In-House VS. Outsourced SEO Services for Your Website.
By Igor Mordkovich on Sep 20, 2006 in Google, Marketing Strategy, General, Online Marketing, SEO
Whether you have money to hire an in-house SEO person or you you don’t, website owners are trying to figure out which would benefit their business the most. I’ll try to clarify here the pros and cons of hiring an in-house SEO or outsourcing to an SEO company.
At a recent marketing seminar I attended, one of the speakers (Dana Todd from SiteLab I believe) asked attendees to raise their hand if they DO NOT have an in-house SEO person and instead pay a search optimization company to do the job. I’d say about 60-70% of hands were raised.
The next question was … keep your hand up if you feel that your SEO provider is doing a great job. Result = 15-20% out of 100% that raised their hands the first time.
Next … raise your hand if you feel your SEO company is doing an OK job. Result was about 30-40%. Then question was … raise your hand if you are unsatisfied with your current SEO company you use. Result = 50-60%.
Surprising?
Let’s not assume that having an SEO in-house is better than outsourcing. Instead let’s run through the PROS and CONS of this. We’ll start with;
Outsourcing SEO (PROS)
- SEO company has more data on the algorithm changes as they can monitor its effect by studying their other clients’ websites
- Reputable SEO companies care about their “face” within the industry and they will try to perform in order to maintain that reputation
- You have the ability to “Google” the SEO company’s name and believe me … you’ll learn a bit about them
- SEO companies usually have few people doing different tasks and thus things like “link building, article writing, etc” can be done faster
Outsourcing SEO (CONS)
- You have less control over what is being done as there is no one 10 feet away from you with whom you can speak or monitor
- Sometimes companies feel neglected by SEO companies that decide to devote more attention to their larger, more “important” clients
- Search engine optimization process can be represented in different ways and thus quite a few companies lie to grab as much money as they can while they can
- SEO companies usually spend less time learning about your industry than if you had an in-house person
In-House SEO (PROS)
- More control over what’s going on and how it’s being done
- In-house search optimization marketer will usually know more about your company and industry and thus will usually make better decision towards SEO practices
- You can expect more “responsible” techniques from an in-house person simply because he has more to loose in case he/she is fired. If an SEO company looses a client, they have others (not that they don’t care … but they can go on)
- In-house person is 100% devoted to your company and no other … I believe this is why you’ll find more companies satisfied with having someone in house rather than outsourcing
In-House SEO (CONS)
- Not enough time. SEO is a long process that takes time and more than one person to do efficiently. With an in-house SEO you can expect to see results 3-4 months later than if you would deal with a “good” SEO company.
- It’s usually more expensive. If you sit down and do the numbers you’ll notice that to have an in-house SEO person could cost you 4-5 times more per year than if you would hire a mid-level SEO company. (THIS IS JUST FOR SEO not PPC, PR, etc) ….. Maybe that’s why search engine optimization companies feel that they are underpaid.
Here is my bottom line “opinion”.
The best variation is to have an in-house marketer who’s going to oversee your outsourced SEO campaign. This way, you’ll have someone to check with every day and at the same time you’ll benefit from all the PROS of outsourcing SEO services.
Good list Igor. Of course I’m biased, but I think you left off an important con to in-house SEO. SEO itself requires expertise in many different areas: algorithms, link marketing, copy writing, statistical analysis, etc. etc. That’s hard to find in just a single person. No problem for bigger companies that can hire their own SEO team, but that’s a big chunk of payroll for anybody who can’t… and wants to do SEO right.
If you don’t mind the link drop, here are my own Seven Reasons to Hire a Professional SEO.
Stoney deGeyter | Sep 20, 2006 | Reply
Stoney you’re right and I kind of hinted on that in the “Outsourcing PROS” section;
Faster and maybe even better. Let’s not diminish the power of a “guru” a “1 man band” who can actually do all these things on a professional level.
Igor Mordkovich | Sep 20, 2006 | Reply
1 man band in SEO? I believe that’s more of a mythical creature than anything. Most single man SEO consultants either a) know enough to provide excellent consulting advice, or b) uses other expert sub-contractors for various tasks.
Stoney deGeyter | Sep 20, 2006 | Reply
Stoney … that “1 man band” was a bit of morning humor.
Even though I agree with most of what you say, we can’t discount the power of a human being. There are people who do all the required tasks of an SEO and they handle it pretty well. Maybe it’s because they try to optimize in a fairly competitive industry. But the bottom line is, I wouldn’t want to say ….
“It’s IMPOSSIBLE to do good SEO if you do it by your self. You MUST hire a team!”
I disagree with this statement and I know that’s not what you were really saying. Yes, a team of good SEOs who do different tasks “should” bring better results. Nevertheless, once again … let’s not discount others who do well by themselves.
Igor Mordkovich | Sep 20, 2006 | Reply
We are in agreement. Most “gurus” know enough about all of it to do a great job, but the really smart ones know enough to know that they are better off finding experts to help compensate for their weaker points.
Stoney deGeyter | Sep 20, 2006 | Reply
There are a few of us who are or have been In house one man bands.
Joseph Morin - Autobytel.com
Me - Shopping.com and eBay company
I am sure there are more out there.
Aaron Shear | Sep 20, 2006 | Reply
Aaron … I’ll add my self to the list of “one man band” as well, though I’ll say that I am “FOR” sometimes outsourcing different tasks to SEO companies.
It all depends on the task, industry, situation, time, etc.
Igor Mordkovich | Sep 20, 2006 | Reply
Is there any special techniques that can be used to optimize a wordpress blog on my server for SEO. One issue I see is no way to change the title tags on each page, where it seems to take the blog name for the home page.
I have several hundred 600+ inbound links.
I have pinged Technorati manually and used pingoat as well as pingomatic every time I add a new blog.
There is plenty of content, about 30 articles.
What else can I do? What else should I do to optimize my blog?
Jeffery | Nov 29, 2006 | Reply
Jeffery,
Wordpress has a plug that will basically use the title of your post as a Title of the page. I don’t remember that plug in or if it’s just an option within Wordpress. They have a forum where you can get that info.
Other things that you can do to optimize your blog is to focus on 2-3 keywords per post. Keep them relevant. Write a good (keyword rich) title and get links pointing to that post.
When you write your future posts, you should link to your previous posts (if it’s relevant and useful to your reader) …. deep linking.
Good luck.
Igor Mordkovich | Nov 29, 2006 | Reply