Every growing business eventually hits a fork in the road with its marketing: should we handle search engine optimization ourselves or hire someone to do it for us? This is the core of the seo in house vs outsourcing debate. It’s a major decision that shapes your budget, team structure, and growth trajectory.
There’s no single right answer, but there is a right answer for you. An in house team gives you direct control and deep brand alignment, while outsourcing can provide specialized expertise and scale without the overhead. Many businesses are navigating this choice. While about 37% of companies rely on an in house team, a staggering 70% of small to midsize businesses prefer to outsource their SEO to an agency.
This guide will walk you through everything you need to consider. We’ll break down the pros and cons of each approach, compare the costs, and give you a clear checklist to help you decide on the best path for your company’s growth.
What is In House SEO? (And Is It for You?)
In house SEO simply means you use your own employees and internal resources to manage your search engine optimization strategy and execution. This could be a single dedicated specialist or a full department responsible for everything from keyword research and content creation to technical audits and link building.
The big advantage here is control. An in house team lives and breathes your brand. They can collaborate instantly with your marketing, content, and web development teams, ensuring every SEO effort is perfectly aligned with your company’s voice and goals. You are investing in building a long term asset: an internal expert who accumulates deep, company specific knowledge over time.
This approach is common, with studies showing that 65% of companies have at least one in house SEO specialist on staff. However, it comes with challenges. Finding and retaining top SEO talent is difficult, and an internal team may lack the broad exposure an agency gets from working across many industries. In fact, only 18% of in house teams feel they have enough technical SEO expertise for all their needs.
What is Outsourced SEO? (The Agency Approach)
Outsourced SEO is the practice of hiring an external agency, consultant, or freelancer to handle your search engine optimization. Instead of adding employees to your payroll, you contract a third party to plan and execute an SEO strategy on your behalf, typically on a monthly retainer or project basis.
The primary draw of outsourcing is immediate access to a team of seasoned experts. For a single fee, you can get the combined brainpower of a strategist, a technical analyst, a content writer, and a link building specialist. An agency brings a wealth of experience from other clients, allowing them to diagnose problems and implement best practices quickly.
This model is incredibly popular, especially for small and mid sized businesses. It’s often more cost effective than building a team from the ground up and allows you to scale your efforts up or down as needed. If you’re looking to tap into a ready made engine for growth, exploring how services like Rankai’s AI first SEO platform deliver results can be a great starting point.
SEO In House vs Outsourcing: The Cost Breakdown
Cost is often the biggest factor in the seo in house vs outsourcing decision. While an agency retainer might seem like a big monthly expense, a true comparison reveals that building an in house team is often the more significant investment.
In House SEO Costs
When you hire in house, you’re paying for more than just a salary. The total cost includes:
Salary and Benefits: The average salary for an SEO manager in the US is around $80,000 per year, not including benefits, taxes, and overhead.
Recruitment: Finding and hiring the right person can cost thousands of dollars and take weeks or months.
Tools and Software: A professional SEO toolkit with platforms like Ahrefs or Semrush can easily cost several hundred to over a thousand dollars per month (see our guide to Ahrefs alternatives for budget-friendly options).
Training: SEO is always changing, so you’ll need to budget for ongoing training and development to keep your team’s skills sharp.
For many small businesses, these fixed costs are too high to justify, which is why 38% handle SEO by giving the responsibilities to existing employees part time.
Outsourced SEO Costs
Outsourcing converts SEO into a more predictable and often lower operational expense. Most agencies charge a monthly retainer, which typically falls between $2,500 and $7,500 per month for a comprehensive campaign. While this isn’t cheap, the fee usually bundles the cost of a full team of specialists and all the necessary software. For the price of one mid level in house hire, an agency can provide a much wider range of expertise and services.
Modern, technology driven solutions are pushing costs down even further. For instance, Rankai offers a unique model that combines AI with human experts to deliver over 20 pages of optimized content per month, plus technical fixes and reporting, for a flat subscription of $499. This demonstrates how outsourcing can provide incredible value and ROI.
Budget and ROI Considerations
Ultimately, the choice comes down to return on investment. While 52% of companies believe in house SEO is more cost effective in the long run, this assumes they can successfully build and retain a high performing team. For businesses looking for flexibility and faster speed to market, outsourcing often delivers a better initial ROI. A top tier agency led campaign can generate an average ROI of 275% over 12 months.
Building Your Team: People and Skills
Whether you build or buy, your SEO success depends on having the right people with the right skills. The seo in house vs outsourcing question is often a question of talent.
Recruitment, Hiring, and Training
Hiring for SEO is tough. The demand for skilled professionals is high, and talented people tend to move on quickly as their careers advance. When you invest in training an in house specialist, you run the risk of them leaving for a better opportunity, taking your investment with them.
Outsourcing eliminates these challenges. You don’t have to worry about recruiting, hiring, or the constant need for training. The agency is responsible for attracting and developing its own talent, and you benefit from their already sharp expertise. They are paid to stay on top of the hundreds of algorithm changes Google makes each year.
Expertise and Skill Gaps
Modern SEO requires a diverse skill set:
Technical SEO: Site architecture, page speed, schema markup.
On Page SEO: Content strategy, keyword optimization.
Off Page SEO: Link building, digital PR.
Analytics: Data interpretation and reporting.
It’s rare to find one person who is an expert in all these areas. This is why in house teams often have skill gaps. As mentioned, a vast majority of in house teams (82%) feel they lack sufficient technical SEO expertise. This is a critical gap that can be effectively filled by outsourcing to a specialized agency that has dedicated technical experts on staff.
Operations and Workflow: How Things Get Done
How you manage workflow, control strategy, and communicate priorities will look very different depending on your choice.
Scalability and Flexibility
One of the strongest arguments for outsourcing is scalability. With an agency, you can often scale your SEO efforts up or down by simply adjusting your service package. Need to triple your content output for a holiday push? A good agency can deploy more writers, and programmatic SEO can help you scale your content efficiently. Need to pause for a bit? That’s easier to do with a contract than with a full time employee. In house teams are less elastic; scaling up means a lengthy hiring process.
Control and Communication
In house SEO provides maximum control. Your team is on your schedule, in your meetings, and can pivot priorities in an instant. You have direct oversight over every change and communication is immediate.
When you outsource, you delegate some of that control. This requires trust and clear communication. A great agency will feel like an extension of your team, providing regular updates and collaborating closely. In fact, poor communication is responsible for 35% of client churn at agencies, which shows just how much businesses value being kept in the loop. Services that prioritize transparency, like Rankai’s weekly impact reporting, are designed to give you that in house level of visibility.
Implementation Speed and Time to Results
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. It typically takes 4 to 6 months to see significant results, regardless of whether you go in house or outsource. However, the speed of implementation can impact that timeline.
An in house team can make small changes quickly, but can get bogged down by internal bottlenecks. A common complaint from in house teams (48% of them, in fact) is that a lack of developer resources slows down technical fixes. An agency with a large team can often execute more tasks in parallel, like producing content at a much higher volume, which can help capture momentum faster. Some modern outsourced services are built entirely for speed; for example, Rankai’s model of producing and iterating on content quickly is designed to generate early positive signals in under 30 days.
Strategy and Results: Aligning SEO with Your Business
Regardless of your model, your SEO efforts must align with your broader business goals and deliver a measurable return.
Performance and ROI Reporting
Tracking performance and proving ROI is essential. An in house team has the advantage of direct access to all your internal sales and revenue data, making it easier to connect SEO efforts to the bottom line. However, they can also struggle to communicate this value, with nearly half of in house SEOs finding it difficult to prove ROI to leadership. For a practical framework, see how to tell if your SEO strategy is working.
A good agency, on the other hand, lives and dies by its ability to demonstrate results. Their reports should be clear, transparent, and focused on the metrics that matter to your business, like organic traffic, leads, and sales.
Integration with Marketing and Niche Considerations
SEO works best when it’s woven into your entire marketing strategy—effective content mapping ensures those efforts align across channels. An in house team has a natural advantage here, as they can easily participate in marketing meetings and align their efforts with other campaigns.
However, a great agency will work hard to understand your business and integrate with your marketing calendar. This is especially important in specialized or regulated industries (like healthcare or finance). If you operate in a specific niche, you’ll want either an in house expert with deep domain knowledge or an agency with proven experience in your field.
The Practical Stuff: Security and Resources
Finally, there are the operational details of site access, technology, and networking to consider in the seo in house vs outsourcing decision.
Site Access, Security, and Technology
To do their job, any SEO provider needs access to your website’s backend, Google Analytics, and other systems. With an in house employee, this is a standard part of onboarding. With an agency, it requires a level of trust. Reputable agencies have strict security protocols, but you are still handing over the keys.
Technology is another key resource. An effective SEO campaign requires expensive software. An agency’s retainer fee typically includes the cost of their entire professional tool stack, which can save you thousands per year. An in house team will require you to purchase and manage these subscriptions yourself.
Network and Outreach
Building high quality backlinks is one of the most challenging parts of SEO, and it often relies on relationships and outreach. Agencies frequently have established networks of publishers and media contacts they can leverage to earn links and mentions for your brand. This is a specialized skill that many in house teams lack the time or connections to develop effectively, making it one of the most commonly outsourced SEO tasks.
Finding the Middle Ground: The Hybrid SEO Approach
For many businesses, the answer to the seo in house vs outsourcing question isn’t “either or.” It’s “both.” A hybrid approach combines the strengths of an in house team with the resources of an external agency.
A common hybrid model involves having an in house SEO manager who sets the strategy and oversees the brand, while outsourcing the heavy lifting of content creation and link building to an agency. This gives you strategic control and brand alignment, plus the scale and specialized expertise of an external partner. It’s a flexible and powerful way to build a comprehensive SEO program.
Making Your Choice: An SEO In House vs Outsourcing Checklist
Use these questions to guide your decision:
Budget: Can you afford a full time salary, benefits, tools, and training? Or does a predictable monthly retainer make more financial sense?
Skills: Do you have the necessary SEO expertise on your team right now? Are you confident you can hire and retain top talent?
Speed & Scale: How quickly do you need to ramp up your efforts? Do you need the flexibility to scale your SEO up or down?
Control: How important is it for you to have direct, daily control over your SEO strategy and execution?
Resources: Do you have the time and internal support (from developers, content writers, etc.) to make an in house program successful?
Thinking through these points will give you a much clearer picture of whether building in house, outsourcing, or a hybrid model is the right fit. If the scale, speed, and affordability of outsourcing sound appealing, you might want to see how Rankai’s service works.
How to Outsource SEO The Right Way
If you decide to outsource, follow these steps to find the right partner:
Define Your Goals: Know what you want to achieve before you start looking.
Do Your Research: Look for agencies with a proven track record and experience in your industry.
Ask for Case Studies: A reputable agency should be able to show you real world results.
Understand Their Process: Ensure they use ethical, white hat SEO techniques.
Set Clear Expectations: Agree on scope, deliverables, KPIs, and communication frequency before signing a contract.
Collaborate: The best results come from a true partnership. Be prepared to share insights about your business and provide feedback.
How to Build a Great In House SEO Team
If you’re ready to invest in building your own team, here’s how to start:
Get Executive Buy In: Ensure leadership understands SEO is a long term investment.
Hire a Strong Leader: Your first hire should be an experienced SEO manager who can build the strategy and the team.
Provide the Right Tools: Don’t skimp on the software your team needs to succeed.
Integrate SEO Across the Company: Make SEO a part of your marketing, content, and web development workflows from the beginning.
Invest in Training: Support your team with a budget for continuous learning to keep their skills sharp.
Focus on ROI: Establish clear reporting to track progress and demonstrate the value of your team to the entire organization.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO In House vs Outsourcing
Is outsourcing SEO better for small businesses?
For most small businesses, outsourcing SEO is more practical and cost effective. It provides immediate access to expertise and a full team of specialists for less than the cost of a single full time hire, avoiding the high costs of salary, benefits, and software. The seo in house vs outsourcing balance often tips towards outsourcing for SMBs.
How much should I budget for SEO?
Budgets vary widely based on your goals and competition. An in house team can cost upwards of $100,000 per year all in. Agency retainers commonly range from $2,500 to $7,500 per month. More affordable, tech enabled services like Rankai offer comprehensive packages for around $499 per month, making it accessible for almost any budget. For more ways to stretch your spend, see our guide to low-cost SEO services.
What are the biggest risks of outsourcing SEO?
The biggest risks are choosing the wrong partner, poor communication, and a lack of transparency. Vet agencies carefully by checking reviews and case studies, and establish clear communication expectations from the start. A good partner will act as a transparent extension of your team.
What are the main challenges of building an in house SEO team?
The primary challenges are the high cost, the difficulty of recruiting and retaining talent, and the likelihood of having internal skill gaps (especially in technical SEO and link building). It requires a significant and sustained investment to build a team that can cover all aspects of a modern SEO strategy.
Can I switch from an agency to an in house team later?
Yes, absolutely. Many companies start with an agency to get results quickly and learn the ropes. As they grow, they may decide to build their own internal team. A good agency will support this transition by providing data, insights, and a clear handover process. This is a common evolution in the seo in house vs outsourcing journey.