Is it Better to In-house SEO or Work with an SEO Agency?

In this post, we tackle a recurring topic for businesses and e-merchants: "Should I hire an SEO consultant or should I turn to an agency?" This is a legitimate question raised by companies that have reached a certain level of online maturity.

These companies struggle to choose between collaborating with a partner agency or hiring a consultant. Although hiring an SEO expert to complete or create the marketing team offers a number of advantages, this tactic may not necessarily be the best suited to their growth objectives. The hiring and necessary training of an employee can be expensive and time-consuming. Added to this is also the cost of purchasing software. In our opinion, if the company is determined to improve its SEO performance, it is better to trust an agency.

Discover 5 advantages of delegating your SEO project to an agency!

🚀 Quick read: the 5 advantages of an SEO agency at a glance

Here is a summary of the 5 main advantages of hiring an SEO agency to improve the SEO of a business or e-commerce site.

1. Experience gained with numerous clients, in various fields.
2. New technologies tested to stay at the forefront of organic SEO.
3. Tools that are efficient and sometimes expensive at their disposal.
4. Teams trained and available at all times.
5. Network of partners available for all ancillary needs.

👴 1. The agency's experience

Agencies that work with several clients have the opportunity to test numerous strategies and tactics. They are thus more capable of applying best practices and will save you time and money by providing you with tailor-made solutions. This means that you will get better results faster!

Conversely, consultants at the advertiser may suffer from a certain professional isolation that does not allow them to question their practices. In some cases, the consultant may even develop a false belief that no one can or will be able to help them in case of difficulty.

🤯 2. Agencies beta test solutions

Marketing or SEO agencies quickly have access to new products and beta versions. Thanks to these products, agencies can offer their clients access to the latest SEO trends.

At the launch of Facebook Ads or even Google Ads, competition was lower and return on investment was much higher. Being at the forefront of digital marketing trends is therefore a real asset.

🗝️ 3. Better marketing tools

Agencies generally have more advanced tools. Most companies do not buy several tools to perform the same type of tasks. For example, a company will not provide both Ahrefs, SEMRush, MajesticSEO to their team.

Agencies, on the other hand, often have a wide variety of tools at their disposal. This has more advantages than you might think. Since each SEO tool tends to analyze situations a bit differently, you will get multiple evaluations of the same website.

In addition, some tools are more or less efficient, depending on the fields. For example, it is not uncommon to see discrepancies in the volume data provided by Ahrefs and SEMRush. But know that if you limit yourself to one tool, you risk making decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete measurements.

Finally, for some companies, the accumulation of different licenses can have a significant impact on their marketing budget, which is not the case for agencies, as the tools are amortized across all clients.

🤺 4. Teams and training

SEO agencies employ enough people so that vacations and sick leave do not impact the activity. Your agency will therefore always be available for you and will always be ready to solve a problem or give you its opinion. Regardless of the issue, such as a Google algorithm update, having a partner available all the time can make a big difference.

SEO agencies must constantly train their staff in the following areas: result analysis, new best practices, and new tools.

Thanks to this ongoing training, teams master the latest news. As a rule, internal training is only focused on the brand or the product offered by the company and teams must improve their skills on their own initiative.

🕸️ 5. A wide network

Do you need to make technical adjustments to your website, have optimized content written to feed your company blog, or find partner sites for creating quality backlinks? An SEO agency works with numerous partners (website developers, web/UX designers, SEO copywriters, community managers, etc.) to meet all your digital communication needs.

In addition, they often work with numerous websites dealing with the same theme as yours to place relevant links. Finally, they generally have contacts with popular press, which allows acquiring incoming links from sources recognized and appreciated by Google.