It is not an easy decision for businesses when it comes to hiring an employee and an agency when it comes to SEO tasks. The business owners should make their decision on what will be more beneficial. Hiring an SEO expert as an employee and an SEO agency each has its pros and cons; however, one is more adequate for a certain business than the other, and it depends on the company’s needs.
SEO Employee
An SEO employee is somebody that is hired to provide various aspects of online marketing and is asked to complete specific tasks. Some of these tasks may include using search engine optimization techniques to increase a website’s traffic. The employee may also need to cover a variety of marketing areas such as content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Pros:
- Salaries of employees can be kept relatively lower compared to hiring a reputable agency.
- An employee can be trained to be highly productive in specific areas.
- Someone with SEO experience can be an asset to a smaller business especially if his services are cost-effective.
- An employee will be more familiar with the company culture that it works with, rather than an external agency.
- Employees will add more value to a company over time as they gain more experience and will be able to do their work with greater quality.
Cons:
- Spending time training SEO employees who may have little to no experience with SEO may not be the best investment.
- Employees only know what is taught to them and may not be interested in staying up to date with the most recent marketing techniques.
- Hiring an employee that does not work can be a setback to an SEO campaign; they can cost the company more money.
SEO Agency
An SEO agency is an external consultant or team of experts that are hired, usually temporarily to manage the specific SEO requirements of a company. Hiring an agency gives a company access to people with a specialized set of skills. The members of the agency will likely complete the same tasks as an SEO employee, but the main difference between the two is the difference in skill sets.
Pros:
- A team of experts usually has more experience in one or many aspects of SEO.
- It is less expensive to hire an agency than to train employees individually, to achieve all of the same results.
- Eliminate the risk of hiring employees that may cost a company money in the end.
- Agencies have access to suffocated and expensive marketing software.
- SEO agents are constantly looking for the newest trends and adapting to modern marketing.
- Great for large companies that can afford to pay an agency to manage all of their SEO and they don’t have to invest time and money in the training of a new department.
- Agencies provide a different perspective that may prove to be useful, they are more market-oriented and they know how to connect a business’ expertise with the understanding of consumers.
- Agencies usually have expertise in more than one type of marketing.
Con:
• Can be expensive for companies that do not have the right budget for SEO
These are some of the pros and cons that can be considered when choosing to hire an SEO employee vs. an SEO agency. The overall main point that should be considered is the business’ needs and which one of these fulfills them the most.
