SEO careers: In-house or agency?
So, (or should we say SeO), you’re passionate about search engine optimisation and confident in your ability to maximise a website’s online visibility and search engine rankings. SEO is an incredibly important element of digital marketing that can make or break a company’s growth strategy in terms of how easy it is for potential customers to interact with your products and services.
With this in mind, it’s an increasingly popular industry to move into, albeit often accidentally, as online presence continues to define a company’s success. As your knowledge of SEO increases – whether on purpose or as a compliment to your job role – it’s likely that your employability will as well.
If you’re planning on progressing in your SEO career, there are several routes you can take which depend on how you prefer to work and your specific skill set.
Feel at home in-house
In-house means that you’ll be hired by a company as one of their employees and your responsibility within that role will be monitoring and improving the company website’s SEO. Usually, this means that your sole focus will be on one company, rather than a range of clients. Therefore, in this role you would be expected to develop a thorough understanding and knowledge of that company’s current content, marketing goals and customer base, and how to achieve results by boosting visibility and CTR (click-through rates) on SERPs (search engine results pages).
That’s not to say you shouldn’t have a comprehensive understanding of any company or client you work with even in an agency; B2C is an important element of any successful SEO process. However, as the company’s employee, this relationship is likely to have more longevity than you might have in your relationship with certain clients.
A sense of agency in agency
By contrast, with an agency, you’ll usually be one of a team of specialists hired to work with a range of clients and on various projects. In an agency role, there is a lot more emphasis on developing strong, professional relationships with clients in order to provide the exact service they’re looking for in order to get their website where it needs to be in order to be successful. However, this will also allow you to develop your own sense of personal agency as you manage your own workload and client communications.
Across both in-house and agency SEO careers, many of the standard procedures and basic strategies will remain the same. Whether it’s your own or a client’s website, they might still bring you in to fix certain issues like a high bounce rate or low conversion rates. This is why in either role you still need demonstrable and reputable knowledge and experience of SEO best practices, including website auditing, site mapping and metadata analysis.
Is consistency important for you?
An in-house role is most likely of the two to give you the space to develop a specialism, as well as the comfort of a familiar company voice. This enables you to build up a portfolio demonstrating this topic-specific knowledge for future employers. It also has a positive impact on site rankings through the creation of content that prioritises quality standards like Google’s EEAT (experience, expertise, authority, trust).
This might be best for you if you’re the sort of person who likes to focus on the trajectory of one project and follow it through to completion before moving on to something else. It can be rewarding to see a website you’ve worked hard on gain greater success through increased organic traffic thanks to your skill set and expertise.
However, if you do end up wanting to enter an alternative area of the SEO industry, it can be more difficult if you’ve only been writing about one niche topic. If you’re someone who thrives in a dynamic and varied work environment, in-house might feel a bit stagnant compared to an agency setting.
Another downside to an in-house SEO career is that, depending on the size of your company and whether or not you have any in-house developers, if your expertise doesn’t extend to technical SEO, any specific issues around crawling, indexing, rendering, and website architecture could take longer to solve and require external help anyway.
…Or is variety the spice of life?
What Sets Embryo Apart From Other Agencies?In an agency, you’re much more likely to be dealing with a variety of topics day-to-day and have more external deadlines. This will give you the chance to embrace daily challenges and learn to develop and adapt your tone of voice according to the client’s brief. An agency will also charge each client individually for the use of your skills and expertise.
As well as working with a range of clients, your role within an SEO agency also means that you’ll most likely be part of a team with a similar skill set to you. Not only are you likely to be working alongside similarly minded creative people, but you’ll also have a readily available support system in case you need a second opinion.
Due to an agency’s specific focus on SEO, it’s also far more likely that you’ll have access to, and the resources for, useful SEO tools that can speed up the process of things like website audits and keyword research. It also means that a client has more clarity of exactly how, and on what, their money is being spent.
The variety of an SEO agency career may sound exciting, but it requires a lot of effective time management, task prioritisation, and constant communication with clients which some people might feel interrupts their writing process.
With agency work, there’s also the added disadvantage that although you’ll become proficient in a range of SEO content, an agency usually has specifically designated teams focussed on various aspects of web design and development. This means that you’ll have less opportunity to develop skills related to those areas.
Key advantages of each
Let’s break down some key advantages for each that may make the decision easier for you:
In-house:
- Consistency, so it can often be easier for time management
- No dependency on whether clients stay or not
- Only need to stick to one company tone of voice
- You can work in a small group or by yourself, which may suit your needs better
Agency:
- You can develop project management skills
- More chance of networking in the SEO community
- There’s likely more of a career ladder to follow
- People above can mentor you
- Working with a range of clients which will develop your expertise
- Communicating with lots of people, which may suit you if you’re a sociable worker
However, some of these pros could potentially be cons when it comes to suiting what you want. You may have some absolute no-gos or deal breakers that will make your mind up for you, so hopefully those key advantages (or possible disadvantages) can sway you one way or the other:
Applying for your desired role
If you aim to work in-house, you may have had your eye on certain companies that you’d like to use your SEO expertise for, so the easiest way is to check their website for any available positions. Or, if not, you may have to put in some extra work to contact them directly and show them how they can benefit from your help/SEO.
As for an agency, it’s worth sending off your CV to any available SEO positions that seem to fit your expertise. Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date to maintain a sense of professionalism, and do your research to see if the agency seems a good fit for your own personal values. Remember, don’t hold yourself back if you lack confidence- there’s no harm in applying to anything you’re interested in, and you’ll still learn a lot from the application and interview experience.
At Embryo, we’re looking for people who are willing to go above and beyond, and you can view all our available roles on our career page! If you’re interested in joining a great bunch of people who are experts at what they do, then browse our open positions, or feel free to send us an email. With plenty of perks- such as private health and dental care, hybrid working, and a yearly company trip to name a few- and a positive workplace with the nicest people in the biz (we aren’t biased!), Embryo could be the perfect fit for you.
At the end of the day, it’s about picking an SEO career that suits you
If you’re just starting out in SEO, an agency tends to be a good place to learn quickly and to expand your range of knowledge around optimisation skills very quickly. However, it can be quite a stressful first impression of the industry. On the other hand, in-house might provide you with career stability at first, but there might not be as much opportunity for personal development as you work towards the company’s growth.
All of that to say, ultimately whether you want to pursue an SEO career in-house or in an agency is really down to personal preference and the way you manage your workload. Either way, in order to be a successful member of any optimisation project, it’s important to have a demonstrable and comprehensive understanding of SEO.
FAQs
Answered by Jamie Beatty
Does in-house SEO require a larger range of skills?
This depends on what brands you are working on and the scale of the website. For example, If you are working for a larger brand (fashion industry), a wider knowledge of SEO is beneficial. Companies with huge internal marketing teams will have employees with specific skills in that area.
With agency SEO, can I specialise in a skill eg. technical SEO?
Yes, typically in agency work you will specialise in a skill. Smaller agency work, however, will require a more broad knowledge of SEO.
Does in-house SEO become more maintenance-like after all main optimisations are complete?
This depends on how ambitious the brand is- lots of work is going to have to be done to get to this point. Content creation etc will be an ongoing process if the brand wants to remain active.
Will a marketing agency hire people with degrees but no experience?
This will be specific to each individual agency. In general, employers will hire people with no experience based on on work ethic and willingness to learn.
