Smiling female professional SEO services consultant with cell phone

Although many companies prefer to develop an in-house SEO team, there are certain professional SEO services that make more sense to outsource to an SEO agency—some due to economies of scale, others due to expertise, and some due to the fact that it’s wise to have an external set of eyes bringing a fresh perspective to your efforts.

WHAT SEO SERVICES SHOULD BE DONE IN-HOUSE?

There are some SEO tasks that can be handled pretty easily by most companies, even if they don’t have a dedicated, in-house SEO team.  We’re talking about the basics: content creation (assuming that you have subject matter expertise and folks who can write well), title tags, meta descriptions, etc.  The basic guidelines for these can be found fairly easily online and your CMS (content management system) may even prompt you to comply with some of the best practices.

If you have access to good research tools, you can even learn how to identify the target keywords and topics that are likely to perform well for your company and target audience.  This, however, does have a bit of a learning curve so might be best left to either an outside agency or a dedicated in-house individual or team.

Also best left to an in-house team (should you have one) may be some of the architectural decisions for your website—not because external agencies can’t do this, but because an internal voice is frequently better positioned to champion those efforts internally.

WHAT SHOULD BE OUTSOURCED TO A PROFESSIONAL SEO SERVICES AGENCY?

The tasks best suited to hand off to an agency will largely depend on what skills you already have in-house, what your budget is, and what your goals are.  Here are the efforts frequently outsourced to a professional SEO services agency or consultant.

  • Audits and reviews: Even if you have an in-house team, it’s always a good idea to have external eyes look at your work. A fresh perspective could catch things you missed, especially on pages you’ve been looking at for the last 6 months.

  • High-quality keyword research: Although there are tools available that will allow you to do your own keyword research (such as BrightEdge, Conductor, seoClarity, and Ahrefs ), they tend to have a steep learning curve—and some come with hefty price tags (thousands of dollars/month).  

  • Content strategies: A good content strategy should consider keyword research, user and cohort analytics, and SEO copywriting.  Unless you have these skills in-house, bringing in an agency to provide strategic advice makes the most sense.

  • Technical SEO: As Google puts ever-greater emphasis on user experience, it becomes increasingly important that your web development team has crystal-clear guidance on the technical aspects of SEO (Core Web Vitals, coding best practices, funnel optimization, etc).


Still confused about what you should do in-house and what you should outsource?  Reach out and ask us; we’re happy to help!