In-house SEO vs. agency? How to decide

Search “agency vs in-house SEO” and you’ll find roughly the same article over and over again. A list of pros and cons. A comparison table. And, inevitably, a conclusion along the lines of “there’s no right answer – it depends on your business.”

Helpful? Sort of. But there’s one fairly important thing most of those articles leave out: they’re written by agencies. So, unsurprisingly, the agency option tends to come out looking pretty good. We’re not going to do that. Sometimes you need someone in-house. Sometimes an agency makes more sense. And quite often, the best answer is a bit of both. The trick is working out what you actually need before deciding what you think you need.

TL;DR

• The real question isn’t “agency or in-house” – it’s where the gap is: capacity, specialist knowledge or speed.
• In-house gives you deeper business knowledge and closer collaboration; agencies bring broader expertise and flexibility.
• Sometimes, the honest answer is go and hire someone.
• But the strongest setups we see are often both – working together rather than one replacing the other.

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Start with what you’ve already got

Before deciding whether you need an agency or someone in-house, look at what you already have. For most businesses we speak to, they already have some form of internal marketing department already, whether that’s a marketing manager, a few marketing execs, maybe a designer in the mix. What they don’t always have is specialist SEO resource and insight –  and there’s an important difference between the two.

Your marketing manager might be brilliant at keeping everything moving. They know the business better than an external agency ever could. But expecting them to keep up with every Google update, understand the latest SEO news, follow what’s happening with AI search, AND still find the time to do the work is a lot to ask. After all, nobody can be a specialist in everything.

Sometimes the gap is knowledge. SEO changes constantly, and specialist knowledge is knowing what matters to your business, what doesn’t, and what you need to do about it, not just what’s changed. That’s one area where an agency can add value. Agencies spend their time in the SEO world – going to conferences, following industry developments closely, testing new methods, and seeing what works across different businesses. That experience can help an internal team avoid spending hours chasing something that ultimately turns out to be noise.

But sometimes the gap isn’t knowledge at all. Your team might know exactly what needs doing, but just do not have the capacity or resource to do it.

So, we wanted to preface this by saying, the first question isn’t simply “agency or in-house?” It should be: “Where’s the gap? Is it specialist knowledge, capacity, strategy or something else entirely?”

Once you know that, the answer becomes much easier to work out!

What we see businesses doing 

There are a few situations we see come up again and again when businesses are trying to work out what their SEO setup should look like. They’re all slightly different, and the right answer isn’t always to hire an agency or bring someone in-house but depends on where the pressure point is in your business.

Here are some of the scenarios we see most often, and how we’d approach each one.

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1. One generalist marketing exec wearing five hats

We see this one a lot. One person is looking after social, paid, SEO, email marketing… and probably getting asked to make a deck or two at some point. 

The problem is that there are only so many hours in the day. And, while they might know a little about lots of things, it’s difficult to be a specialist across five different disciplines at once.

This is where hiring an agency can make sense. Instead of asking one person to cover everything, you can bring in a wider team of specialists when you need them – without having to hire an entire department for every skill, which could cost significantly more.

There’s also the question of keeping those skills up to date. SEO doesn’t sit still, and staying on top of changes, testing what works and understanding the potential future commercial impacts  takes time in itself.

If your internal team has the business knowledge but simply doesn’t have the specialist resource or capacity to do SEO properly, bringing in an agency can fill that gap.

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2. You actually just need to hire someone

Here’s something you probably won’t hear from many agencies: sometimes, you need to hire someone in-house.

We’ve turned businesses away before because we thought they needed a marketing manager more than they needed us.

If nobody is owning marketing day-to-day, bringing in an agency isn’t going to solve the problem. You might just end up paying an agency to work around the same gap, and that’s not particularly helpful to anyone. 

If what you need is someone internally who knows the business, owns the relationships and keeps everything moving, make that hire. 

We’d much rather tell you that than sell you something you don’t need.

3. You’ve got a strong internal team but need specialist SEO support

This is probably one of the strongest setups for your business. It’s not “in-house vs. agency” at all but a hybrid: in-house + agency.

Your marketing manager knows the business, the people, the priorities, the customers and what’s happening internally. An agency can bring specialist knowledge, extra capacity, fresh thinking and an outside perspective.

That combination can work well because everyone brings something different. Your internal team keeps the business context and ownership, while the agency provides the specialist lens and resources to support them.

It’s more about having the right people doing the right things. In many cases, a hybrid setup gives you the best of both worlds rather than handing everything over.

4. You’re mid-project and need things to move faster

If you’re relying on a freelancer, developer or small team, and a website change sits in a queue for weeks, that can become a bigger issue than it sounds. Especially when that change is affecting leads, rankings or conversions in the meantime.

Sometimes fixes get held up by the number of steps between spotting an issue and getting it resolved:

One of the benefits of having multiple specialists working together at an agency is that things can often move much faster:

Sometimes, speed is the thing you’re actually buying.

Having several disciplines under one roof means requests can be picked up in hours rather than weeks, without everything having to go through a ticketing system or wait for multiple people to come back with an answer.

5. You’ve got the budget and want a dedicated SEO resource

If SEO is important enough to the business that you can justify a dedicated person, and you have the budget, management support and enough work to keep them busy, there’s a strong argument for bringing that expertise in-house.

You get someone whose focus is your website, your customers, your priorities and your internal stakeholders. They become part of the business and, over time, build a level of knowledge that’s difficult for an external partner to replicate.

That doesn’t mean they have to work alone. A dedicated in-house SEO alongside an agency can be a very strong hybrid setup if you need additional specialist expertise, capacity or support on particular projects.

But if the choice is between paying an agency indefinitely and hiring the person you know you need, it’s worth being honest about which one makes more sense.

One thing we’d be careful about: making an agency your entire marketing department

This is possible, but we’d probably ask you to stop and think about it first.

There’s a difference between working alongside your marketing team and trying to become your marketing team. The latter can work, but it comes at a premium, and there are some things an external agency simply can’t replicate.

There’s still huge value in having someone internally who acts as the hub of the business. Someone who understands the politics, the personalities, the priorities and what’s happening day to day. Because however good your agency is, you’re still external.

That doesn’t mean the relationship has to feel distant. We’ve seen how effective it can be when an agency works closely with an internal team, including spending a day or two a week on-site. Being physically in the business gives you a much better understanding of how the team works, what’s happening day to day and where SEO fits into the wider marketing picture. It also makes those informal conversations and quick decisions much easier.

But there’s a balance to strike. We’ve also seen businesses try to have someone half in-house and half external, without really committing to either. It tends not to work brilliantly. You need clear ownership, clear communication and people who know where they fit.

So, agency or in-house? 🤔

Don’t start by choosing between an agency and an in-house hire – identify the gap! 

Is it capacity, specialist SEO knowledge or ownership? Once you know what’s missing, you can work out what needs to happen next.

If you need more specialist knowledge, an agency may be the right fit. If you need someone to own marketing from inside the business, an in-house hire could make more sense. And if you’ve already got a strong internal team but need extra expertise or capacity, there’s no reason it has to be one or the other. The important thing is to solve the gap, rather than decide on the solution first and work backwards.

So, take an honest look at your current setup and what your business needs right now. Identify what’s missing, decide what would fill it, and take it from there.

Sometimes the answer will be us, sometimes it’ll be an in-house hire, and sometimes, it’ll be both.