Cha-Ching! The Cost of Bringing SEO In-House Vs. Outsourcing

David and I were recently kicking around some numbers about what it would cost for a company to hire all of the people needed to bring an SEO team in house. Wow. Even we were a bit surprised at what we found. Because SEO is comprised of so many different moving parts that must each be powered by a different type of professional, it’s no wonder that the majority of SEO is outsouced!

To bring SEO in-house and accomplish the job successfully, a company would need at the minimum a team that includes:

• Project manager
• Web programmer
• Copywriter
• Link building specialist
• Graphic designer
• AdWords/PPC Specialist

Add to the cost of all of these people’s salaries and benefits the fact that you’ve got to keep the team educated; SEO is a constantly changing business. For us in the industry, education means thousands of dollars worth of conferences each year, (an average SEO conference costs about $2,000- and that’s just the attendance fee), meeting with other SEO consultants, and a great deal of time spent on research.

Outsourcing means that companies have access to a whole group of expert professionals at a slice of the cost. Our team alone consists of

• 3 SEO Industry Expert Trainers & Consultants
• 3 Degreed Copywriters and/or Ad Agency Executives
• 1 Web Developer
• 1 Web Designer
• 1 Link Building Expert
• 1 Pay Per Click Expert
• And a handful of other professionals that we routinely count on

That’s a lot of knowledge! I know David has worked for year to build his team up to where it is now and it took a lot of trial and error along the way. With the exception of perhaps small companies with very limited budgets and very large companies with a heavy full-time workload, SEO is one of those things that just makes more sense to outsource than it does to try and build in-house.