The Downside To In House SEO

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 25 of July , 2008 at 8:15 pm

Many businesses prefer to undertake their search engine optimization programs in-house rather out-sourcing the service. While this can be done successfully, there are quite a few pitfalls that should be considered before selecting the in house SEO path versus out sourced.

The first real problem is that of talent, or lack of. There are thousands, if not millions of partially trained experts around the world. These partially trained experts can work well as part of a team. However, left to do the job themselves they will only achieve a 60-80% site optimization success rate. They will almost always leave out some components of a good search engine optimization strategy.

SEO experts that are thorough and know the requirements of good search engine optimization are few and far between. These guys (and gals) won’t work for a small salary when they can earn much more as consultants on their own.

As an employer you can often be left with employing second best in this field. Jessica Bowman painted a pretty accurate picture of some of the problems of undertaking search engine optimization in-house. I would suggest any company considering hiring an in-house SEO expert read the article first.

Her conclusion can be a good solution for many companies. It amounts to doing as much as you can in-house then contracting an external consultant to review your efforts and make recommendations. The benefits? Here’s Jessica’ conclusion:
It’s a win-win situation: (1) You get all of the SEO requirements, (2) you aren’t paying for an SEO consultant to write up the basic items, and (3) as you review what the consultant added, your knowledge will grow.

Search engine optimization is an evolving business that requires knowledge of not only what is required today, but where to find information on tomorrow’s requirements. Like any professional, keeping your knowledge up-to-date is half the battle.

For a business undertaking an internal search engine optimization program, you won’t know what key aspects of your program are missing if you are not aware of them - you will be when it’s too late of course. If you are looking to hire an expert SEO consultant, please feel free to give me a call for a free initial analysis at 781-350-4365.

                      Category: SEO                      

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