As an SEO consultant, your job is not limited to acquiring better visibility for a website in SERPs; your job is also to bring in more leads and sales for the business.
The role as an agency-based SEO consultant is very different than an in-house consultant, so if you’re just making the transition to a career as an in-house SEO consultant, here are a few things you should know.
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There Are No Clients
This sounds like an obvious statement, but in my experience this can have a major impact on your daily routine.
When you’re working at an SEO agency, your daily routine includes a list of clients to whom you send daily project updates and check in with via email, as well as check their SERP rankings and make adjustments if necessary.
When working in-house, you only have one client, and your daily work routine includes understanding the need of that business, ensuring the quality of work, looking in to what competitors are doing, and keeping track of how many new leads and sales your SEO practices are acquiring.
Instead of sending SERP progress to the clients, you have to send reports directly to your superiors and you are often solely responsible for ensuring the success of various websites, blogs, advertisements, and/or campaigns.
You also have to pitch ideas to your directors for new and innovative plans to increase the company’s SERP rankings and bring in more leads for the business.
Pro Tip: As an agency SEO expert, your job is more directed towards making your clients happy, whereas in an in-house role you are more responsible for sales and reporting the progress of newly launched online marketing techniques to your directors.
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Different Tools to Play With
Marketing tools can give you insight into the website you’re working on and what you need to do in order to optimize it for maximum online traffic.
When working in an agency you are generally limited to tools like Google Analytics, Moz.com, and few other commonly available programs.
Working in-house can give you the opportunity to work with more advanced tools such as Kiss Metrics, Majestic SEO, and various other new and exciting programs.
It’s great to get your hands on number of different tools, but don’t fall into the trap of trying to use every SEO tool out there—more data sometimes can be more confusing than helpful.
When working in-house you need to be smart when it comes to dealing with data; focus on how you can benefit by converting that information into more business and branding for your company.
Pro Tip: When you first make the transition to working in-house, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data you can accumulate. Decide what data is most important to your company and only focus on those numbers.
If you don’t see online traffic rising after a few weeks, re-evaluate your data to decide if you’re concentrating on the right areas.
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You are Surrounded by Business-Minded People
The major difference I see between agency and in-house roles is that in an agency you are surrounded by digital marketers, but in an in-house role you are surrounded by business-minded people who work hard to get more sales for the business.
In an agency you can discuss ideas and work together to find solutions to problems, but when working in-house your colleagues will often be more interested in the bottom line than in the strategies you used to get those results. This means that you may be on your own when it comes to planning, launching, and troubleshooting new marketing techniques.
Pro Tip: When working in-house, construct your reports to revolve around the sales and profits of the company rather than the tools and strategies you used to get them. Unlike agency reports, these need to be all about the bottom line.
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Master an Industry
When you are working as an agency SEO consultant you have to deal with multiple clients at once—possibly from several different industries. In-house SEO consultants, on the other hand, generally work within one specific industry. This gives you the opportunity to become an expert in your company’s niche and allows you to learn specific tricks and tools that work best for your company.
As an in-house SEO expert, it’s your job to stay on top of industry standards and trends. Using standard SEO protocols may be enough for an agency, but will not foster the kind of results expected from hiring an in-house expert.
Pro Tip: Find what gap hasn’t been filled yet in your industry and fill it. Write bold, new ideas that will interest potential clients, not just content pieces that will up your SERP ranking.
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Limitations
Agency SEO consultants face many limitations including slim budgets, outdated tools, an overwhelmingly wide range of clients, and more. Working in-house often eliminates many of these limitations, allowing consultants to put in their full efforts to get the best possible results for the company.
In an agency environment you are limited to a strict budget that limits both the time and tools you can use to get the job done. When working in-house, particularly if you’re hired by a large and/or successful company, your time is significantly less limited, and often a single great presentation is all that’s needed to secure a budget increase for a new project.
Pro Tip: In-house SEO experts should present their ideas by explaining the sales and branding benefits that the company can expect out of them. Ideas without clearly explained expected results are often dismissed by boards unfamiliar with advanced SEO tactics.
Making the transition from working at an agency to working as an in-house SEO expert can be rough—many of your colleagues and superiors will be more focused entirely on results and won’t understand the strategies you use to get them there. However, if you can stick it out and learn to speak the lingo of the business world, the opportunities provided by an in-house position can make it more than worth your while.
Really this one is great article, i had read many other posts but yours are very excellent and informative.
brittany wolfenj would love you to read ..Content Marketing & SEO – Take Your Content from Zero to Optimized Hero
SEO is a really hard thing to understand. You really need to ask for help. Specially when you have no ideo on whatsoever. SEO really helps small business grow.
The pressure of being an in-house SEO is substantially less. The taboo of SEO causes clients to want things right away without understanding that SEO is a marathon. This is why being an agency of SEO is so much stressful.
Dan would love you to read ..WooCommerce Product Page Accordion Contact Form
This is the best difference that you have given. But i think both of house and out side the house has clients. But outside the house , SEO clients are mostly available.
zamankhalek would love you to read ..Top 5 Largest Search Engines in web world
Thanks to you for this article, i’ve learned for SEO too just a little bit knowledge that I know.
I must say it is not everyday i come across articles this much detailed on in-house SEO, not many people understand it very correctly, splendid job done mate, really good.
Dave would love you to read ..4 real life examples for how & why ‘get rich quick ideas’ actually work
I think when we are working in agency, we have an opportunity to work with more advanced tools such as Kiss Metrics, Majestic SEO. Because we have clients and we can spend on tools. while in house we are working on single website. Going pro is not a good idea.
Yorke Communications would love you to read ..How to Build an Effective Blog Plan?
Wonderful article Dude! Lots of ideas spinning in my head. Today link building is not just dropping link blindly on sites, lots of things changed over past years and I am trying to be regularly updated with trends.
Hi
Hemani Moosa
Agency seo consultants and In-house seo are really two different environments .There may be many experts who simultaneously working in both environment and have experience of both But just change there role and and way of working according to environment .This is unique article .Thanks for sharing .
sanjeev would love you to read ..Data Entry Work from Home – Opportunities and Insights
Thanks for sharing this informative experience , it means in-house SEO is better for us to grow ourself and also we can check what our competitors are doing.Its a great Idea.
Keep sharing
sachin would love you to read ..How to wear OPAL
Thanks for sharing the difference between agency seo work and in-house seo work, thanks for giving this information,
Hi Hemani,
Good points you have mentioned here .
I don’t really think that any place matters for seo .
I think what matters is What SEO strategy you use for your client .
Every client have different product , services to offers with different niche, so it is very important to work differently, apply different strategy according to requirement .
Yes obviously limitations are always there in both the cases .
Thanks for sharing this differences.
Pritam Nagrale would love you to read ..Best & Tested Online Jobs from Home Without Investment – Work Part Time or Full Time
i think so home is best option for work . the wow Really it is a very nice information .I regular top blog readers, and your blog is in my one of top blog reading list, I really love and like reading your blogs! And I really liked this post as well.. All the best keep writing.
Alexander Miller would love you to read ..Visualizing and Demonstrating the Architectural Concepts and Designs in 3D
seo does not depend upon place u work it depends upon the project u work, it may be any place if we do the work correctly is important,,,,
carl hardy would love you to read ..IBD tests and diagnosis
Thanks for sharing the difference between agency seo work and in-house seo work. In-house seo work is better than agency seo work.
it is a great opportunity that you offers such a wonderful post about in-house seo, it is really very helpful for new wevb bloggers 🙂 thanks for sharing, Great job 😛
Every place has its own challenges & limitations. But I think as an agency SEO consultant, you have the scope to work with sites from different niches that enrich your idea and strategy for different marketing field. You can test, experiment and learn what would work or not in a particular niche. You can judge the customer behaviors and that will definitely be helpful to future projects. But in case of inhouse SEO, you are to stick to your business only and if you want to jump company belonged to another niche, you are going to start; though not from the scratch but yes have to face new challenges.
thanks for sharing difference between SEO agency and in-house. however in-house SEO is better than SEO agency from my point of view.
Good breakdown of the differences. I’ve been working in a large agency for a while but often look at what my friends in-house go through. Different challenges but at the end of the day, it’s all a challenging industry.
Matt A would love you to read ..What’s New with Social Business – May 2015
wow you have shared some awesome facts about in-house seo and I guess I just came to know about the process of in-house seo and how does it works
Samir would love you to read ..TOP 10 Google Play Store Banned apps
Thanks for your information. Now i came to know the difference between working in home and SEO agency. And there will be many advantages in working in home for SEO clients.