Hiring an SEO Company Versus Keeping It In-House: There’s a Better Third Option

Most businesses frame this as a binary choice.

Do we hire an SEO agency? Or do we build an in-house SEO team?

Both options get debated endlessly. Both have real tradeoffs. And most businesses end up going with one or the other, spending too much money, waiting too long for results, and eventually wondering why organic traffic still isn’t where it needs to be.

Here’s what nobody tells you: there’s a third option. One that’s faster than an agency, cheaper than building a team, and comes with the kind of senior expertise that neither option reliably delivers.

I’m Brandon Leuangpaseuth — a remote freelance SEO growth marketer who has driven explosive results for multi-million dollar companies and Y Combinator-backed startups. I’ve helped Keeper Tax achieve a 400% increase in organic traffic and a 700% increase in conversions in 3.5 months. I’ve scaled SEO programs for growth-stage B2B SaaS companies where organic search is a core revenue channel, not an afterthought.

I publish in CXL, Clearscope, and Grow & Convert. I’ve run SEO and growth campaigns at companies where the stakes were real and the timelines were tight.

This article breaks down what you actually get from hiring an SEO company versus keeping it in house — and makes the case for why a senior freelance growth marketer is the option most businesses should be choosing instead.

Note: If you’re stuck choosing between an overpriced agency and a slow in-house hire — and neither is actually moving the needle — then let’s talk. I’ve helped companies like Keeper Tax hit 400% organic traffic growth in 3.5 months, and you work directly with me, not a junior account manager.

The Problem With Hiring an SEO Agency

Let me be direct about what happens at most agencies.

You have a discovery call with a senior strategist. The pitch is impressive. You sign the contract. Then you get an account manager — someone whose job is to coordinate communication, not execute SEO.

The person actually doing your keyword research, building your links, writing your content strategy, and making the technical decisions? That’s a junior SEO specialist. Probably one managing your account alongside twelve others.

This isn’t a cynical take. It’s the economics of how SEO agencies operate. They have overheads — account managers, sales teams, office space, software subscriptions, profit margins. To sustain those costs, they need to maximize utilization across their team. Your account gets the bandwidth left over after everyone else’s is covered.

And you’re paying for all of it.

The average SEO agency charges $3,209 per month. For enterprise work, that number climbs dramatically higher. A meaningful portion of what you’re paying covers costs that have nothing to do with your SEO.

What You’re Actually Buying at Most Agencies

You’re buying access to a process. Not a senior strategist.

Not all SEO agencies deliver bad results. Some are genuinely excellent. But the variance is enormous, and identifying the good ones from the outside is hard.

Digital marketing agencies often present senior talent during the pitch process — the experienced strategists, the published case studies, the credentialed leadership team. That’s who you’re evaluating when you decide to hire. That’s not necessarily who runs your account once you’re onboarded.

Account managers are the day-to-day reality of working with most agency teams. They collect your feedback, pass it to the execution team, and relay the results back to you. They’re not making SEO decisions. They’re managing a relationship.

Red flags to watch for when evaluating SEO companies: vague deliverables instead of specific outcomes, account managers who struggle to answer technical questions, monthly reports designed to look impressive rather than tell the truth, and timelines that keep extending without clear explanations.

The deeper problem is accountability. An in house SEO team is accountable to you daily. A freelance SEO specialist’s reputation depends on your results. An agency’s account manager is accountable to their internal process — and their internal process is designed to keep clients on retainer, not to produce the fastest possible results for your business.

Agency Costs Don’t Reflect the Work You Receive

Here’s the math nobody shows you.

A mid-tier SEO agency charging $4,000 per month has significant overhead to cover before any of that budget reaches your SEO. Account management, sales, tools, office space, and margin typically consume 40–60% of revenue. That leaves $1,600–$2,400 per month of actual work on your account.

At $75–$100 per hour for a mid-level SEO specialist, that’s 16–32 hours of actual execution time per month. For everything — technical SEO, content strategy, link building, reporting.

That’s not enough time to move the needle on a competitive account.

When you hire a freelance SEO expert directly, you’re paying for execution time, not overhead. The economics shift entirely in your favor.

The Problem With Building an In-House SEO Team

Building an in house SEO team sounds like the answer to the agency problem.

Full alignment with your brand. Direct control. A team solely dedicated to your site.

In theory, that’s all true. In practice, it comes with costs most companies underestimate — and a timeline that doesn’t match the urgency most growth-stage companies actually have.

The Real Cost of In-House SEO

The average base salary for an SEO specialist is around $53,918. Senior SEO professionals command significantly more — $80,000 to $120,000+ for someone with real strategic depth and a track record at competitive companies. Add benefits (roughly $24,000 per year), equipment, office space, and software subscriptions — a premium SEO tool stack alone can cost $5,000+ annually — and the annual cost of a single senior in house SEO professional easily reaches $100,000+.

The average employer spends $4,000 and takes around 24 days just to hire a new employee. That’s before onboarding, ramp-up, and the 3–6 months it typically takes for even an experienced hire to get up to speed on your specific business, competitive landscape, and technical setup before producing meaningful SEO results.

And that’s assuming you found the right person on the first try.

Finding qualified SEO talent is genuinely difficult. The skills required for an effective SEO strategy span technical SEO, content strategy, keyword research, link building, analytics, and increasingly, LLM SEO and AI search optimization. You’re unlikely to find a single person who’s excellent across all of them. So you either hire a generalist who does everything adequately and nothing brilliantly, or you hire multiple seo professionals — which multiplies the cost significantly.

The Speed Problem With In-House SEO

Here’s the timeline reality nobody advertises.

You spend 24 days recruiting. You onboard your new hire over 4–6 weeks. They spend the first 3 months learning your business, your existing content, your historical SEO situation, and the competitive dynamics in your market.

Then they start developing a strategy. Then they start executing.

You’re looking at 6–12 months before in house SEO teams produce measurable results in most cases. For a startup or growth-stage company with real revenue targets, that’s an enormous window of missed opportunity.

An SEO agency might tell you 3–6 months to meaningful results. A senior freelance growth marketer who already understands your market and your type of business can operate significantly faster — because there’s no institutional ramp-up, no internal bureaucracy, and no layers between strategy and execution.

The Single Point of Failure Problem

With an in house SEO team — especially a small one — you’re exposed to a risk that doesn’t get discussed enough.

If that person leaves, your SEO program goes with them.

The knowledge, the strategy, the institutional understanding of your site’s history, the vendor relationships, the content calendar logic — all of it walks out the door. Rebuilding takes months. The cost is real, even if it doesn’t show up cleanly on a balance sheet.

Digital marketing agencies at least provide continuity. The account keeps running even when people change. But for most in house teams, one departure means starting over entirely.

The Third Option: A Senior Freelance Growth Marketer

Here’s what you actually need when you’re making this decision.

You need someone with the strategic depth of a senior in house hire. The breadth of expertise you’d get from a full SEO agency. The speed of someone who isn’t managing internal politics, agency overhead, or fifteen other client accounts. And the accountability of someone whose entire reputation depends on delivering results for you.

That’s what a senior freelance growth marketer delivers — and it’s why this model consistently outperforms both alternatives for companies that need SEO to produce real business outcomes on a timeline that actually matters.

Unlike agency teams who distribute your account across multiple junior specialists, a freelance Most businesses frame this as a binary choice.

Do we hire an SEO agency? Or do we build an in-house SEO team?

Both options get debated endlessly. Both have real tradeoffs. And most businesses end up going with one or the other, spending too much money, waiting too long for results, and eventually wondering why organic traffic still isn’t where it needs to be.

Here’s what nobody tells you: there’s a third option. One that’s faster than an agency, cheaper than building a team, and comes with the kind of senior expertise that neither option reliably delivers.

I’m Brandon Leuangpaseuth — a remote freelance growth marketer who has driven explosive results for multi-million dollar companies and Y Combinator-backed startups. I’ve helped Keeper Tax achieve a 400% increase in organic traffic and a 700% increase in conversions in 3.5 months. I’ve scaled SEO programs for growth-stage B2B SaaS companies where organic search is a core revenue channel, not an afterthought.

I publish in CXL, Clearscope, and Grow & Convert. I’ve run SEO and growth campaigns at companies where the stakes were real and the timelines were tight.

This article breaks down what you actually get from hiring an SEO company versus keeping it in house — and makes the case for why a senior freelance growth marketer is the option most businesses should be choosing instead.

The Problem With Hiring an SEO Agency

Let me be direct about what happens at most agencies.

You have a discovery call with a senior strategist. The pitch is impressive. You sign the contract. Then you get an account manager — someone whose job is to coordinate communication, not execute SEO.

The person actually doing your keyword research, building your links, writing your content strategy, and making the technical decisions? That’s a junior SEO specialist. Probably one managing your account alongside twelve others.

This isn’t a cynical take. It’s the economics of how SEO agencies operate. They have overheads — account managers, sales teams, office space, software subscriptions, profit margins. To sustain those costs, they need to maximize utilization across their team. Your account gets the bandwidth left over after everyone else’s is covered.

And you’re paying for all of it.

The average SEO agency charges $3,209 per month. For enterprise work, that number climbs dramatically higher. A meaningful portion of what you’re paying covers costs that have nothing to do with your SEO.

What You’re Actually Buying at Most Agencies

You’re buying access to a process. Not a senior strategist.

Not all SEO agencies deliver bad results. Some are genuinely excellent. But the variance is enormous, and identifying the good ones from the outside is hard.

Digital marketing agencies often present senior talent during the pitch process — the experienced strategists, the published case studies, the credentialed leadership team. That’s who you’re evaluating when you decide to hire. That’s not necessarily who runs your account once you’re onboarded.

Account managers are the day-to-day reality of working with most agency teams. They collect your feedback, pass it to the execution team, and relay the results back to you. They’re not making SEO decisions. They’re managing a relationship.

Red flags to watch for when evaluating SEO companies: vague deliverables instead of specific outcomes, account managers who struggle to answer technical questions, monthly reports designed to look impressive rather than tell the truth, and timelines that keep extending without clear explanations.

The deeper problem is accountability. An in house SEO team is accountable to you daily. A freelance SEO specialist’s reputation depends on your results. An agency’s account manager is accountable to their internal process — and their internal process is designed to keep clients on retainer, not to produce the fastest possible results for your business.

Agency Costs Don’t Reflect the Work You Receive

Here’s the math nobody shows you.

A mid-tier SEO agency charging $4,000 per month has significant overhead to cover before any of that budget reaches your SEO. Account management, sales, tools, office space, and margin typically consume 40–60% of revenue. That leaves $1,600–$2,400 per month of actual work on your account.

At $75–$100 per hour for a mid-level SEO specialist, that’s 16–32 hours of actual execution time per month. For everything — technical SEO, content strategy, link building, reporting.

That’s not enough time to move the needle on a competitive account.

When you hire a freelance SEO expert directly, you’re paying for execution time, not overhead. The economics shift entirely in your favor.

The Problem With Building an In-House SEO Team

Building an in house SEO team sounds like the answer to the agency problem.

Full alignment with your brand. Direct control. A team solely dedicated to your site.

In theory, that’s all true. In practice, it comes with costs most companies underestimate — and a timeline that doesn’t match the urgency most growth-stage companies actually have.

The Real Cost of In-House SEO

The average base salary for an SEO specialist is around $53,918 (compare that to the cost of hiring a freelance SEO). Senior SEO professionals command significantly more — $80,000 to $120,000+ for someone with real strategic depth and a track record at competitive companies. Add benefits (roughly $24,000 per year), equipment, office space, and software subscriptions — a premium SEO tool stack alone can cost $5,000+ annually — and the annual cost of a single senior in house SEO professional easily reaches $100,000+.

The average employer spends $4,000 and takes around 24 days just to hire a new employee. That’s before onboarding, ramp-up, and the 3–6 months it typically takes for even an experienced hire to get up to speed on your specific business, competitive landscape, and technical setup before producing meaningful SEO results.

And that’s assuming you found the right person on the first try.

Finding qualified SEO talent is genuinely difficult. The skills required for an effective SEO strategy span technical SEO, content strategy, keyword research, link building, analytics, and increasingly, LLM SEO and AI search optimization or get cited by LLMs. You’re unlikely to find a single person who’s excellent across all of them. So you either hire a generalist who does everything adequately and nothing brilliantly, or you hire multiple SEO professionals — which multiplies the cost significantly.

The Speed Problem With In-House SEO

Here’s the timeline reality nobody advertises.

You spend 24 days recruiting. Searching places like Fiverr SEO services alternatives. You onboard your new hire over 4–6 weeks. They spend the first 3 months learning your business, your existing content, your historical SEO situation, and the competitive dynamics in your market.

Then they start developing a strategy. Then they start executing.

You’re looking at 6–12 months before in house SEO teams produce measurable results in most cases. For a startup or growth-stage company with real revenue targets, that’s an enormous window of missed opportunity.

An SEO agency might tell you 3–6 months to meaningful results. A senior freelance growth marketer who already understands your market and your type of business can operate significantly faster — because there’s no institutional ramp-up, no internal bureaucracy, and no layers between strategy and execution.

The Single Point of Failure Problem

With an in house seo team — especially a small one — you’re exposed to a risk that doesn’t get discussed enough.

If that person leaves, your SEO program goes with them.

The knowledge, the strategy, the institutional understanding of your site’s history, the vendor relationships, the content calendar logic — all of it walks out the door. Rebuilding takes months. The cost is real, even if it doesn’t show up cleanly on a balance sheet.

Digital marketing agencies at least provide continuity. The account keeps running even when people change. But for most in house teams, one departure means starting over entirely.

The Third Option: A Senior Freelance Growth Marketer

Here’s what you actually need when you’re making this decision.

You need someone with the strategic depth of a senior in house hire. The breadth of expertise you’d get from a full SEO agency. The speed of someone who isn’t managing internal politics, agency overhead, or fifteen other client accounts. And the accountability of someone whose entire reputation depends on delivering results for you.

That’s what a senior freelance growth marketer delivers — and it’s why this model consistently outperforms both alternatives for companies that need SEO to produce real business outcomes on a timeline that actually matters.

Unlike agency teams who distribute your account across multiple junior specialists, a freelance SEO expert does the work directly. Strategy, technical SEO, keyword research, content direction, link building oversight — every decision runs through the same senior person who understands your business and has a stake in your outcomes.

Unlike an in house SEO professional, a remote freelance SEO specialist comes with a track record you can verify before committing. You’re not spending 24 days on recruitment and six months on ramp-up. You’re engaging someone who has already solved the problems you’re facing, at companies running at the pace you need to match.

And unlike either option, a senior freelancer operates without overhead. No account managers. No office space costs. No layers between you and the person doing the work. That’s why the economics work — you’re paying for expertise and execution, not infrastructure.

Unlike the slow, methodical pace of most agency retainers — optimized for recurring monthly revenue rather than speed — I approach SEO with a growth marketer’s mindset. That means identifying the highest-leverage opportunities first, moving fast on execution, and iterating based on what the data actually shows.

Most businesses don’t need 200 pieces of content. They need 20 that are positioned exactly right in their competitive landscape and structured to convert. That’s the difference between growth hacking SEO techniques and volume-based SEO. And it’s the difference between 3.5 months to meaningful results and 12 months of waiting.

Real Results: Why This Model Works

I don’t ask you to take this on faith.

At Keeper Tax — a Y Combinator-backed tax automation company operating in a competitive financial services market — I drove a 400% increase in organic traffic and a 700% increase in conversions in 3.5 months.

Those aren’t vanity metrics. Conversions are what matter at a SaaS company. And 700% in 3.5 months is the kind of result that changes how a company thinks about SEO as a channel.

At EasyLlama, another YC-backed company, I built out an SEO content strategy that produced measurable traffic growth in a competitive compliance and workplace training space.

Across multiple multi-million dollar companies and growth-stage startups, the pattern holds: when you combine senior strategic thinking with fast, focused execution, SEO produces results on a timeline that neither agencies nor in house teams typically match.

You can read the full case study at brandonleuangpaseuth.com/case-study.

You can hear directly from clients through video testimonials here.

These aren’t carefully curated testimonials written to make a portfolio look impressive. They’re real people talking about what actually happened to their business when we worked together.

Hiring an SEO Company Versus Keeping It In-House: Side-by-Side

Here’s the honest comparison.

Most businesses looking at this comparison need the benefits of the middle and right columns simultaneously — and they need them without the cost or timeline of either traditional option. That’s exactly what a senior freelance specialist delivers, and why the model consistently outperforms both alternatives for B2B SaaS companies and growth-stage startups.

When Each Option Actually Makes Sense

I want to be honest here, because not every situation calls for the same answer.

• Hire an SEO agency if: You’re a large enterprise with complex, multi-market SEO needs that genuinely require a full team executing simultaneously across multiple functions. Or if you need a specific type of large-scale technical SEO work — a multi-site migration, a massive programmatic SEO build — that requires coordinated team execution over an extended period.
• Build an in house seo team if: You’re a large, well-funded company with long time horizons, established brand complexity, and the resources to invest in building and retaining a genuine in house seo team of senior professionals. Not a single specialist covering everything — an actual team with distinct roles.
• Hire a senior freelance growth marketer if: You’re a B2B SaaS company, startup, or growth-stage brand that needs SEO to produce real pipeline on a real timeline. You need strategic depth, fast execution, and someone accountable to your outcomes — not to an agency’s internal process or a headcount budget. I also offer freelance AI SEO services.

What Working With Me Looks Like

I work with a small number of clients directly at any given time — deliberately, so the work gets done properly.

No account managers. No junior team members doing the actual work. No deliverable checklists designed to justify a monthly retainer. Direct access to a growth marketer who has driven results at the companies that hired him, with a track record you can verify before we have a single conversation.

The engagement starts with understanding your specific situation — your competitive landscape, your current SEO program, where you are, and where you need to go. From there, we build a strategy and execute it.

Monthly retainers cover full-stack SEO: technical SEO audits, keyword research and content strategy (we can even create an automated SEO content machine), link building, LLM SEO for AI search visibility, and transparent reporting tied to actual business outcomes — not vanity metrics.

For companies that want to understand exactly where they stand before committing, I also offer one-time SEO audits that give you a clear, actionable picture of your current situation.

Apply to work with me — tell me about your business and what you’re trying to build. If it makes sense, we’ll talk directly about scope and what results look like.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it better to hire an SEO company or keep SEO in-house?

Neither option is universally better. Hiring an seo company gives you immediate access to broader expertise but comes with overhead costs and the risk of junior execution. Keeping SEO in house gives you alignment and control but requires significant investment and time to build. A third option — hiring a senior freelance growth marketer — often delivers more per dollar for growth-stage companies than either alternative.

How long does it take to see results from hiring an SEO company?

Most seo agencies project 3–6 months before meaningful results. An in house seo team typically takes 6–12 months to get fully operational. A senior freelancer with existing knowledge of your market and no ramp-up overhead can move significantly faster — though realistic expectations still account for the fact that SEO is a compounding long-term strategy.

What does an in-house SEO team actually cost?

Fully loaded, an in house seo team costs significantly more than most companies budget for. A single senior seo specialist runs $65,000–$100,000+ in base salary, plus benefits ($24,000+), tools ($5,000+/year), equipment, and office space. A complete in house seo team covering strategy, content, technical, and link building can easily reach $250,000–$400,000 annually.

What’s the hybrid approach to SEO?

Many companies adopt a hybrid model — keeping a strategist in house to manage direction and coordinate with an external seo agency or freelancer handling technical execution and heavy lifting. This can work well. The key is ensuring the internal hire is senior enough to provide real strategic direction, and the external partner is accountable to outcomes rather than deliverables.

Why is a freelance growth marketer different from an SEO agency?

An seo agency adds layers — account managers, coordination overhead, junior execution staff — between you and the strategic thinking. A senior freelance growth marketer removes those layers. You’re engaging directly with the person who developed the strategy, executes the work, and is accountable for the outcomes. That’s a fundamentally different relationship than what most seo agencies deliver. expert does the work directly. Strategy, technical seo, keyword research, content direction, link building oversight — every decision runs through the same senior person who understands your business and has a stake in your outcomes.