Outsourced SEO vs In-House SEO – Which is better ?
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Companies trying to get better ranks on the search engines are always asked this question – should they outsource their SEO work to an outsourcing partner or should they hire an in house SEO ?
I was an in house SEO to an MNC once (a stock photo agency with millions of images and pages), and like any other in-house SEO, I had all the mess with me. It was fun, you had to focus all your energy on just one site and you could monitor it 24/7 if you loved it. Life was simple and nice. But not everything is okay being an in house SEO. I had to handle all the project reports myself, all the spreadsheets, seo tools, daily reports and in between all that monitor your site and keep tweaking things to perfection ! But that’s a typical in house SEO job. your entire life revolves around just one website and its entire pages.
However, an outsourced SEO parner could bring in more value to his clients, or so I prefer to beleive. Ask why ?
1 – An outsourced SEO partner brings in more value as he’s probably an expert in his domain.
2 – He might have a team who’d take care of link building and other SEO chores by themselves.
3 – He would probably be updated about the SEO industry since its his business.
4 – Outsourced SEO’s have processes in place like reports/ rank trackers that might fit all.
At the same time outsourced SEO’s can be not so efficient (sometimes, depends on who it is)
1 – He might not be focussed on your project as he has more people like you paying him.
2 – If he screw things up and you won’t probably get a chance to give him a piece of your mind.
Essentially, if you’re a big company its probably better to have your SEO done inhouse with a team of experts. So you might want to hire a few SEO experts. On the other hand, if you are an SME, outsourcing your SEO work to expert hands would be the right choice provided you know what they are doing and who they are.
But I could be wrong. What do you think ?
Is outsourced SEO better or in house SEOs ?
Great Post Mani!
I am currently the in-house SEO for “North America’s largest competitive energy retailer”. Legally I’m not allowed to mention the company by name, but if you search for that term of course you can discover my employer. A little SEO humour!
I am not a one man band. Fortunately I have at my disposal an analytics team and an SEM expert. Which means I concentrate on the day to day optimization. But I still have to do the monthly reports and such, because upper management always wants to know what their ROI is, even on the Organic results.
Could they get better results if everything was outsourced? Probably not. But then again we are not an SME.
In the evening and weekend I have a couple of SME SEO clients and I am almost like the “SEO producer”. I have teams of people doing link building and keyword research. I take care of the On Page Optimization and Analytics reporting.
In my opinion then whether or not to outsource depends on the size of your business and the complexity.
I agree Mike,
I think a lot depends on the size of your company and whether you’d like to keep “things to yourself”, big companies certainly do.
And if you’re having an inhouse team, having a well balanced team of link builders, analytics experst & onsite optimization experts is the way to go.
BTW, I did search the term and found that you’ve done quite a bit of offiste opt stuff.
Lot of articles pointing towards the site. Nice !
Have enjoyed you bringing these to light on twitter. Am actually adding these to my bi-weekly repostings on http://naperdesign.com
TY for pointing out the best articles.
I say inhouse because you know that 100% of the money that you are paying is going to benefit you, and the person you hired is not out doing work on someone else’s project.
In house SEO everytime. Great article
It all depends on the size of the company. Some businesses just can not afford to employ a dedicated individual to handle their SEO, and here the need for an external expert is obvious. For bigger companies it will prove cheaper to do things in-house, but then you’re not assured of the very best….
I am right now an IN House SEO to my blog and i am happy with it.
I’m an in-house SEO and i think it just depends with the situation and none is better.
Great Article! I think both the options of in-house and outsourced can work but under very different circumstances. If we take a simple case study of a SME that sells, lets say, T-shirts online. So, although they can out- source their SEO tasks, but to retain a certain search ranking position that they acquire will need to be continuously monitored. So, in my opinion an ideal solution for this company would be to hire at least a seo mediocre who can actually look after their blogs, directory submissions and social media campaigns. In my opinion. a very bitter truth is that the day you stop producing unique content and stop monitoring your site, your downfall just begins.
Hey, but I can be wrong too! any more ideas on this?
Outsource or In-house?
It really depends on the need of your business. If you are a business owner and want to market your business then go hire for an SEO. Now the question is, which one is better? in-house? or outsource? Well, only you can answer it. Remember that SEO is vital to your business growth and time. Try to make further research on this and ask yourself which one works better for you.