SEO is complicated. It has several technical, strategic, and content marketing elements, all of which require constant refinement. And then there’s Google, which is constantly changing its algorithms and keeping everyone on their toes.
No wonder many businesses turn to external experts to manage their SEO needs. But if you’re unsure whether that’s the right path for you, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of each approach. In this article, I compare the benefits and pitfalls of working with an SEO agency vs having an in-house SEO team. As a bonus, I also discuss a blended approach and share some free, easy-to-use dashboards with you.
How to choose the best option for your business?
Here are three major factors to consider when deciding between an in-house or agency SEO team:
- Your goals and plans: How big is your scope, and how ambitious are your goals? Will SEO become a long-term priority or something you do on an ad hoc basis? If you’re starting from zero and need to launch a separate project/activity or the whole channel quickly, it’s better to enlist the help of external experts. But if you have time to build it from scratch, an in-house team might work for you.
- Level of SEO expertise: If nobody on your marketing team has an SEO background, it will be hard to develop a channel and achieve consistent results. Hiring someone may also be challenging as you won’t know exactly what to look for. In this case, it’s more efficient to ‘rent’ the services of skilled professionals who can implement a system right away.
- Budget limitations: How much are you willing to spend on SEO overall? Think about the cost of links, content, reporting tools, salaries, training, and team dynamics (cost of onboarding or needing to hire someone new).
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look more closely at the pros and cons of in-house and agency teams.
Would collaboration with an SEO agency fit your needs?
When you partner with an SEO agency, you’ll typically have access to a team of multidisciplinary experts, including an SEO specialist, content writers, link builders, and a digital marketing or project manager. Let’s discuss the positives and negatives of this approach.
Pros of an SEO agency
1. Ability to launch faster
An agency will typically create a roadmap based on your desired goals and provide you with a results forecast. An agency also allows you to launch quickly despite your lack of experience. They bring proven techniques and the expertise to build a project from scratch. This means that you won’t need to spend time on SEO-related activities. The agency will handle it all.
2. No additional overheads or unexpected costs
You’ll typically pay a fixed monthly retainer for SEO agency services. According to Forbes and Ahrefs, the average agency rate ranges from $3,000–$4,000, depending on the package. For example, you’ll pay more for services like paid search management and advanced reporting.
The final cost will depend on your goals, industry, and the stage of your business. It’s expensive, but it can be more cost-effective in the long term. You won’t have to worry about the additional costs of running an in-house team, such as SEO tools subscriptions, hiring and onboarding expenses, maintenance, and development.
3. Easier to scale projects
What happens when you need to scale a project rapidly? For example, let’s say you built your localization strategy and launched a content localization project in an attempt to gain more customers in the French market. It worked! You’re experiencing exponential growth in organic traffic and you’re ready to double down.
If you were to scale this project with an internal team, you might encounter obstacles such as not having enough writers to translate and publish the content, limitations of the translation tool plan, and so on. On the other hand, working with an agency would allow you to scale without losing momentum. No need to extend the team or purchase new tools.
Cons of an SEO agency
1. Finding a reliable agency is a challenge
Plenty of agencies will take your money, do the bare minimum, and then exaggerate their results. It can also be hard to find an agency that communicates regularly and delivers when they say they will. Here are some typical red flags:
- Can’t provide case studies or references, especially for your industry
- Guarantees to get you top rankings instantly
2. Lack of transparency and limited control over activities
You won’t have insight into the day-to-day activities of the agency. It may not be clear which methods they used to promote your website.
Some agencies will use unethical practices like buying cheap low-quality backlinks or delivering poor content to achieve quick results. In the long term, these practices can undermine your search engine rankings and damage your business. The problem is, you may not know about them until it’s too late.
3. May not understand the niche and product well enough
An agency specializing in B2B may not necessarily know how to work with your specific B2B product. Strategies and success requirements can vary by niche and it helps to understand your target audience.
Agencies typically lack the time and resources to fully understand your specific industry. As a result, they may struggle to grasp the nuances of your product or service, making it difficult for them to create customized content and establish a strong online presence.
4. Strict unneeded obligations
Most agencies will ask you to sign a 6-month minimum contract. This can become a problem if you discover it’s not a good match. Considering that most SEO agencies charge upwards of $3K a month, you could waste thousands of dollars before finding the right fit.
5. Security vulnerabilities
A 2024 survey found that 66% of CISOs consider human error to be the biggest threat to their organization’s cybersecurity. Hopefully, you won’t ever have to face the nightmare of a security breach, but working with an agency increases your risk.
To start, you will have to share credentials to give access to essential tools like your CMS, Google Search Console, and GA4 for agencies. There’s a risk that an external specialist could inadvertently expose data from these tools or make a serious error, like installing a third-party plugin that breaks your website template.
Additionally, you’ll need to share internal documentation which may contain sensitive business data. If this data is breached, it could have an irreversible impact on your company’s revenue, SEO ROI, and reputation.
Would an in-house SEO team work for you?
An in-house SEO team offers greater stability and control of the process. But is it too expensive and complex to run? Let’s look at the main benefits of this approach before delving into the drawbacks.
Pros of an in-house SEO team
1. Full control over the process
An in-house approach allows you to be truly agile. You get the freedom to design the entire SEO strategy and set clear standards for implementation. Your team can also choose which activities to prioritize as business needs shift. For example, you might decide to switch off one of the channels in link building to put more effort into PR campaigns before a product update release.
Not only that, but you can adapt to industry trends and algorithm updates right away. SEO analytics and reporting will also be in your wheelhouse, so there’s no chance of being misled by external ‘experts.’
2. Build expertise over time
Team members will gradually become specialists in your product and industry niche. This is important because it lets you:
- Identify and monitor niche-specific opportunities (emerging trends in link building or content creation)
- Understand customer needs and their key pain points to gain a 100% match with their search intent.
- Develop deep product knowledge to promote and sell the product with maximum efficiency.
Take the Coupler.io SEO team, for instance. Our content writers regularly interview knowledge holders from different departments – marketing, finance, data analytics – to increase the value of the content. Meanwhile, our SEOs and link-builders collaborate with other internal specialists to execute complex SEO campaigns.
3. Full-time dedication to a single project
Bringing SEO in-house allows you to be proactive, which is essential for staying competitive and achieving consistent traffic growth. Unlike an agency that manages several client projects at the same time, your in-house team would be fully committed to only your business. There will be eyes on your SEO context every day. Technical issues, like sudden deindexing of pages, can be spotted immediately.
4. Collaborations are more efficient
Communication and knowledge sharing are typically smoother with an in-house team. The team usually has sufficient time to discuss potential collaborations, progress, and results. When it comes to bigger SEO projects, specialists can easily collaborate with stakeholders and experts from different business departments.
This level of synchronization is hard to achieve with an agency or semi-outsourced team. You might have to wait several days for a reply or struggle to stay aligned on the project vision.
5. You can still get the best of both worlds
Having an in-house team doesn’t mean you can’t also collaborate with external specialists. It often makes sense to assign your own specialists to the most challenging and high-priority projects and share the smaller ones with freelancers.
For instance, you might need a freelancer to handle tasks like contacts search for outreach, crowd marketing, or content publishing.
Cons of an In-house SEO team
1. Monthly expenses
Agencies are expensive, but so is running an in-house team. I’m not just talking about subscriptions for tools which can amount to thousands of dollars a month. It also includes salaries for several team members (e.g. SEO manager, SEO specialist, content writers, and link-builders). Then there are ongoing training costs and hiring costs to consider, as well as vacation and sick leave pay. Yeah, it’s a lot.
Based on figures from Glassdoor and Indeed, a senior SEO specialist or SEO manager can expect to earn around $70-77K per year. Meanwhile, the average annual salary for content writers and link-builders in the United States is between $50-60K, with slightly lower rates in Europe.
That’s why an agency can be cheaper than a standard in-house team. But it will depend on the industry, region you hire from, and how big and experienced you need an in-house team to be.
2. Investment in recruitment and team development processes
It’s not easy to recruit multiple specialists and build a synchronized team. First of all, it takes time to hire people with the right skill set and experience. Then you need to onboard and align team members around business goals and marketing strategy.
Consider that the average cost per hire across industries is $4,000, not accounting for indirect costs like the time invested in the hiring process by the marketing team.
3. Limited capacity
When your team needs to scale quickly or tackle a growing problem, hiring more people isn’t always an option. You often have to make do with the specialists – and limited time – that you’ve got. But this can put your goals in jeopardy.
Imagine your team has a backlog of content updates that must be completed by the end of the quarter. You can’t get them done with your team, but you can’t afford not to do them. In this case, you would need to outsource the project, and it will still cost you time and money.
Blended approach: Inhouse SEO + outsourced services
A blended approach is when you employ an in-house SEO specialist/manager who outsources certain aspects of the SEO scope, such as link building or content production. Let’s explore the good and bad about this option.
Pros of a blended approach
1. You maintain ownership of the SEO process
Even though some activities are outsourced, you still have control over core activities and results. Your in-house SEO specialist will gradually become an expert in your niche, ensuring that every project and task aligns with your business goals.
They also serve as gatekeepers, preventing poor-quality links from appearing on your site and making sure content is delivered to a high standard. Every activity is monitored and measured so there’s less room for error.
2. Sometimes easier to scale
In some cases, outsourcing tasks to freelancers allows you to scale projects faster. You can spread the workload among 2 or 3 specialists and assign your in-house SEO manager to oversee delivery. In my experience, though, the quality of deliverables usually drops when you dramatically increase the task load or involve more agency specialists too quickly.
On the other hand, scaling with freelancers is easier because you don’t have to waste money on recruitment or tools for new employees.
3. You can switch things up when needed
If a collaboration with a service provider isn’t working out, you can easily terminate the agreement and move on. There won’t be any complex contracts or offboarding processes to deal with. It’s a matter of finding someone else to cover the context.
Cons of a blended approach
1. Freelancers likely won’t have the necessary expertise
Many freelancers specialize in areas like SaaS, e-commerce, cryptocurrency, and so on. But finding someone who understands the ins and outs of fintech or agro-engineering? That’s a real challenge.
To publish competitive, expert-level content, you need writers who know what they are talking about. First-hand experience, deep industry knowledge, and in-depth research are key. The same goes for link-building specialists. Backlinks from niche-specific domains are precious but hardly achievable with a freelancer.
2. You’ll be highly dependent on external factors
In this dynamic, freelancers have a huge impact on the project. Take link-builders for instance. They can simply dictate the rules, increase prices whenever they want, and you are not very flexible in this case.
Freelancers can also postpone the delivery of tasks for reasons beyond your control. And what happens when they frequently miss deadlines or don’t take your feedback well? As mentioned earlier, you can end the collaboration, but this can impact your bottom line and project goals. Searching for a replacement also costs valuable time and resources.
3. The quality can fluctuate
As your product evolves and requirements change, your current freelancers may struggle to keep up. For example, writers might lack expertise in new topics, impacting the depth and helpfulness of their content. Meanwhile, you might see a drop in link-building quality when a freelancer runs out of their base.
4. Communication can still be slow
It takes time to pitch new tasks to freelancers, discuss requirements, and negotiate deadlines. Freelancers may not respond during your working hours, especially if they are based in different time zones. This type of workflow leaves more room for misunderstandings and delays.
In any case, you’ll need smart reporting to control the results
Dashboards are critical tools for every SEO team. Even if you choose to go the agency or semi-outsourced route, you’ll still need to keep track of your SEO efforts and performance. So, let me introduce three dashboard templates for different contexts: overall search dynamics, technical SEO, and website analytics.
SEO dashboard for Google Search Console
This dashboard for SEO is perfect if you need a bird’s eye view of your Google Search performance. It pulls data from your Google Search Console (GSC) account and allows you to filter your results by device and webpage. You can check weekly and monthly dynamics for key metrics like:
- clicks,
- impressions,
- CTR,
- average position,
- indexation statuses,
and drill down into your best and worst-performing pages.
It’s useful for tracking your website’s performance over a specific period. You can analyze performance data to understand which pages are capturing your target audience’s attention and identify opportunities to improve on-page engagement.
This template is available for Google Sheets, Looker Studio, and Power BI. Feel free to try it for yourself for free.
SEO dashboard for Google Search Console in Google Sheets
Get an overview and details of the key performance metrics from Google Search Console required for SEO of your websites.
SEO dashboard for Google Search Console in Looker Studio
Optimize SEO with Looker Studio’s dashboard for Google Search Console. Track page rankings, CTRs, and organic traffic efficiently.
SEO dashboard for Google Search Console in Power BI
Get insights into your page’s SEO performance with our Power BI dashboard template integrated with Google Search Console.
Technical SEO dashboard
When it comes to managing the more complex aspects of search engine optimization, this dashboard template covers all the bases. It’s connected to GSC and lets you monitor pages by:
- coverage state,
- indexing verdict,
- fetch state,
- robots.txt status,
- indexing state.
You can use this dashboard to make a site pre-audit during SEO services negotiating, to check the quality of provided SEO services, and as a routine for your SEO performance tracking.
There is also a pages overview table that lets you filter by several AMP states, canonicalization state, etc. This enables you to quickly dig into any issues and start figuring out solutions. In addition, five pie charts provide quick insights into the status of your website pages.
Get a copy of this template for Looker Studio or Google Sheets:
Web analytics dashboard
This web analytics dashboard template provides an overview of daily updates on key SEO metrics like site traffic and conversions. It pulls data from GA4 and lets you break down metrics like active users, engagement time, total revenue, and much more. But that’s not all. The dashboard has several pages for analyzing different aspects of web performance, including Acquisition, Behavior and Audience, and a Conversions Funnel.
With this dashboard, you can develop a deeper understanding of customer behavior and demographics, such as the locations your website perform best in. It also allows you to identify bottlenecks in your conversions funnel and see which landing pages turn visitors into customers.
This free template is available for Looker Studio, Power BI, and Tableau. Check it out:
Web Analytics dashboard for Looker Studio
Use the insights based on the data from GA4 to monitor your website traffic and discover which pages resonate most with your audience.
Web Analytics dashboard for Power BI
Discover insights into your website’s traffic acquisition, audience, and conversions with Google Analytics 4 data seamlessly connected to our Power BI dashboard template.
Web Analytics dashboard for Tableau
Monitor the performance of your traffic, analyze the conversion funnel, and derive other insights from Google Analytics 4.
However, these aren’t the only dashboard templates we offer at Coupler.io. If you want to level up your reporting game without spending a dime, check out our full selection of SEO reporting dashboards and Looker Studio SEO report templates.
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