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SEO In-House vs. Outsourced

Summary

In-House vs. Outsourced It's the age-old problem of many businesses, now modernized for the cyber age - should a business take on the work or outsource to a pro?

Our industry, once known only as search engine optimization (SEO) and now as search engine marketing (SEM), is no different.

Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing seem to be the biggest winners, taking the vast majority of the $5.75 billion industry according to the State of Search Engine Marketing 2005 - an annual survey by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. Paid placement (also known as Pay-Per-Click) gets an amazing 83% of that industry total (with search media firms gobbling up an 89.2% share).

So what's left for SEO to accomplish and who should do the work?

Of that $5.75 billion, only $642 million goes to SEO, and in-house optimization dominates in this area - 74.5% of SEO is conducted by actual employees of the web site being optimized. This means that outside search engine marketing agencies play a role only 25.5% of the time.

From these figures, it may seem that in-house SEO is the way to go. The majority could be right or wrong. Perhaps companies have made the most out of existing resources. Maybe they're just suspicious of SEO consultants. A C-level executive may rightly say, "This consultant succeeded with some other web sites, but will they have the same success with our business?"

SEO firms may be better at what they do.

A national study tells the story: In MarketingSherpa's 2nd Annual Search Marketing Survey (released in September 2005), traffic grew a great deal more after six months when an agency was involved:

Agency optimized 110% increase
In-house optimized 38% increase

We believe those numbers reflect some of the issues we'll highlight in this guide, including expertise, focus and priorities that can change in-house.

Even though the SEO industry is more than a decade old, SEO firms sometimes have trouble proving that they're the best option. Pricing, marketing and expertise may come into play.

If they want to remain (or become) competitive, businesses may very well need to outsource SEO. And that makes sense, too. As SEO firms focus on getting traffic, companies can direct their resources to products, services, and marketing they understand, including the way visitors use their web sites.

Read excerpts from this SEO study online:

Fathom SEO is a market-leading firm dedicated to Search Engine Marketing (SEM), with an emphasis on natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Fathom SEO provides link building, pay-per-click (PPC) bid management, web analytics, and custom and integrated Opt-in Email Marketing services. Clients include Eaton Corp., the Cleveland Clinic, Little Tikes, Sauder, Bissell and Darice.