In-House Vs. Outsourced SEO:
Pros And Cons

Even for the sharpest of industry professionals, effective SEO (search engine optimization) can be a bit of a challenge. Rankings, inbound traffic, and conversion are all very volatile. Every day certain factors change, leading SEO professionals having to adapt and change their tactics. With SEO being so complicated, yet so essential, you may be wondering how to go about managing it at your company. Here we’ll describe your options between outsourcing your SEO or establishing an in-house solution.

First of all, the in-house option. This has a few obvious benefits. For starters, you’ll be able to exercise a much more control over how your SEO campaign is run. You’ll be able to target your audience and measure specific objectives far better than you would outsourcing. Furthermore, there’s usually far less cost in setting up your own SEO resources than giving the job to an outside company. However, this can depend heavily on other factors at your business. If you only need to have one or two SEO professionals, keeping them on staff will likely save you money in the long run.

However, if your business is more centered around online commerce, and you want to run campaigns on a larger scale, then you may need to plan for more personnel. This is closely linked to the major disadvantage of hiring in-house SEO staff. For many companies, especially startups, hiring many highly skilled personnel can simply be too costly. Running a large recruitment drive isn’t easy, especially when your resources are stretched. You need all the time you have to keep your business growing, and may not have the required period for advertising on Indeed and scheduling interviews. Even after you have the staff, finding a good strategy for your business can take a good deal of planning and experimentation to find the right strategy that works.

So what about the other option? For many companies, outsourcing their SEO needs is the only way to go. By choosing a company like PDX SEO to do the work for you, you can skip over the hassle that comes with recruiting SEO specialists. They won’t come with any pre-existing biases about the business, and they won’t feel the need to tell management what they want to hear. When you hire an SEO agency, they’ll come in, review your current strategy, and tell you exactly what is and what isn’t working.

Generally, they’ll have more knowledge regarding current SEO trends, and will be able to apply it in the most effective way possible. This can end up making the second option more cost effective over time, rather than staff having learn on the job, and by trial and error. Remember though that SEO is still relatively new discipline. There’s no industry certification at this time to say one company is better than the other. If you choose the wrong SEO firm, you could be sending your money straight down the drain.

Take a look at your firm’s requirements and finances, consider both options, and then move forward with the choice that best fits the needs of you and your company.