The Art of SEO

Mixing Outsourced SEO with In-House SEO Teams

When you are combining the resources of an external team with those of your in-house SEO team, there is a need to determine who does what, who decides what is to be done, and so on. It is best to have this all clearly defined up front, or else there will be conflicts and confusion, which will slow down the process of increasing your organic traffic.

If we look first at the process of defining who does what, there are a few considerations, such as the following:

• What areas of expertise does your in-house team have? How does the outsourced resource complement or reinforce that?

• Is the outsourced resource bringing a unique new area of expertise to your organization or is it a supplemental resource to an existing area of expertise?

• Is the outsourced resource going to be working on an area where you consider the expertise essential to build in-house?

• Can you leverage the outsourced resource with your internal resources? Perhaps you can use this to keep the outside help working on higher-value tasks that provide you a bigger return on your consulting dollar.

All of these considerations factor into the overall division of labor between your contracted team and your internal team.

You also need to be clear about who is making the decisions and who is communicating those decisions to the outside SEO consultant. He will need guidance and direction on what you are looking to accomplish. Although you hopefully defined this in detail up front, it does change ...