To continue with the popular guest post series, I have asked Jo Turnbull of seojoblogs.com fame to write about search engine optimisation, or SEO. This is a subject I am particularly keen to learn more about as I’ve recently instructed an SEO agency for one of my clients and the results have been less than electric.
In any case, over to Jo for her post on whether to do your SEO in house or via an agency…
SEO – in house or agency?
When you start thinking about implementing an SEO strategy, there are two options:
- Bring the SEO inhouse and have one person or a team looking after the SEO.
- Use an seo agency who will be managed by one person in your company.
I have worked both client and agency side and have written the pros and cons of each in this post.
Advantages of using an SEO agency:
- Specialists – the people at the agency are the specialists in the field. They have experience in working on numerous websites, optimizing them for seo. They know what works and what doesn’t.
- Team – there is a dedicated team at the agency who will be working on your site.
- Integrated search strategy – you may be offered the opportunity to work with the paid search team, driving traffic for specific campaigns.
Disadvantages of an SEO agency
- Expensive – it can cost anywhere from 5,000 pounds to 25,000 pounds for one year of work from an seo agency.
- Commitment – most agencies want to sign a client up for at least a year with a retainer clause.
- Account management – unless stated in the contract, you may not have an account manager meaning it is unclear who is working on your site. With high turn over rates at agencies, it may just be only one person working on your site with little support from the rest of the team.
Now you have seen the pros and cons of an agency, you may want to bring SEO in house, but wait, read the below first…..
Advantages of in house SEO
- Cost – the member of staff that is working on the seo for the site is already employed by the company to carry out a particular job. Therefore the company does not have to shelve out anymore money for the employee to work on seo.
- Knowledge is power – it is important that those who own the site, know as much as possible about it. Those that already work for the company have a good understanding of its products and services and therefore are able to optimize the site easier than those who know nothing about the company.
- Team – this ties in with the second point. If the employee knows the company well, they should also know the people well and can liaise with the tech and marketing team to help them implement the seo recommendations.
Disadvantages of in house seo
- Training – many people client side may not be fully aware of what seo is and how it can benefit the site. Therefore a lot of education and training needs to be carried out to make sure everyone is behind the seo team or manager.
- Over worked – sometimes seo is under estimated and people do not think it is a full time job. There be a marketing manager that has been told to do seo as well as his/her full time job which means he/she is overworked.
- Attention to detail –this ties in with the last point. If the staff are overworked, they have no time to check out the search news and how they can implement this to address issues with their site.
The solution to SEO is dependant on the size of your website and the company’s needs.
From personal experience, if you have a small website, I would encourage companies to hire consultants who have experience who then can come in and work with the client. This way they are also showing the client in a step by step way how they can increase visibility of the client’s website. The other advantage of a consultant, is that they can be cheaper and can be used on an adhoc basis without being tied in for a year. Their work is very transparent and therefore it is obvious if they are good or not.
All solutions should be well thought through, because even though some are cheaper than others, it is still time that will be spent on a project. Money, you can get back, but time, you never will. So choose wisely, the SEO path you want to follow.
Now a days the SEO compition is rising day by day this post help me to make my SEO techniques better thanks nice Article.
hey that a great comparison between in house or agency base SEO but i will prefer in house SEO because having a in house SEO team will give more benefits.
SEO is a critical part for any blog or website.Thats why nowadays many seo masters are now creating more seo agency or company.
thank you very much…
this post is very helpfull to increase our knowledge…
Thanks for the great comparsions between both options for SEO. Great post.
SEO competition is increase day by day many of web competitors hire SEO specialist but your post is speak more Than seo specialist i take lesson from your post .
Thanks for nice Share.
Though we can tell that SEO in house has less training but if you have set up strategy to increase ones knowledge, one should be able to learn and be equipped. For startups, money is important so financial aspect of SEO should be considered. There are some even if in house are still worth or is as competitive as in agency.
Yeah you are right about the seo agencies advantages and disadvantages but I got to know about a seo agency who provide seo assistance from a month to a year plans & that too on the cost of your doggy’s monthly food expense isn’t that good to see! In fact I also have a 6 months SEO associate for my site who works entirely only for my site! if you please forward their email add. (seo511@yahoomail.com) to all the needy persons !
thanks!
very good presentation of the pros and cons. from my experience it really shouldn’t be underestimated what knowledge and experience SEO requires. to think it just can be done in-house for cost-reasons can back-fire if you don’t see any results…as you said, especially smaller companies should consider to hire a seo agency or consultant at least – in the end, seo is still one of the most cost-effective online marketing techniques around.
It is more cheaper in hiring SEO’s in house rather than hiring SEO’s from agency that would cost you more
i think everyone can do inhouse seo. or yes..if u can make more money than spending on agency seo than yes. outsource
Really good points about SEO, however is it really necessary for a person to be working on the clients site for almost a year, factors such as whether its a small business or a large needs to be addressed, and also was the aim of the SEO agency to reach the clients site to page 1?
I’m doing some in house SEO. Strategies that gives you good results may be duplicated to some of your other sites – that would save you some money.
Seo is always important if you want your website found. Doing it in house or outsourcing really depends on how much competition is there for the keywords that you are targeting. If you have a lot of competition then outsource it to save you some time. While it may cost more to outsource it up front, in the long run it should save you in your time investment.
They are goods and bads to having SEO outside of the business. Some small business don’t have funds to have full time SEO on payroll which at that time outsourcing is the best thing for them. If business can afford to have full time SEO then by all mean hire away :)
Perfect guide for everyone going to start its own SEO business. You are quite correct SEO is not so fair and easy as it seems to be for the first sight. I think a person requires certain period of time to get into the details of this job. The more time he or she is involved into SEO – the more experience and profit he or she receives. As for me, I vote for SEO in house. :)
Interesing article, thanks.
SEO is all about the budget you have – big or small you can do a great job!
Now a days the SEO compition is rising day by day this post help me to make my SEO techniques better thanks nice Article. Bursa indirim
i have learned SEO techniques all by myself.Well i met a guy, an outsourcing expert and internet marketing expert. He encouraged me to learn SEO on http://www.search-engine-marketing-unleashed.com/ . Here all secrets are revealed. So i recommend you guys visit this site and also his blog.
Wow i was really amazed by him. Here you are check this and send me your feedbacks http://rajeevkistoo.com/
Very interesting article, I’d never use an SEO agency – total waste of money. We are one of the biggest web design and SEO companies in the UK, and we have ‘departments’ one SEO and the other WEB DESIGN. This way we can always track each site and not have to rely on agencies on the other side of the world. Its not hard to do both, its just a case of monitoring each individual site.
I get 10 emails a day from people offering SEO services to us, we prefer in house solutions because we hired a US based firm once and they broke so many rules, staggering. Our own SEO has proven to be very effective, so why outsource? perhaps when we grow too big and fat to do anything on our own.
I don´t really know much about SEO but with wordpress and different plugins used for SEO I dont think that you have to know that much. I bellieve that writing good content and submitting to the article directories is good.It is only recently that I have discovered the power of article marketing, and I have to say that I am truely amazed at the spead that my articles are starting to show up around the web. At first I found it very difficult to get started and get ideas, now it seems to flow a litte easier, but I still cant write enough articles, and I don´t want to use article spinners, so instead I rely on the good content that I create,and I´m prepared to wait for the results.
Hi Wolfgang,
I think any SEO consultant worth his salt will agree with you on the value of good content and certainly by writing a blog that adds value you will help your website get ranked in the seach engines. Artciles are great too as you suggest although in the past I’ve found my content scraped and pasted into blogs, so be careful on that front.
Cheers,
Andy
As you (rightly) said, it really depends on the size of the company – but also on the importance of the website. It’s always important to remember that websites have a cost associated with them, even if it’s just an investment of time. Adding to that investment by spending money on SEO (whether internal or external) needs to be worth it in the long run: BAA or the Underground doesn’t need much effort, as visitors to the site are there for a specific reason, and traffic won’t increase just because the homepage scores better for a search term. On the other hand, a generic services or online sales site in a competitive environment (hoping to generate additional income) needs to spend to earn.
I prefer the agency.
great article, i will prefer the the first one “SEO as house” , as you have already explained that here we can make good strategies, because we will have good opportunity of having discussion and team work. so i like that to work in.
thanks for sharing.