How to Structure in-house SEO Team

Published by Femi Olajiga in Digital Marketing Strategy

How to Structure In-house SEO Team

There is a general perception that it’s better to hire an external agency to work on your SEO as opposed to building an in-house SEO team. This assumption is far from the truth and in this article I will explain how and why it is better to build and structure your in-house SEO team. Let’s start with the top level explanations of the meaning of in-house SEO team.

What is an in-house SEO Team?

An in-house SEO team is a scenario where you hire full-time SEO professionals to work exclusively on your website alone. Your in-house SEO team has limited to no interaction or dependencies on external SEO agencies. This, of course, very much depends on the level of SEO maturity of your website. The concept of in-house SEO team(s) also applies to SEO agencies because they, too, can decide to in-source their end-to-end SEO capability in-house. So why would an organisation opt to hire an in-house SEO team as opposed to delegating its SEO strategy planning to an external SEO agency? This leads us nicely to the next question.

 

What are the benefits of having an in-house SEO team?

I have had the opportunity to work as part of in-house SEO teams both on the client and on the agency side, which has given me a wealth of experience. There are a few benefits of hiring an in-house SEO team:

  1. Security: Having an in-house SEO team reduces the risk of falling into the trap of bad SEO being done to your website which might result in Google punishing your website for ‘black hat’ SEO. This is because some agencies are only interested in quick wins, without considering that these might have a long term negative impact on your website. This is why I always recommend building your SEO team in-house, as this gives you complete control over your SEO activities. 
  2. Internal Communication: One of the main problems of implementing SEO in companies is due to the fractured communication between external agencies and important internal stakeholders like the IT development team. It is extremely easy for in-house SEO team members to just walk up to IT dev team members and collaborate towards implementing technical SEO tasks. It’s even easier for internal SEO team members to request access to internal data which cannot be shared with external SEO agencies. 
  3. Reduced Cost: I have worked with large marketing agencies that charge clients anything from $800 to $1500 per day depending on the size of the website. There is a perception that external agencies are expensive because they have expertise that in-house SEO teams don’t have. There is a different side to this assumption, because an in-house SEO team can easily hire someone with agency background. Business leaders often make the mistake of believing that hiring an SEO agency will give them access to SEO tools but in actual fact, in-house teams can buy these SEO tools themselves, and often at a cheaper rate, directly from vendors. The cost of SEO tools should not be the main factor driving your decision on whether or not to outsource your SEO to an agency. 
  4. SEO Implementation Speed: The ease of collaboration with important internal stakeholders makes SEO implementation a lot faster for in-house SEO teams. I have seen situations where the implementation of SEO recommendations from external teams is delayed by up to 6 months (?!) due to fractured communication with external SEO agencies. It is also possible to have multiple agencies working on your SEO which makes it difficult to track prioritisation of SEO tasks and further complicates the communication and the execution of your SEO strategy. In-house SEO teams can easily nudge internal stakeholders to speed up SEO task implementation. 

There are pros and cons to the cost benefits of in-house SEO team structure and the next question to consider when structuring your in-house SEO team is:

How much does it cost to build an in-house SEO team?

Whether in-house or agency side, every SEO team needs SEO software for technical SEO, content production and link building. It is significantly cheaper to buy your own in-house SEO tools because you will basically be buying the same tools agencies use, for which they will often charge a premium. There are situations where agencies ‘white label’ SEO tools and resell the same tools to clients as “proprietary SEO tools”. The cost of SEO tools ranges from $600 to $800 per month depending on the size of your website, but you can easily find cheaper tools for $200 per month if you have a very small website. 

Next you need to consider how much it would cost to hire an in-house SEO team. You will ideally need between two to 20 people on your in-house SEO team, depending on the size of your website and the competitiveness of your industry. For startups I recommend hiring a T-shaped SEO consultant like myself, as opposed to building an in-house SEO team. This is a more cost effective approach that saves time and money because it costs around $120,000 to hire an in-house team with all the skills required but you can easily pay half of that to a consultant and still get better results than hiring an agency. Most organisations do not fully in-house their SEO but adopt a hybrid model that offers the best of both worlds. 

Skills you need for when structuring an in-house SEO team

There is the perception that you get more skilled SEO if you decide to outsource your SEO to an SEO agency but people often fail to realise that some of the best SEO teams work in-house. It’s also easy to build an in-house SEO team by hiring people with agency backgrounds. Having said that, you will need to ensure that the people you hire have a mix of the following SEO skills:

  • Technical SEO
  • Content Production
  • Digital PR
  • Link Building

How do you structure a successful in-house SEO team?

In-house SEO Team structure

Usually this function is driven by a Head of SEO or SEO Director and I recommend hiring a seasoned, T-shaped SEO professional with experience of technical, content and link building. This will ensure that every aspect of SEO is covered. Reporting into the Head of SEO are 3 broad skillset groups lead by the:

  • SEO Manager (Technical SEO)
  • SEO Manager (Content)
  • SEO Manager (Link building / Digital PR)

This can then be further extended with the executive/assistant/intern layers, if necessary, as shown in the image.

Different types of in-house SEO teams

There are two options of in-house SEO team structure which are:

  • Fully in-house SEO team
  • Hybrid in-house SEO team.

Hybrid in-house SEO team is a structure that works well for most small to medium-sized organisations. It’s often difficult to in-house all of your SEO team, which is why most organisations hire SEO consultants on an ad hoc basis to help create a detailed SEO strategy and implementation roadmap. 

I work with companies to save them the cost of hiring expensive in-house SEO team due to my experience across Technical SEO, content, link building and conversion optimisation. If you’d like to discuss your requirements further – please get in touch via email on femi@cxconversion.com or call me on +44 (0)75 6809 1722.