SEO is an industry where scale provides significant advantages. This naturally benefits agencies and puts in-house efforts at a disadvantage. In my eyes, this is by far the most common reason companies fail when trying to manage their own SEO in competitive niches.
There are really two cornerstones in search engine optimization. The first is knowing what to do. The second is doing it.
The first cornerstone scales effortlessly. Once you have the knowledge to do SEO well, you have access to a nearly inexhaustible source of insights. The execution part, of course, takes more time—but as mentioned, it’s only half the work. Also, the better your knowledge, the less you typically need to execute, to some extent.
Almost everyone who fails
Almost every in-house SEO effort I’ve seen fails on one of these two points. Either you hire a senior SEO who truly knows their stuff, or you hire someone who’s closer to an implementer. The problem with a senior hire is that you’re paying good money and still need someone to carry out the actual work. In my experience, very few senior SEOs are willing to stay long in a role that involves too many junior-level tasks. The problem with hiring someone more junior is that, without guidance from someone who has run many SEO projects, what you end up with is essentially a glorified webmaster.
The most common failure I’ve seen over the years is the idea: “If I build a bunch of sites and link to my own, I’ll reach number one.”
This often sounds brilliant on paper. I’ve probably seen around 100 attempts like this, and I’d estimate that only a handful succeeded for more than a year or two. Then they get shut down, forgotten, or simply stop delivering value. No disrespect to those working in-house—I just think that in many cases, it’s simply not feasible. At least not to do well and in a sustainable way.
But I still believe we’ll see more in-house SEO
In a recent conversation with a former colleague—now in-house at one of Europe’s largest online companies—I had a realization. He’s not particularly satisfied with what they’re able to achieve. He’s often the only one with SEO knowledge in the projects and has no one to bounce ideas off. Sure, he has juniors who can carry out the work (it’s a large operation), but when Google rolls out major updates, it’s just him.
Despite this, it became pretty clear to me that we will see more in-house SEO. The reason is that mid-level SEO is becoming increasingly accessible. There are more people now who can successfully run SEO projects, as long as they’re not too complex. That makes it possible to hire internally, even if you’re not an agency.
Further reading
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this topic, I recommend an earlier article I wrote along the same lines: Why In-House SEO Is So Difficult. It explores a slightly different reason and another layer of complexity.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.