even when using your business credit.

 

The post Are There More Than 3 Business Credit Reporting Agencies? appeared first on Credit Suite.