This Is Why You Need An In-House SEO

Christian Watson SEO

We work with a local SEO agency for our off-site SEO, while I primarily take care of the on-site component. It’s been working well for some time now and our sites rank on page one for many key terms.

Recently, however, I’ve been feeling increasingly that I do not have enough time to devote to this critical component of our online business and that it’s time to hire someone to take on this role full time.

I raised the subject with my boss, who questioned whether there would be enough work for a full-time employee. And then this post came along from Everett Sizemore of seOverflow.

If you’ve ever wondered what are the wide range of areas modern SEOs have to cover, this post nails them all along with providing a wealth of useful information and links.

Here’s a quick summary taken from the post of all the areas that SEO now encompasses:

  • Site performance / page load time
  • Brand building / PR
  • Http header status codes
  • Content quality
  • Sitemap changes
  • Social integration
  • Usability and user experience
  • Rel canonical (single domain and cross-domain)
  • Micro-formatting, rich snippets and structured data
  • Navigation and pagination
  • eCommerce SEO
  • International SEO
  • Local SEO
  • Link building
  • Analytics
  • Paid search
  • Mobile search

Holy cow! Do you think that is enough to keep one person fully occupied for 40 hours per week?

11 thoughts to “This Is Why You Need An In-House SEO”

  1. SEO is a very interesting aspect of web design and development. It is not something that one man can fully grasp and so it cannot be left in the hands of one man.
    But I think the results may be slightly unpredictable as Google still keeps its algorithm function a closely guarded secret.

  3. I’d definitely say there is enough work on any given site to provide a full time job. That said, I disagree that it has to be more than one person managing it (especially one full time person).
    Anyone with a level headed attitude, hard working and with an analytic mindset can pick up SEO, and anyone with the ability to learn and read continuously will do will IMHO.

  4. SEO is a massive subject, and Graham O is right, it’s got so many variables for one person to deal with effectively.
    Golden rule of course is to make sure that all content is semantic, relevant and built with good markup. From there things can only get better 🙂 Don’t try and trick anyone, that’s not how SEO works.

  5. I have literally been waiting a year to see the split start to form between technical SEO and creative/on-page. It looks like it’s finally started to happen and now I know I have to change my title to CRO.

  7. In many ways SEO and web development go hand in hand. Ensuring that newly built site’s are designed with SEO in mind is more important than ever. SEOs and developers need to work together to achieve the best possible results for the client.
    Best wishes, Alex

  8. It would be great if businesses could have an in-house SEO but this is not always possible with most smaller businesses who have to outsource the work to an agency or individual consultant.
    Your quite right though, there is much to cover with SEO encompassing more and more work as new marketing opportunities present themselves.
    For me it’s more a case of using Inbound Marketing and incorporating blogging, social media and general SEO into your campaign.
    But like I say, many clients/businesses just don’t have the budget today so it’s a case of giving them the best ROI for what they can afford and utilising the channels that will give them the best return.
    Thanks.
    Rob

  9. Now SEO process is very crucial after the penguin update as many of the SEO activities are proving negative results now. As it is said in the post, we should hire a professional SEO person for the SEO task for our business websites.

  10. Hi 🙂 Speaking from experience, an In-house SEO has advantages and drawbacks. I worked as an In-house SEO for years before I left to start my own SEO company. The bennifit of having a team member work in-house is the fact that they become engrained in your company culture. They will know the ins and outs of your company, and they will have a better understandingly your workable assets.
    The draw backs are; They will be limited to your marketing budget. Since I work with multiple clients, and I work with multiple budgets I’m able to deploy higher-end tools for tracking/optimizing/and building out content. Also, I work with my own team now, so I am able to offer WAY more services than I was able to give my in-house employer (this part is just simple math, 5 is better than 1.) Lastly, the biggest challenge I had in-house was getting buy in from management on new projects. As a SEO consultant, I have more Athority. If a business owner has already decided to hire me, they aren’t going to question my advice (very much) because that would be stupid to pay someone, and not allow them to deliver results.
    Either way, you can achieve “search sucsess” if you work with talented people. Best of luck!

Comments are closed.