Ever heard that Search engine optimization is the 21st-century octane boost your business needs to reach record profitability? If you’ve not, you’re here now, and I’m saying for any business looking to exploit what’s now a globally digital marketspace SEO is a needs must.
How do you go about optimizing your website (or business) for search engines? If keyword research, competitor research, backlink building, and all of that stuff sound alien to you, then this is something you’re better off leaving to the experts. But that then brings up another problem where do I find a fitting SEO expert for my business needs?
I’ve seen some ads for freelance SEO experts. My friends have recommended some SEO agencies. And recently, I saw a company filling up an in-house SEO specialist role. Which route is the best for my business?
In the end, it all depends on your business needs.
There’s a reason different people go different routes when hiring an SEO expert, and it’s because each SEO expert category fits different business circumstances and SEO needs.
For instance, it makes no sense to hire a freelance SEO expert when you’re launching a product with established competition from well-known brands. In that kind of scenario, you’ll want to go all blazing guns out and hire a full-on SEO agency or in-house SEO veteran.
SEO is a numbers game, and industry connections matter a lot. Someone who’s been in the game for long enough will have not just the skills to optimize all the technicalities but the network to fetch priceless backlinks for a sure-fire octane boost.
Already familiar with your business needs? Let’s quickly itemize the advantages and disadvantages of freelance SEO experts, Agency SEO specialists, and In-house SEO chiefs, so you know what you get from each and which one best suits your business model.
First off, what does it mean for SEO specialists to be in-house, freelance or agency?
There’s a subtle difference in the experience and quality of work you get from each group but for now, let’s just say the major distinguishing factor when it comes to definitions is how each operates.
In-house SEO specialist
An in-house SEO specialist is an SEO specialist you’d hire full-time as an employee to handle all your business SEO needs.
Freelance SEO Specialist
If an SEO specialist operates on a freelance basis, that is, on a contract and usually short-term basis, then they’re freelance SEO specialists. Freelance SEO specialists could be wholly independent or offer their services through one of the many freelance sites available today.
Agency SEO specialist
When an SEO expert (usually a reputable SEO expert) creates a company with other team members entirely focused on the business of SEO, then he/she and the team they work with become Agency SEO specialists.
In-house SEO specialist vs. freelance SEO specialist vs. Agency SEO specialist
With each group, you’re getting a mix of good and bad. Here’s how they compare.
What are the advantages of an in-house SEO specialist?
Full-on dedication to your SEO needs
Contrary to what many assume, SEO is a full-time business that requires full-time commitment if you’re serious about getting the best results. When you hire an in-house SEO expert, they’re usually committed to your SEO needs and just that.
Why is this approach beneficial? It’s simple mathematics, really. if an SEO specialist is, for instance, doing a backlink reach out and sends out fifty emails per day for just your business, then you’re more likely to attract more backlinks compared to an SEO expert who’s outreaching for five brands simultaneously
In-house SEO experts get a better hold of your needs
Sometimes backlinks, despite their famed reputation as the not-so-secret sauce of dominating SERP, might not be what you need. It might just be something as simple as on-page SEO or technical SEO. If an SEO expert is not well in tune with your needs, then it’s almost impossible to find out what the actual problem is to provide a fitting solution.
In-house SEO experts are employees in your organization. So asides from having more time to focus on your brand and dig into the details, they’re in sync with all the auxiliary stuff, which, believe it or not, have a significant impact on SEO.
Picture a local brand targeting consumers who love to eat cheese – if this target audience prefers shopping in person at a local store, and an SEO expert doesn’t realize this, the company might sink huge resources into creating an eCommerce store only bots use.
In-house SEO experts are usually good at their craft
Brands that hire in-house SEO experts usually only settle for persons with a proven track record of delivering SEO deliverables. Think about it, if you do eventually settle for the in-house SEO expert, you’ll want someone with an impressive CV.
This high barrier of entry means that with in-house SEO experts, you’re getting top-of-the-line professionalism and results that speak for themselves over time. But there’s a cost to this anyway. The bigger the CV, the bigger the pay, and talking about that, let’s switch to the disadvantages of hiring an in-house SEO expert.
What are the disadvantages of hiring an in-house SEO expert
You’ll pay extra for skilled SEO persons
Search engine optimization can make or break businesses. People who are skilled in this art realize their worth and charge businesses for it appropriately. If you’re going to keep a seasoned SEO specialist in-house, expect to pay north of $50,000 per year for their services.
That’s not a budget many startups or small businesses have, and it’s one of the major reasons most will go with the other routes of securing the services of an SEO expert.
An in-house SEO specialist might lack the industry reach and connections
Certainly less than the reach of agency SEO experts. Yes, they’re industry professionals, and true most will find a way around this. But the fact still remains that compared to agency SEO specialists who are part of a highly interconnected web of SEO professionals – from content developers to software developers, journalists, and the entire lot of the SEO ensemble – in-house SEO experts tend to be more siloed.
You’ll need more than an In-house SEO expert if you hire an in-house SEO expert
Let me explain; Search engine optimization is a multifaceted discipline. Again, it’s not just about backlinks or pumping out content. SEO is all-encompassing, usually requiring content developers, software developers, marketing professionals, sales executives, and even market researchers.
If you went on to hire just an in-house SEO expert without having the full complement of these professionals, then your in-house SEO expert will end up handicapped regardless of his/her skills.
He/she needs these auxiliary experts, if you like, to function effectively. Fair to note that some businesses jump through this hoop by going freelance with staffing auxiliary roles.
What are the advantages of hiring a freelance SEO expert?
So in-house is good, but what are the advantages of going freelance?
It’s easier on your budget
On a cost basis, hiring a freelance SEO specialist is cheaper than the other two options. The reason for this price discrepancy is not far-fetched – the average freelance SEO specialist spends less time on your SEO project, utilizes fewer resources, and is generally less experienced.
Freelance provides a clear-cut route to achieve very direct objectives
Unlike In-house SEO specialists who tend to take a more jack-of-all-trades approach, freelance SEO specialists are usually specialists in an area of the search engine optimization game. So you’re more likely to see freelance SEO specialists who specialize in building links, optimizing on-page SEO, and the likes.
If you wanted to achieve a specific SEO goal, say, maybe optimize your product landing pages rather than take the shotgun approach with an in-house SEO specialist, you’d be better off hiring a freelancer with specialty skills in on-page SEO optimization. It’s cheaper and more effective everything considered.
What are the disadvantages of hiring a freelance SEO specialist?
Many freelance SEO specialists are not in every meaning of the word ‘specialists.’
I, for instance, have dabbled in search engine optimization for years now. In fact, everything concerning SEO on this site is handled by me to some success, I might add – you probably got here through a search engine. But that doesn’t make me an expert in any way. If I wanted to toot my horns, I’d say I’m an enthusiast at best.
There are many people with similar skills like me, sometimes even less, who go about branding themselves as SEO specialists, and why not? Nothing stops them (or me) from creating an Upwork/Fiverr profile with the tag SEO specialist. It’s an easy way to con business owners like you off your hard-earned money with little to no results to show for it.
It’s one thing to rank for a long-tail keyword like how to hire a freelance SEO specialist (something I’ve done if you’re reading this), and it’s another thing entirely to rank for an SEO specialist. The latter is a highly technical battle only a few have the ammunition to fight.
With freelance SEO specialists, you’re at a higher risk of getting a botched SEO job
I know, this applies to all cadres of SEO professionals – even an in-house SEO guy can deliver a botched SEO job. But, the fact still remains that the risk of this happening is higher when you go freelance. As I already noted, many freelance SEO specialists are not the professionals they claim to be, but since you’ve paid the money, they have to deliver results by hook or crook.
This can lead them to use what we call black hat SEO techniques. Black hat could be anything from creating a PBN to spamming links on forums and everything in between. Google and virtually every other search engine frown on Black hat.
While they might bring in results in the short term, it’s only a matter of time before the long arm of Google’s algorithm catches up. And when it does, it’s not merely a matter of losing your rankings; you might get what we call a manual action that effectively places a search embargo on your site and business.
Limited industry connections
Like many in-house SEO professionals, many freelance SEO specialists lack the widespread industry connection and reach needed to go hard on SEO and fast. Don’t get me wrong; they can for sure deliver results but the quality and speed at which they deliver these results is certainly not the best.
A budding freelance SEO specialist, the kind with low rates, whom you’re most likely going to settle for, might need upwards of a year to gather significant backlinks through cold emailing webmasters or using the HARO technique. Another SEO specialist who runs an agency that’s connected to myriad journalists simply needs to blast an email to achieve the same results in a week.
And speaking about agencies;
What are the advantages of hiring an agency SEO specialist?
The whole package
Reputable SEO agencies run as ensuite organizations with all the technical disciplines required to run successful SEO campaigns available on demand. Remember, search engine optimization is a multifaceted discipline requiring the input of multiple professionals.
An analysis of your website could show that the problem is with the page performance. Maybe you’re running unoptimized ad scripts, or maybe it’s a layout issue that’s affecting your core web vitals score.
In scenarios like the solution is not hiring a content writer to stuff in more keywords. Instead, you need a skilled web programmer who can optimize your web pages. If you contract your SEO job to an SEO agency, you can rest assured knowing they have a developer on the ground trained to handle issues like this when they arise.
Quick and robust results
The expertise and depth of experience available in the best SEO agencies allow them to execute even the most complex SEO strategies to good effect and fast. What will take the average in-house SEO expert or SEO freelancer a year to implement might be completed by a capable SEO agency in a matter of weeks. And even though people say search engine optimization is a long game, you’d agree with me that longer running steps allow you to reach set milestones faster.
Lower risk of getting a botched SEO job
Top SEO agencies have a reputation to protect. While it’s not unheard of that some of them might engage in borderline black hat techniques, the risk of this happening is significantly lower. Reputation is one reason why they wouldn’t go black on you, but another is the fact that they, by virtue of their experience and expertise, have working white hat techniques. Why bother with the risky black hat SEO practices when you have a legit optimization process that works?
Little to no supervision
Most big-name SEO agencies offer managed SEO services where all you do is specify your goals. Once you pay the bill, you can relax and watch from the sidelines as your SEO strategy gets implemented into place – no stress. The same cannot be said for freelance SEO specialists and, to some extent, in-house SEO specialists. With the latter two, you’ve got to put your eyes on the job to make sure they’re at least delivering on the project deliverables.
With some SEO freelancers, management is even more hectic. You have to provide actionable points, measure results yourself, and restrategize over time as things develop.
What are the disadvantages of hiring an SEO agency?
It’s expensive
Like neck-breaking expensive. The good guys who use only legit techniques to put you on the front pages of SERP will charge very huge sums for their services. Heck, even the black hat specialists charge top dollar for their short-term results.
If you want to go the agency route, especially for SEO agencies that are worth their onions, be ready with deep pockets to offset the cost.
Limited flexibility
The top-notch professionalism you get with agencies bites back here. Whereas freelancers and your in-house SEO specialist might allow you to modify and tweak an SEO campaign as things develop, the typical SEO agency implements only what’s specified in the contract at the time of signing.
Agencies like freelancers might not really connect with your brand
Let me, first of all, say that failure to connect with your brand, its values, and objectives is not something that’d frequently happen with SEO agencies, certainly not with top brass SEO firms. However, it’s a possibility, and it’s a noteworthy disadvantage compared to in-house where it rarely happens.
Why would an SEO agency not connect with your brand? For starters, just like freelancers, at any one point in time, the typical SEO agency is juggling several clients with diverse SEO needs. Then there’s the fact that it’s usually difficult for someone from the outside to understand the subtle nuances peculiar to your brand.
Which should you choose?
- It’s been pretty obvious from the start of this piece – agencies are the way to go if you want the holistic search engine optimization experience for your business. The best ones deliver stellar results, and even though they cost literal fortunes, you can consider that cost an expense that will pay over itself.
- If you’re a small business, however, targeting low competition keywords on SERP, then an agency might be overkill. I’d suggest an in-house SEO expert in this case because asides from being cheaper long-term than SEO agencies, they can connect better with your brand to understand your market, the forces at play, and the best mechanism to exploit the whole system.
- I reserve freelancers for the more specific bit of search engine optimizations. As someone I regard highly once said, they’re the foot soldiers of the game, the people you hire to get the dirty menial SEO jobs done on a whim. Surely there are some SEO freelancers who’ve shown their mettle, and if you’re to find them (usually through referrals), then it might be worth the shot.
Otherwise, you’re better sticking with tested and trusted SEO brands who’ve demonstrated a long-standing track record of delivering valuable results.
