In-house SEOs generally don’t get much of a voice in our industry. I spent my entire SEO career working from the agency side, years before setting up NeoMam. At the early stages of our agency, most of our work was sold through some of the largest agencies in the UK.
Over the past few years I have seen a large number of skilled practitioners move in-house and I have been very impressed with what they have been able to achieve, compared to what I saw from agencies.
In this post, I have worked with a number of the top in-house SEO’s in our industry to understand some of the benefits of working in-house over choosing an agency.
Here are five reasons why you should bring SEO in-house:
The days of a cookie cutter approach to SEO are over. You can no longer have one process that can be applied directly to every type of client. Agencies are also businesses and providing a customised service for every client will quickly become costly.
When SEO was more about the purchasing of anchor text links, there was far less need for complex changes from the client’s side. SEO in 2016 is far more technical and any supporting content marketing requires significant input from marketing, branding, PR and product teams.
An in-house team is built from the ground up to support the unique issues facing that company and have a far bigger chance of providing a return on investment.
“Just over two years ago I made the decision at Debenhams to remove our SEO agency and invest in an in-house SEO team and since then have never looked back.
All of the issues and struggles that we used to have with an agency disappeared almost immediately. We no longer waste time debating why targets are being missed, spend a significant proportion of the SEO budget on management fees and have to explain for the 20th time why renaming an entire category or implementing canonical tags will take over one year to achieve.
Agency priorities and in-house priorities were often very misaligned which was evidenced by Debenhams going through 3 different SEO agencies within three years. The agencies were too slow to provide support and just couldn’t adapt to suit our ways of working and provide the bespoke service that we required.
Within two years I’ve grown my team from 1 to 10 people who are all completely aligned with the needs of the business. They know who to speak to, how to speak to them and what to say to obtain sign off and support. They know what SEO activity is achievable, are commercially focused with what will deliver profit (not revenue) and what will create a positive impression with the PR team. Not only that but we are now incredibly reactive, we provide insight and support across the business within the hour without having to wait for an agency response or a PowerPoint 5 days later and can provide immediate training. With a greater presence of SEOs within head office, we are in more meetings and influencing decision-making every day of the week whether it be what content to produce and what the website should look like right up to buying level where our insight often feeds into what the buyers should be buying for the UK market.
Not every business will be the same; we are a very large organisation compared to most, however for Debenhams the in-house setup has achieved significantly greater results than any of the previous agency relationships.”
“Usually, in-house teams can react a lot faster and action new plans much quicker than agencies. This is partly due to the lower amount of communication levels that is required and partly because in-house SEO teams learn the business much more than agencies. They know what they can and can’t do based on previous experience with creative directors but also know what angles that they can play with.”
Getting SEO advice implemented is a big challenge, especially with large enterprise clients. With an internal team, you can break down the ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality and find a way to get SEO implemented quicker.
When you compare an outside agency that meets with their client sporadically against a team working together in the same office every day of the week, it’s clear who has more power to get changes actioned.
“Working with the internal IT team helps get implementation done quickly. Currently, we were working on getting videos embedded and from an agency that could take 6 months plus.
Now that I’m in-house (worked agency 4 yrs) it’s safe to say that being in-house has helped pushed, and reduced cost, to make the site a better all around experience”
“If the organisation has in-house SEO function, there’s usually a good chance they understand the value SEO can provide, and as such you can often be in a better position to action any changes you need that may not be directly within your sphere of influence (for example technical changes to the website).”
“Working as an in-house SEO manager with the support of a development and content team allows for responsive implementation of ideas. With increasing competition for results, as well as rising investment in SEO, the ability to act swiftly has never been more important.
In contrast to an agency environment, in-house SEOs are able to stay ahead of the competition by removing the barriers to production. This all too often can hold a project back and devalue the relevancy and competitive elements at the time of release.”
Modern SEO can no longer exist in its silo. Good SEO campaigns need support from the head of marketing and above. Without approval from the leadership team, it’s likely that SEO won’t receive the support from the wider business.
An internal SEO team can build strong relationships and educate the wider team on the benefits of SEO. In comparison, an SEO agency will have to rely on pre-existing relationships and the monthly or quarterly meetings with department heads.
“Having a full 360 view of what’s going on in the business and ability to impact internal decisions is, in my opinion, the biggest benefit of an in-house SEO team. External SEO agencies face a substantial internal barrier when it comes to a decision-making process and rely on internal people to get things done. That’s not the case for in-house SEO team who are heavily involved in decisions as the internal stakeholders understand the implications of not looping in the SEO team.
Being in-house also mean you get to see the full impact of your actions on the business which is highly rewarding and challenging at the same time.”
“Having worked as a Head of SEO for one of the biggest companies in the UK, where your responsibility is to set strategy and educate, inspire and more often than not, be a politician (in the corporate sense) so your team can drive for the success of your SEO strategy.”
There are many benefits to working with a search marketing agency, but it is inevitable that you will never be that agency’s sole focus. One of the benefits of bringing the function in-house is the ability to focus on your site and business needs to gain a really detailed understanding of what is happening.
Search is getting more, rather than less, complicated. In some respects (such as outreach) it is also getting much harder. As such, the role of specialist agencies that complete specific tasks as part of your strategy becomes vital.
“Having not long left an agency I’ve immediately noticed the amount of focus you can give a site when dedicated to it every day. Organic search is more complex than it has ever been, and if you really want to move a site forwards it demands focus. There are a lot of factors to consider and testing is vital to success in SEO.
I think often the client-agency relationship is too focused on the ‘expertise’ of agencies, when in reality there are not many situations and decisions in search that are not subjective. I can now see the benefit of having an overarching view on what is happening and then bringing specialist agencies or consultants to do a specific job.”
“In competitive search verticals it’s really important to closely monitor and audit your backlink profile. Unfortunately, this has to be a weekly task in our industry and takes up a lot of time.
Doing this in-house is the only way to keep this process cost effective.”
One of the biggest challenges for SEO in 2016 is producing high quality content that is relevant to your brand. Agencies spend a lot of time trying to understand a business but there is a limit to how much time they can spend with each client.
In-house teams sit with the wider business and can uncover opportunities that an agency might miss. They will find it easier to uncover knowledge and talent within the business that can be leveraged to create content that stands out from competitors.
“With a greater presence of SEOs within head office, we are in more meetings and influencing decision making every day of the week whether it be what content to produce and what the website should look like right up to buying level where our insight often feeds into what the buyers should be buying for the UK market.”
“From my perspective bringing SEO in-house can lead to greater oversight of content and keyword opportunities. Whether it’s an ad hoc discussion with a customer service colleague or a marketing meeting with senior staff, those lightbulb moments of great content can come from anywhere at anytime.
An in-house team can be much better placed to pick up on these opportunities and then rapidly capitalise on them. If it’s done right and it leverages the rich experience within the business, these content ideas can often pre-empt ad hoc or seasonal changes in search volume and push your content ahead of your competitors.
Additionally, an internal SEO team are more likely to ensure that the source of those ideas is officially acknowledged, thus improving internal PR for the department and improving company cooperation. In my experience, sourcing ideas from internal teams, creating great content which ranks, and then feeding those results back into the wider team, is the best way to secure and improve buy-in for SEO and future content spend.“
“No one is better equipped to continuously develop a company’s SEO strategy than a SEO professional that works in-house. This is irrevocably true for a simple, but extremely important reason: the in-house professional knows the service/product and the company’s audience in a way that is impossible for someone working from the outside. Knowing your people and planning with them in mind is the basis of a successful SEO strategy.”
I am certain that many SEO agency owners will disagree with many of the points brought up by this post.
I personally believe our industry is changing dramatically and that the old agency model is outdated to fit the current challenge of competing online.
NeoMam has always been about specialisation to the detriment of missing out on other types of work:
We don’t do SEO strategy
We don’t do keyword research
We don’t do technical SEO recommendations
We don’t help with site migration
We don’t do PPC
We don’t touch your newsletter
We do create awesome content and guarantee that big name publishers are going to pick it up.
I expect over the next 5 years we are going to see more agencies become experts at their specific skill set and see far less of the generalist agencies that provide everything under one roof.
And in 10 years it will likely all change again as we know the SEO industry doesn’t stand still.
Be sure to leave your comments below as I am keen to hear from both sides of this debate.
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6 thoughts on “5 reasons why you should bring SEO in-house”
While I agree with some of these points, and have seen first hand evidence of why it can be better to keep SEO in-house, I think that there are also compelling arguments against this. In the fist place, it is my firm belief that SEO is dead in its own right. SEO by its very nature relies on focus toward ranking your website, and that is where it ends. As Google and other engines do not want your website to rank (despite their protestations to the contrary) – it is more and more difficult to succeed in organic listing of major key phrases. It is quite true that you not only need to understand the signals the search engine gives as to how it engages with your pages, but also how viewers do. In my experience, there are very few people, let alone agencies who get this. If you have an in-house SEO team you are reliant (as you are with an agency) on their knowledge and understanding of how to rank. For example. are they commercial? do they understand their audience? do they look not just at ranking but conversion? Have they got a social media handle? Can they code? Do they understand website?
I build my agency on these foundations. It is interesting that Debenhams was cited as an example of success in-house. Of course, with over 9.7million organic visitors a month to their site, 66,900 PPC visitors, 153,700 back links to their site, and 485,253 listings in the top 100 in Google, you would be pleased to be associated with these numbers. However, you are still paying (probably) a team of staff to complete this work, and even though this is bringing riches, when you scratch the surface of the site, I can tell you five things about it:
1. The brand carries the business. Most conversion is on brand-based phrases
2. The PPC traffic looks to have decreased 25% in the past 30 days.
3. Most product or category based search phrases (whether in the top 10 of Google or not, appear not convert more than 1% of overall traffic.
4. The PPC equivalent cost of this traffic is £3.8 million per month.
5. Traffic has not really increased or decreased in the past 12 months. So no improvement to show.
So, as I never assume anything from a client requirement, I would ask the business whether this was firstly an accurate picture, secondly I would not assume their needs, but work with them to create an holistic campaign, and then plan and improve on (typically) a consultative level to offer more to their team.
As a conclusion therefore, I would say that if you have the right agency, with people carrying over 20 years of experience online, then you might find that you can gain but perhaps not either or, but both together working as a team in its own right.
I have unfortunately the experience of supporting many many people who have been ripped off in SEO or web design and development a lot of people have lost there small businesses because of a toad in the business. Learn all you need to be able to do it yourself, you may not get to the top ranking as quick but your way will be ethical and have longevity.
I am sorry to hear that and thanks for the comment.
I know many agencies that are certainly not toads but I am aware there are many that prey on small businesses.
I think the big challenge is that most good agencies start at prices that are out of budget for most small businesses. The reality is that impactful SEO campaigns in 2016 have significant costs. Hiring an SEO agency for less than £5k per month is usually not recommended.
At NeoMam we provide only the link building aspect of a campaign and it starts at £5k per month although is likely overkill for most small/medium size businesses.
With lower budgets, inhouse certainly makes sense and you don’t have to get someone full time straight away.
We hired Chris Wheeler and his company Metalfrog Studios, paying them a total of nearly £20k over 8 months, we are now seriously looking at getting an in house SEO and found this article to make a lot of sense and could help eliminate the dangers associated with hiring SEO agencies.
We have personally asked Chris Wheeler 10 times to provide us with the details of what activity his agency actually carried out in the 8 months and who did the work and 10 time he has refused to provide us with this information.
Our sales went to record low levels and we can find no evidence of any quality SEO / Digital Marketing work being done. We found a lot of keyword stuffed links from very dodgy looking websites and not much else.
We have heard from a lot of other companies who have had similar or worse experiences with Metalfrog and ex Metalfrog employees who have provided information about how the company operates.
SEO is an unregulated industry where literally anyone could set up an agency tmrw and claim they have been ‘online’ for 20 years and promise you the earth.
If you hire an agency how do you know what they are actually doing? If you do SEO in house then at least that person is in your office everyday and you know what they are doing, why they are doing it and how successful it’s being.
We paid Metalfrog £1850 per month + VAT for digital marketing. I’ve been told I could have hired a competent SEO full time and in house for around the same amount – an absolute no brainier for us.
Thanks for the comment SNT.
Sorry to hear you have had a bad experience with a provider.
I’m a big advocate of performance pricing for this very reason. Clients and agencies need to have a clear idea of what is expected to happen and in what time frames and what is success and failure.
Since the start of this year, we now base our pricing on some features we can generate for clients. If we don’t hit them, then we do another campaign for free until we do. (Not a sales pitch – honest)
I always recommend clients on smaller budgets (<£5k per month) to break yearly budget into campaigns rather than the standard monthly retainer model.
Do you need technical SEO of an existing site - purchase this as a separately and compare freelancers/agencies/consultants.
If you need more links or content again, see them as sperate entities and be open to different providers for each.
Some agencies are great at some things and less good at others. By breaking the various activities into campaigns then you spread your risk and also increase your chances of getting a best in class provider for each task.
An SEO in-house will also help you to identify which things you should do internally and those that would be best to be sent to a freelancers/agencies/consultant.
One thing I would tell you (and any other person looking to hire in-house or agency) is to make sure you check in with people in the SEO industry beforehand. We are very close knit and most of us don't want anything bad to happen to any client and like to protect our industry from those looking to ruin it.
We too have suffered at the hands of Metal Frog. No montly reports (which were part of the contract) despite numerous requests. No idea what they did, if anything. Seems like you unfortunately have to kiss a few frogs before you get to your Prince Charming.
While I agree with some of these points, and have seen first hand evidence of why it can be better to keep SEO in-house, I think that there are also compelling arguments against this. In the fist place, it is my firm belief that SEO is dead in its own right. SEO by its very nature relies on focus toward ranking your website, and that is where it ends. As Google and other engines do not want your website to rank (despite their protestations to the contrary) – it is more and more difficult to succeed in organic listing of major key phrases. It is quite true that you not only need to understand the signals the search engine gives as to how it engages with your pages, but also how viewers do. In my experience, there are very few people, let alone agencies who get this. If you have an in-house SEO team you are reliant (as you are with an agency) on their knowledge and understanding of how to rank. For example. are they commercial? do they understand their audience? do they look not just at ranking but conversion? Have they got a social media handle? Can they code? Do they understand website?
I build my agency on these foundations. It is interesting that Debenhams was cited as an example of success in-house. Of course, with over 9.7million organic visitors a month to their site, 66,900 PPC visitors, 153,700 back links to their site, and 485,253 listings in the top 100 in Google, you would be pleased to be associated with these numbers. However, you are still paying (probably) a team of staff to complete this work, and even though this is bringing riches, when you scratch the surface of the site, I can tell you five things about it:
1. The brand carries the business. Most conversion is on brand-based phrases
2. The PPC traffic looks to have decreased 25% in the past 30 days.
3. Most product or category based search phrases (whether in the top 10 of Google or not, appear not convert more than 1% of overall traffic.
4. The PPC equivalent cost of this traffic is £3.8 million per month.
5. Traffic has not really increased or decreased in the past 12 months. So no improvement to show.
So, as I never assume anything from a client requirement, I would ask the business whether this was firstly an accurate picture, secondly I would not assume their needs, but work with them to create an holistic campaign, and then plan and improve on (typically) a consultative level to offer more to their team.
As a conclusion therefore, I would say that if you have the right agency, with people carrying over 20 years of experience online, then you might find that you can gain but perhaps not either or, but both together working as a team in its own right.
I have unfortunately the experience of supporting many many people who have been ripped off in SEO or web design and development a lot of people have lost there small businesses because of a toad in the business. Learn all you need to be able to do it yourself, you may not get to the top ranking as quick but your way will be ethical and have longevity.
I am sorry to hear that and thanks for the comment.
I know many agencies that are certainly not toads but I am aware there are many that prey on small businesses.
I think the big challenge is that most good agencies start at prices that are out of budget for most small businesses. The reality is that impactful SEO campaigns in 2016 have significant costs. Hiring an SEO agency for less than £5k per month is usually not recommended.
At NeoMam we provide only the link building aspect of a campaign and it starts at £5k per month although is likely overkill for most small/medium size businesses.
With lower budgets, inhouse certainly makes sense and you don’t have to get someone full time straight away.
We hired Chris Wheeler and his company Metalfrog Studios, paying them a total of nearly £20k over 8 months, we are now seriously looking at getting an in house SEO and found this article to make a lot of sense and could help eliminate the dangers associated with hiring SEO agencies.
We have personally asked Chris Wheeler 10 times to provide us with the details of what activity his agency actually carried out in the 8 months and who did the work and 10 time he has refused to provide us with this information.
Our sales went to record low levels and we can find no evidence of any quality SEO / Digital Marketing work being done. We found a lot of keyword stuffed links from very dodgy looking websites and not much else.
We have heard from a lot of other companies who have had similar or worse experiences with Metalfrog and ex Metalfrog employees who have provided information about how the company operates.
SEO is an unregulated industry where literally anyone could set up an agency tmrw and claim they have been ‘online’ for 20 years and promise you the earth.
If you hire an agency how do you know what they are actually doing? If you do SEO in house then at least that person is in your office everyday and you know what they are doing, why they are doing it and how successful it’s being.
We paid Metalfrog £1850 per month + VAT for digital marketing. I’ve been told I could have hired a competent SEO full time and in house for around the same amount – an absolute no brainier for us.
Thanks for the comment SNT.
Sorry to hear you have had a bad experience with a provider.
I’m a big advocate of performance pricing for this very reason. Clients and agencies need to have a clear idea of what is expected to happen and in what time frames and what is success and failure.
Since the start of this year, we now base our pricing on some features we can generate for clients. If we don’t hit them, then we do another campaign for free until we do. (Not a sales pitch – honest)
I always recommend clients on smaller budgets (<£5k per month) to break yearly budget into campaigns rather than the standard monthly retainer model. Do you need technical SEO of an existing site - purchase this as a separately and compare freelancers/agencies/consultants. If you need more links or content again, see them as sperate entities and be open to different providers for each. Some agencies are great at some things and less good at others. By breaking the various activities into campaigns then you spread your risk and also increase your chances of getting a best in class provider for each task. An SEO in-house will also help you to identify which things you should do internally and those that would be best to be sent to a freelancers/agencies/consultant. One thing I would tell you (and any other person looking to hire in-house or agency) is to make sure you check in with people in the SEO industry beforehand. We are very close knit and most of us don't want anything bad to happen to any client and like to protect our industry from those looking to ruin it.
We too have suffered at the hands of Metal Frog. No montly reports (which were part of the contract) despite numerous requests. No idea what they did, if anything. Seems like you unfortunately have to kiss a few frogs before you get to your Prince Charming.