SEO
Hire in-house when there is enough continuous work to occupy someone and enough internal complexity that context is the bottleneck. Below that, a specialist will spend most of their time waiting for other teams.
When the constraint is not knowing what to do but getting it deployed, someone internal who can navigate the organisation is worth more than more advice.
A site publishing continuously, running experiments and managing technical debt has enough work for a full role. A brochure site with quarterly updates does not, and the hire will be under-used and eventually reassigned.
SEO now spans technical engineering, content, digital PR, analytics and AI visibility; a single hire will be strong in the discipline they came from and thin elsewhere. That is an argument for supplementing them, not for skipping the hire.
It is legitimate to conclude not yet.
If nobody can currently get a change deployed, hiring a specialist to be blocked by the same obstacle adds salary to the problem rather than solving it.
Whichever matches the binding constraint. If pages are not indexed or rendered, technical. If the site is healthy and thin, content. Hiring the discipline you are most comfortable managing is the common mistake.
For a small site, often. For work spanning technical engineering, content, PR and analytics, they will cover one well and the rest thinly, which is a case for both, not either.
Hire in-house when there is enough continuous work to occupy someone and enough internal complexity that context is the bottleneck. Below that, a specialist will spend most of their time waiting for other teams.
You have read what we think. If you want to know what it means for your case specifically, describe it and we will tell you which parts of when to hire an seo specialist actually apply — and which do not.
