TL;DR — In-house for product depth and retention; agency for breadth and velocity. Most teams need both.
Head to head
In-house SEO
Wins on:
- Deep product knowledge
- Long-term IP retention
- Tight cross-team collaboration
- Predictable cost
Agency SEO
Wins on:
- Access to 10+ years of cross-industry playbooks
- Faster ramp-up
- Multi-discipline execution
- No hiring overhead
- Scale up or down as needed
The verdict
Most companies under $20M ARR should hire a senior SEO manager in-house and partner with an agency for execution. Companies above that scale often hire both in-house leaders and agencies, because the surface area is too large for either alone.
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