Advantages of outsourcing
Outsourcing or insourcing the tasks is a key decision. The benefits of outsourcing are that you get access to specialised expertise, you save on hiring and training costs, you get results faster, you can scale the effort as needed, and you can easily change the agency if the work is not meeting your expectations.
Conversely, there are also benefits to insourcing. You have full control over the process, full transparency of the work and usually also lower costs on an hourly basis (but typically also lower efficiency). At the same time, it's an advantage for the work that your employees know your company and your industry and can work closely with the company's marketing department.
Review the roles in the text on seo strategy and consider whether you have staff with the skills and time to do all the work. If you choose to insource all the work, be aware that in addition to internal costs, there will at least be external costs for purchasing analytical tools and typically also for link building.
Of course, a combination of insourcing and outsourcing can also be a good solution. Many companies prefer to do the copywriting themselves, while the SEO agency focuses mainly on the more specialised tasks, such as link building and technical analysis.
Insourcing of SEO
Should you hire an in-house SEO expert, or do you need to get help from an external seo office? There are many opinions and arguments for both SEO solutions, and in the end it's about finding the solution that works best for you and your business.
Certainly included in that whole discussion is the fact that it doesn't have to be about an either/or. You can easily have a combination of in-house SEO resources and an external agency. But in this case, we're wearing the agency hat. So here are 8 reasons why insourcing SEO is difficult:
1) It is often cheaper with an agency solution
A skilled SEO resource typically costs a full month's salary. On top of that, of course, there are vacation days, sick leave, pension, and whatever other fixed benefits exist for permanent employees.
An SEO solution from an agency can come in many different price ranges but will always be targeted and tailored to your needs, so you don't pay for anything other than the services you actually receive.
But as Jason DeMers writes at SearchEngineWatch.comFor most businesses today, SEO will be the marketing activity that delivers the greatest ROI, so it is often more interesting to look at the results of your SEO solution than the cost of it alone.
2) A good SEO effort requires many different talents
Serious work with SEO today requires mastering many things: 1) The technical part, which focuses on the actual construction of your site, 2) Content optimization, which is about optimising your content, identifying the right keywords and generally working with SEO on the front-end of the site and 3) Link buildingwhich is about getting the right links and creating a link architecture that works.
It can be difficult to get all these facets covered by a single in-house person. An agency will often be able to draw on many different resources, each with their own expertise.
3) Fresh eyes may be needed
If you work with a permanent SEO resource, there is a high risk that this person will develop a number of blind spots to the challenges you face. Often you will swear by the method you have used in the past and which has produced results, but as an SEO effort has to be dynamic and change over time, this is a dangerous way to approach things.
If you use an external agency instead, you can be sure that a number of people, each with their own background and expertise, are helping to define your SEO solution and efforts.
4) An in-house resource can't solve the big, time-consuming challenges
Some SEO tasks are quick and easy, but there are also many tasks that are very time-consuming. If you have a single SEO resource on staff, it will often be impossible for that person to dive into the most time-consuming challenges on the to-do list. If you hire an outside agency, there will be many who can step in when large time-consuming efforts require it.
5) You already have an employee who can help with SEO
By now, most skilled web workers can work with at least the most basic principles of SEO. So, especially if you have a smaller site, it may be enough for them to do the day-to-day, general optimisation work and then you can hire an agency to help with the SEO solutions that require a little extra.
6) You don't need such a comprehensive SEO solution
In fact, you may not need a full-time SEO resource at all. If you have a smaller site, it will often be much more lucrative to contract an SEO solution with an agency rather than paying a full monthly salary to a permanent in-house resource.
7) Results are slow
After all, if you have hired a permanent SEO resource, that person will only be able to put in a certain number of hours per week. But if you need concrete and measurable results from your SEO solution quickly, it often requires a lot of effort over a short period of time. Such an effort will typically be too large a task for one person to accomplish. Agencies, on the other hand, can turn the effort up or down whenever they need to, as they can continuously allocate resources where they are needed.
8) Internal conditions can hamper SEO efforts
When you are a permanent employee in a company, you will inevitably become part of the policies and conditions that prevail in the company. This is a good thing in a number of ways, but it also means that for the permanent employee, there are many other things besides SEO success that shape everyday life. Otherwise good initiatives can drown in the politics of different departments' internal agendas and priorities, problematic relationships and much more.
An external agency can inherently stay away from all this and instead focus 100% on delivering an SEO solution that delivers tangible results quickly.
Read our advice on choice of SEO agency.
