On Thursday night, I joined Mark Staton’s Digital Marketing class to talk about SEO. In particular, I talked about my experience in agency vs in-house SEO jobs. Mark was my very first marketing professor, and I remember the first talk we had when I went to him to share my interest in marketing. It was the fall of 2010 and we walked the Skidmore campus. He broke down the difference between agency and client-side marketing careers. Speaking to his class about this exact topic was a lot of fun. 

I also am extremely impressed with how Mark has evolved his course content to give undergraduate students exposure to important digital marketing concepts and tools. It is great for the students to gain this exposure, and I bet it adds value to employers who get to hire these folks. Here’s some thoughts I prepared before the discussion.

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I worked 2 years in agency SEO and then moved to in-house SEO, which I’ve been doing for almost 6 years now. What I love about the enterprise in-house is the technology and scale. 

I am going to dive into some differences I reflected on but keep in mind the practice of SEO doesn’t change – optimize your site to improve rankings in Google. 

Agency: 

• Within an agency role, you are often running SEO projects and campaigns for a variety of clients. 
• The number can range between 4 and 20 at a given time depending on the model of the SEO agency. 
• This environment creates a fun dynamic of learning your clients’ businesses and how work gets done so you can ensure your various deliverables add value. 
• You might really enjoy some aspects of a client and not enjoy others. I remember loving a client who was particularly excited and engaged when it came to implementing our recommendations. However, the business they were in was not the most exciting for me. 

In-House: 

• In-house means you are the person inside the company optimizing the website for search. 
• This environment is fun because you are more in charge of implementation then if you were an agency SEO. 
• Sometimes people call this more of an operator role. 
• You can join a large in-house SEO team or a smaller one. A smaller one can limit exposure to other SEO perspectives but allow you to connect with your team and build trust within the company. 
• Part of your role will be implementing and then you have some agency-like responsibilities answering questions about SEO and keeping stakeholders updated on performance. 

There are a few other differences I want to call out across team members, projects, and skills. 

Projects – The Work:

In-House: within a large in-house team you’ll have more SEO colleagues often owning different sites run by the company, verticals, or themes (technical vs content). The pieces of work are (1) quarterly or semi-annual roadmaps with initiatives and questions you seek to answer (2) daily / weekly performance checks. Own these from start to finish and stay on top of them. Some research is polished and some isn’t because you are implementing and moving quickly. 

Agency: the core pieces of agency work are (1) client campaigns & strategy, (2) weekly or recurring meetings, and (3) deliverables. Deliverables have to be polished and professional because they are going to a client. You also have performance checks here. 

Team – Collaboration & Exposure:

Client-Side: there must be tight collaboration with different functions such as Data Science, Product Management, Engineering, Merchandising, and others. You’ll also be part of a marketing department and can get different levels of exposure to other types of marketing. Exposure to other marketing was a big selling point for me. 

Agency: will often have many colleagues doing the same work as you which means you can share ideas on what is working vs not for clients. You’ll have other team members working for the same client so it can feel fun and collaborative. You can be matched with SEM folks on clients that are using your agencies for both to get more exposure. In addition to client work, you can be on the lookout to help the agency become more efficient in its service offering or help build a new service. 

Skills & Talents – What You Need to Be Good At: 

On a large SEO team (agency or client), you can often go very deep on SEO or a specific aspect of it (technical, content, linking, copy, analytics, etc.). While smaller teams will mean you do all aspects of SEO from technical to content to analytics to client communication. 

Overall key skills and talents apply to both client-side and agency SEO roles: creativity, communication, critical thinking, innovation, analytics, and curiosity would be some of the core that come to mind.