One of the quickest and low-risk ways that a business can get an SEO program up and running is to hire a solo pro to come on board and get started. It’s often a similar story, someone in leadership knows someone who knows SEO and they feel more comfortable starting there. Or a leader jumps on LinkedIn and searches for a highly esteemed SEO guru. According to Databox it is the number one option with 55% of surveyed companies have a single person managing SEO activities.
And, it may actually be the best decision when you compare against the significant investment of building an in-house team or expense of outsourcing to an agency. However, as with every decision, there are pros and cons. It works for the right type of situation. But many companies will find that it doesn’t return the best results in the long run. Often much time and money has been wasted to find this out. Let’s dive into some of the factors that influence this very important decision for an organization.
In my opinion, an equation for this discussion might look something like this:
This looks simple and easy. You hire a person with a wealth of knowledge and years of experience, then throw in some dollars and voila, you are rolling in the revenue. And it would be this easy, if you could truly see what they were getting with your SEO guru from the onset.
Hiring SEO’s Can Be a Roll of the Dice
But the truth is that you can’t. Often you never really know what you are getting until after you are committed. By the time you realize that you may have made a mistake it may be a year or two down the road – and once a change is made it can require another year or more to recover and get back on track. A growing number of leaders have been bitten by this reality and it has left a bitter taste.
Before we discuss whether this is the right path for your business, let’s break each of those elements of the equation down.
Part One of the Equation: Experience
This one is really tricky. How many years of experience do you think is required to be qualified to build a successful SEO program… 3 years? 5 years? 10…. over 20?
How Much Experience is Enough?
As a person who has actively hired for SEO positions for over 20 years, from entry level all the way up to Senior Director and in both in-house and agency environments, I can assure you that it’s often a crap-shoot. There is no magic number. Hiring in SEO is so challenging that we began to leaning less on hard SEO skills and more heavily on personality and intangibles. The process of SEO hiring is something that I will get into more detail with in future articles.
In my experience, a business owner who is new to SEO will typically land on hiring a person with 3 to 5 years of experience to come in and develop their SEO program. The perception is that this is enough experience to avoid the “newbies” but no so much that its going to cost them a fortune. But the reality is that 3 to 5 years of experience today isn’t what it was 20 years ago.
Strong SEOs are Investigators By Nature
Let sidetrack a little and review some SEO history to frame what 3 to 5 years of SEO experience looks like today, compared to 20 years ago. This may provide a more accurate understanding of what you are likely to get.
SEO, as a marketing channel began in the late 90’s and really came into it’s own in the early 2000’s. At this point there were no tools, no resources, and no guidance whatsoever from the engines themselves. SEO wasn’t even really a thing yet. In those days every SEO pro learned by establishing theories and good old fashioned, hands-on trial and error. We called it reverse engineering.
It involved analyzing the sites that were ranking successfully on page one of the SERPs for the searches that our clients or business needed to win for. We would review the code and analyze the elements that caused them to rise above the others to the top. Then we would adjust our sites to go one step further and rise above them.
Google is Search
Also in those days there were many search engines vying for a much smaller pool of searchers. Engines such as Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, All The Web, MSN, and Yahoo (yes, there was a time when they were relevant) and many more. Each had a unique mix of SEO elements that that their algorithm considered important. An SEO pro in these days needed to be well versed with all of them to be successful. It was a cat and mouse game of SEO figuring out the magic formula and search engine making adjustments to balance the playing field.
Today, organic search is Google. They have a monopoly on all of search and no other engine comes close. A pro today need only be well versed with them. And, although their algorithm has changed dramatically over the last 20 years, the core of what works hasn’t changed significantly in quite some time.
When an engine changed their algorithm 20 years ago there was no advanced warning like there is now, and in merciless fashion it often happened overnight. Nearly all SEO’s back then, at one time or another, experienced the terror of waking up to massive drops in rankings and traffic, and the calls from angry clients that quickly followed.
There were many occasions where the entire day was hijacked and we had to scramble to see what had changed or broken and figure out how to fix it. That rarely happens today. If you adhere to the best practices with technical SEO, content, and link building you will remain largely update-proof.
Not All Experience is Created Equal
And this is where the 3 to 5 year window for experience comes into play and begins to transition into the next part of the equation. Once you have experienced something like that you understand that Google is not your friend. They are out for their best interest only, which is to provide what they consider most relevant websites for each search query. Many pros in the 3 to 5 year window have not experienced anything like this. Because their skills have not been forged with a value for reverse engineering, or making the right decision when Google is offering rhetoric, they may not know how to react appropriately when things go south overnight.
To conclude the question of how much experience is necessary, the unfortunate answer is there is no magic number. More is definitely better because it means that they have been exposed to more unexpected situations and forced to pivot to find what was broken and fix it.
Part Two of the Equation: Knowledge
Unlike 20 years ago, where we had to learn from hands-on investigation or from other SEOs in forums or conferences, a wealth of SEO knowledge is now available right here on the internet. Now there are experts everywhere willing to teach everyone the basics.
The hard lessons learned from the process of building theories and proving them out with trail and error can now be bypassed. The basics of SEO can be absorbed in minutes from a variety of sources.
However, as the saying goes, you cant always believe what you read on the internet. Many SEO pros position themselves as experts when in reality they have just digested someone else’s truth, adopted it as their own without testing or proving any of it, and offer it up to clients. Of course this doesn’t apply to all – but it does apply to many. And it is difficult to see the gold from the fool’s gold in an interview.
On several occasions, I have hired professionals who had a handful of years of experience and shined throughout the interview process. But when we put them in front of a laptop and gave them specific tasks to handle, they struggled. Once a person has been hired it is difficult to go a different direction.
The question of knowledge should extend past what is traditionally considered SEO as well. The right candidate will understand how SEO fits together with other channels such as paid search, conversion rate optimization, and even affiliate marketing. They should be able to see in the analytics whether SEO is performing at the level it should be and at the right balance with the other channels.
SEOs Need to Have Broader Marketing Vision
Two quick examples of this occurred during my 7 years with the large hotel franchisor. When I joined the team the organic search program was a mess. There were major technical issues with the website that had significantly hamstrung the SEO performance. However, as I dug into the metrics I could see something much worse was in play.
Due to the massive SEO challenges, the marketing team was forced to lean on other channels to drive traffic. We were spending over $2M a month on paid search and $2.5M a year on affiliate marketing. Organic search drove less than 7% of all online revenue. This mix felt very out of balance to me.
As I began to dig in with the rankings and traffic metrics I began to see the problem. I discovered that because our SEO was so bad there were a litany of third party sites outperforming us for branded searches, such as “brand + city” and “brand + city + state.” Not only were affiliate websites outranking us in organic for these searches, but third party sites like Travelocity and Hotels.com were outbidding us in paid search. Essentially, these companies were selling conversions that should have happened on our own website back to us at a premium cost.
As we began to clean up the SEO mess, we started to own our own branded searches again. This caused our paid search spend to drop significantly We also set very stringent rules with our affiliate program that our brand names were completely off limits and anyone caught targeting them would be dropped from the program.
The results were incredible. Our paid search budget drop nearly in half. Our affiliate spend went from $2.5M a year to around $250k! And our organic search overall went from around $57M per year to over $256M.
To conclude the question of how much knowledge is necessary, again the answer is not definitive. No professional will have all knowledge, or an answer to every question. But a qualified one will be able to give you the assurance that they have the basics down and have seen enough to be able to find answers when they need to.
It is also important for the business leader or hiring manager to know the right questions to ask to make they have the right person before they sign the dotted line.
Part Three of the Equation: Investment
The question of how much of an investment it takes to ensure success is also complicated. I have witnessed teams with multi-million dollars in salary and tools do absolutely nothing to impact the revenue. And leadership didn’t even have the savvy to see it.
The success of an SEO team doesn’t always come back to money. I have seen many one-person shows and even full teams underperform or fail for many other reasons. A few of these other reasons may be issues with the hiring process so they adding the wrong people, inadequate onboarding and training, lack of internal support, or poor leadership. With these situations, a multi-million dollar investment wont make a difference.
Conversely, I have also seen incredibly talented individuals or teams who were underpaid, under supported, and under appreciated absolutely crush it. Often these pros are crushing it and no one else in the company evens knows. In these situations, a multi-million dollar investment wasn’t needed.
That being said, whether its $80-120k a year for the right person or $1M a year for a team, the right investment is required to have any chance at seeing results. Even the most capable and talented team can flounder if they are not given and appropriate salary to keep them happy and funds to access the right tools to do the job well.
Cost Should Never Drive The Decision
I can unequivocally say that business owners who begin with cost being the determining factor will almost always fail. Historically, SEO has been referred to as a “free” marketing channel. Which is true from the aspect that it requires no upfront cost like paid search does, or back end cost like affiliate marketing. It does require an adequate investment and commitment to putting the right talent, tools, and resources in place to see a strong return.
The Sum of the Equation: Results
You may ask, with the first three parts of the equation being so fuzzy, how can we be sure that we will see the right results? My reply to this would be, if you found the first three to be fuzzy, then it could be possible that do you not really know what the right expectations should be. Improper expectations will always be fulfilled.
A business owner should not go into this decision blind expecting that a single professional will be able to provide that to them. It should be the other way around. There should be discussion with a leadership team, partner, or trusted advisor, and determine what the realistic goals and expectations should be. They should have an idea of the target they are aiming for on the front end or the results will always miss the mark.
Decisions Made From Improper Expectations Have Consequences
Actually, not setting realistic goals they may be on the fast track to a trainwreck. There should be some idea of what success should look like in years 1, 2, 5, or even 10, If not, even with the perfect SEO professional in place, the leader will always find themselves unimpressed. And they will likely blame their SEO guru for it.
Without diving into your specific analytics I couldn’t tell you what the appropriate return after each of those years should be. Often success in year one may just be seeing upward movement in rankings and visibility in the SERPs. Or it could be a 5x increase over a three year period once a program is cleaned up, as in the hotelier example. But each leader should have a goal set for their team to shoot for every year or its likely that nothing impressive will happen.
The Pros of a One-Person SEO Show
- Cost With all of the previous discussion, the biggest benefit of a one-person program is the cost savings. Depending on the level of experience and knowledge you could conceivably bring a pro on board anywhere from $80-150k a year to get the program started. That is significantly less than with a full team or outsourcing to an agency which can easily be in the millions, depending on the size of the team or level of the agency.
- Risk Avoidance. Obviously if something goes wrong its easier to move away from a single person as opposed to a team, and most assuredly from an agency. If big mistakes have been made or performance is poor, the recovery time can often be shorter to find another person and get things back on track.
- One Voice. Working with a single person there is a better chance with a commitment to a single vision and process. With a team you are always going to get a variety of opinions of which directions the program should take and decisions that should be made. Finding the truth among several voices can be challenging and confusing.
The Cons of the One Person SEO Show
- No Workforce The team of one is going to be significantly limited in what they can accomplish. It is a lot of work to assess the needs of the organization, develop a strategy, execute that strategy while they are advising leadership and educating others internally on the basics of SEO. This reality must be factored into the expectations of leadership.
- Less Resources Often the decision to go with a single person means that the company also does not have adequate funds to provide tools and resources that are needed to do the job well. There are a handful of subscriptions and expenses that are required if there is any chance of meeting the organic search goals of the organization.
- Isolation. Being a one-person team can get lonely. There is often no one else in the organization that understands what they are doing. There is no one to bounce ideas off or to catch a mistake when it is about to be made. This can be even more of an issue if their immediate manager, or department that they report to, isn’t giving them the support that they need. For example, often SEOs will butt heads with IT teams. With no support with leadership a single person will often lose those debates and not get their initiatives implemented.
- Risk Exposure. Going with a team of one can be a huge gamble. Since all of the SEO eggs are placed in a single basket, if you part ways with your guru you are essentially starting from scratch. It is likely that no movement will happen until a new SEO pro is on board. And you can be sure that this new SEO guru will have different thoughts and ideas. It could lead to a complete overhaul of the program that is in place. Keep in mind that if you needed to part ways with your SEO person something was obviously broken – so something new must be done to fix it.
Wrapping Up…
There are many situations where a team of one makes a lot of sense. If your organization is unfamiliar with SEO and doesn’t know where to start, or simply doesn’t have the funds to consider building a team or outsourcing that this point, then the one-person show is the only choice.
The big question will be, who is going to manage the hiring process to ensure that the right person is selected for the job? Who will have the savvy to know if the right person was selected? Certainly that shouldn’t be left to a person who has no idea what questions to ask the candidates.
Choosing the foundation of your SEO program is a very important decision for your organization, one that will undoubtedly impact your business for many years. Whether that impact is good or bad depends on your understanding of the role of SEO for your business and the planning put into it before you start.
This is where my services are unique. I excel at partnering with companies to accurately assess their needs, make a recommendation of which direction is right for them, and help them get started in the process. Reach out and let discuss the right plan for your organization and avoid the mistakes that others are making.
This is the first of an upcoming five part series. In the pipeline are:
- The Reality of Outsourcing to an SEO Agency
- The Reality of Building an In-house SEO Team
- The Reality of Hybrid SEO Program
- The Reality of Hiring an SEO Consultant
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