Outsourcing SEO VS In-House Services

After making the decision to implement a search engine optimization strategy for your website, you are left with another question that you will need to answer before moving forward - will you outsource your SEO to a professional company or will you complete it in-house? Let's weigh up the pros and cons of each.

Pros of In-House

    * Getting your SEO done in-house means that the staff will know your business inside and out, allowing them to understand even the smallest aspects and challenges.
    * In-house SEO can give you complete control over the strategy itself, as well as how it is executed. Changes can also be made very smoothly.
    * The person working on your SEO in-house can focus their full attention on the success of your website, as they won't be working on anyone else's at the same time.

Cons of In-House

    * As SEO is a quickly changing area, the person implementing the strategy needs to ensure that they are kept up to date with the various algorithms being used by the search engines. In-house experts often struggle with this and, as such, require occasional refresher training.
    * As the person working on your SEO strategy will have a lot of work on their hands, it could result in them using outdated techniques (without realizing) that could hugely affect the ranking of your website.
    * Effective SEO requires the use of a lot of tools, which means that you will have to purchase them for your in-house expert. Learning how to use each of these tools can also take up a lot of valuable time.

Pros of Outsourced

    * By outsourcing your SEO services to a specialist company, you can rest assured that you are receiving the expertise of a wide range of people, as it will be a team working on your website rather than a single person.
    * You want have to dedicate a lot of time, money and man-hours into training up your staff to be in-house SEO experts (or hiring someone to take on this role).
    * The outsourced company is able to focus solely on the SEO of your website and will not be affected by all the other aspects, such as the marketing.

Cons of Outsourced

    * By hiring an outside company to undertake your SEO for you, you will generally have to invest more money into the process then you would if your strategy was done in-house.
    * As the company will be handling the SEO of other websites as well as yours, there is no telling how much time and effort they will be putting into your strategy.
    * Some companies are known to utilize cheap or even black hat SEO techniques that will do more harm to your website than good.

As you can see, both options have their fair share of pros and cons - ultimately, it is your decision on whether you decide to implement an SEO strategy in-house or get an outside company to do it for you. Choose wisely and you will have made a wise investment.