The Truth About In-House SEO

Online marketing requires a level of constant attention, so the general thought is for companies to use in-house SEO manager or team to handle the work instead of hiring an outside agency .

There are a few things wrong with this strategy so lets first start with the people side of business.

If you want to find a good in-house SEO specialist, you first have to focus on how much you are going to pay them versus how much their skills are worth versus what your overall budget is to achieve company goals are.

On top of this, businesses need to ensure that there are enough projects to keep the person busy so they aren’t wasting time doing busy work. This is almost never put into consideration when thinking about SEO employment decisions, and the impact becomes financially clear quickly.

 What Does In-House SEO Really Cost

The reality is, that an SEO professional with very little experience is usually paid a starting salary of around £20,000 to £30,000 per year, and for a management position, it is usually around £35,000 and up.

However, on average you can expect to pay around £45,000 for someone who knows what there doing (an expert).



It's important to understand that this is the cost of a single employee. If you are looking to build a small team  to support your brand, then this becomes the cost per position, and you should budget accordingly

I know these are big numbers, so feel free to visit any job search website and see for yourself, in house SEO is not a cheap strategy.

SEO Software Is A Requirement That Isn't Cheap

If you haven’t been scared of yet, then the next important point to raise is the cost of tools. There is no question that most search marketing experts live and die by which SEO tools they choose to use, especially for technical SEO.

In fact in many cases these SEO tools can help further knowledge development through analytics providing tips to help team make better decisions. Tools are great as they can help with things like social media sharing on a site like Facebook , Twitter, Google+, and even YouTube.

They can help with mobile marketing strategies, time management or provide great resources to learn and find new sales opportunities.

The issue with tools is that as an outside agency, SEO teams will have access to these resources, while hiring an SEO employee won’t. This means you’re going to have to fit the bill on more programs then your company already has at its location.

The fun part is (IT'S NOT REALLY FUN), that due to the joy of modern marketing, most of these tools are monthly paid services, so over the course of a few months or even years, you will not only be paying a monthly wage to an employee, but also to software companies as well.

I'm sure you are thinking that you can get by with free software, however many SAAS providers will provide you with a free version or even a one off payment, but they will then charge you for continued updates, and it becomes impossible to use the software or scale online without them.

It's important to state that all tools are not created equal, and that most internet teams have at least two to three that they use consistently to help an individual website. While there is loads of technical info out there about what to use there are some industry standards that are recommended no matter what your enterprise is.

I would assume you only know about a few SEO tools, right?

This will mean that your lack of knowledge will have to default to your newly acquired in-house SEO expert, and they will be in charge of large software purchases used to grow your digital web visibility.

I know if I had a blank cheque there are loads of cools items and gadgets I would get. Not necessarily because I needed them, but really to prove that I didn’t, and as an owner you should be aware, WE ALL THINK LIKE THIS .

By hiring an outside agency these tasks become irrelevant and you save yourself loads of money by making one monthly investment.

Okay so I would love to stop right there and say that’s the full picture but it just isn’t true. By now you should be able to spot at least one problem for you hiring an in-house employee for your SEO, and what this means for the future of your enterprise. However in case you need me to raise a few more points to clarify further,  then lets keep going.

Check The Numbers Yourself

If you remove the search engine, the links, the keywords, the content, and all the analytics data from the table you’re left with one specific fact, and that’s that you have just hired an employee, and employees cost money no matter if we are talking about an in-house SEO, PPC, finance, HR, customer service, anything. They also cost even if there is no work for them.

Don’t think that the yearly salary you pay is the actual cost of your new employee, because it comes to way more than that.

I think too many times owners and executives take the approach that they need something done, so the strategy is always to hire someone to do it.



However, what happens when there isn’t any work to do, or you aren’t seeing the results that you expected? Well naturally you’re stuck with an employee. That’s when companies start redundancies, because they hired more people then they actually needed in the first place, and when the money runs low someone has to go, to keep margins looking healthy.

There is an article that does a great job of breaking down the true cost of an employee. All you have to do is type the numbers in the form and it gives you a report detailing how much it would actually cost to hire someone at a desired wage based on a set of specific details. It a simple process that will guide you from beginning to end.

The one thing I found amazing about this page, was that almost every-time I input the wage the cost of an employee was always £6,000-£20,000 more than the base salary.

Since reading the article I have used loads of these online pages and they all provide the same results. You can check out the link here for the best one I have found so far. Click Here and read for yourself.

So on top of the cost of in house SEO training and tools, you have the basic cost of hiring and employee. You are welcome to research and verify, however financially you are going to hear pretty much the same thing. Building a business this way in this new interactive world is a broken system and it will be very difficult for you to see any real level of success this way. This becomes even clearer when related to ecommerce sites

What Modern Efficient Growth Looks Like?

Now here is where every company needs to be clear. Are You Ready? You can hire a full working team of top SEOs that have the experience and knowledge to push your business forward without breaking the bank.

Most agencies have either a team of specialists, or have partners that they closely work with to make sure they are providing the best service possible while ensuring that it is integrated with your company’s ideas so marketing looks seamless and your customers or clients reward you for it.

Your opportunity for sales growth is multiplied while spending less. Seems like a clear win win scenario, right?

So in summary, when it comes down to it no matter what the product or service Google doesn’t care whether your ad campaign was created by an internal SEO employee, or by an outside SEO team or agency, so why should you?

Simple, you shouldn’t.

You should do what makes you money, and I think that has been clarified above. Any decent agency will guarantee that your privacy is always first and will always work in an ethical manner to ensure you achieve sustainable and respectable results.

 Okay, I know some agencies are just bad, even some of the larger ones. With that being said, don't hire a company just because you saw them on the news, or because they have a huge media presence.

The hiring process is the same as if you were hiring the candidate for your in-house SEO role. Start with the companies that are local and work your way out and create a list of who you like.

Then start to connect with them, and maybe invite a few in to pitch. The main upside to this is, you are in control of the process so you don’t need to pay more than you have to. As long as you are clear on your goals and budget.

Now yes I am going to say that you should speak to us first to help you with your SEO, but honestly you should just start looking to see what's right for your business.