# SEO agency vs in-house: which one a startup needs first

SEO agency, freelancer or first in-house hire? How to choose by stage, what each costs, what each is good at, and the work to do before you hire anyone.

Canonical: https://ignura.com/blog/seo-agency-vs-in-house-for-startups
Last updated: 2026-10-28
Author: Jawad Jalal

Most startups need neither an SEO agency nor an SEO hire on day one. Do the technical basics and the list of buyer questions yourself, bring in a freelancer or agency while search is still unproven, and hire in-house once there is a full-time job's worth of search work every week.

The order matters more than the choice. Help you can't brief is money spent finding out what you should have written down first.

## The short version

- Founder-led comes first. Google says a small local business can probably do much of the work itself, starting with its SEO starter guide ([Google](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo)). A startup with a founder who can write is in a similar spot.
- A freelancer or fractional SEO fits when you know what to do but nobody has the hours.
- An agency fits when you need several skills at once (technical, writing, links, reporting) and want someone else to run the plan.
- An in-house hire fits when search is a proven channel and the work fills a full week, every week.
- On cost: Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers put the average agency at $3,209 a month and the average freelancer at $1,348.63 ([Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-pricing/)). The BLS has no SEO job category. Its nearest one, market research analysts and marketing specialists, had a median annual wage of $78,760 in May 2025 ([BLS](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/market-research-analysts.htm)).
- Walk away from anyone who promises a number one ranking. Google says no one can promise that.

## The four options side by side

| Option | Good at | Risks | Choose it when |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Founder-led | Knowing the buyer, writing true comparisons, fast decisions | Slips the moment product gets busy | Pre-seed or seed, search unproven, fewer than ten real pages |
| Freelancer or fractional | One skill done well (technical audit, writing, or strategy) at a part-time cost | You still manage the plan; quality varies a lot | You know the next ten pages and need hands |
| Agency | Several skills at once, a plan, reporting, cover when someone is out | Generic briefs, junior staff on your account, long contracts | You need a full plan run and have someone to own it inside |
| In-house hire | Context that builds up, works with product and sales daily | Slow to hire, one person can't cover every skill, costly if search doesn't work | Search already brings sign-ups and there is a full week of work |

There is no rule that says you pick one forever. A common path is founder-led for the first few months, a freelancer or agency for the next stretch, and a hire once the channel has earned it.

## If you're a B2B SaaS startup

B2B software changes the balance a little, in both directions.

**Reasons to keep it in-house for longer.** Your buyers ask detailed questions: which tools you integrate with, how setup works, what the limits are, how you compare with the product they use now. The people who can answer those are on your team. Comparison pages, docs and integration pages are often the pages that matter most, and they need product knowledge more than SEO volume. [SEO for SaaS startups](https://ignura.com/blog/seo-for-saas-startups) and [SaaS comparison pages](https://ignura.com/blog/saas-comparison-pages) show how to do that work yourself.

**Reasons to bring in outside help sooner.** A site rebuild or migration, where Google itself says it's a good moment to involve an SEO. Technical problems nobody inside can diagnose, such as pages that don't get indexed or content that only renders in the browser. Or a backlog of pages nobody owns, where the honest problem is hours, not skill.

**What to keep either way.** Own your Search Console property, your analytics, your domain and your content. Keep one person inside who decides what gets published. Outside help works best on a brief from that person, and badly without one. [SEO and GEO for Series A SaaS](https://ignura.com/series-a-saas) shows how that split often works once you have a search lead.

None of this needs a big budget to start. Our free [AI crawler checker](https://ignura.com/tools/ai-crawler-checker) and [llms.txt generator](https://ignura.com/tools/llms-txt-generator) cover two checks you can run today without hiring anyone.

## What each option costs

These are market figures from public sources, not our prices. How we price our own work is on the [pricing page](https://ignura.com/pricing).

**Agencies, consultants and freelancers.** Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers and published the results in its [SEO pricing study](https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-pricing/) (updated August 15, 2024). The averages:

- Agencies: $3,209 a month.
- Consultancies: $3,250 a month.
- Freelancers: $1,348.63 a month.
- All providers: $2,917 a month.

Ahrefs also found that 78.2% of providers charge a monthly retainer, the most common retainer band was $501 to $1,000 a month (20.4% of providers), and the average hourly rate was $111. Note how Ahrefs worked out the averages: it asked for price bands and took the top of each band, so treat them as the high side of typical.

**An in-house hire.** The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has no SEO job category. The nearest one is market research analysts and marketing specialists, where the [median annual wage](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/market-research-analysts.htm) was $78,760 in May 2025. The lowest 10% earned less than $43,390 and the highest 10% more than $155,480. In the information industry, which includes software publishers, the median was $102,670.

Salary is not the whole cost. Add tools, benefits, payroll taxes and the months it takes to hire and ramp up. Check pay data for your own country and city before you budget.

The fair comparison is not price per month. It is price per page shipped and per fix made, plus how much of your time each option eats.

## What to do before you hire anyone

An outside SEO can only work from what you give them. Before you spend anything, do the work only you can do. The [SEO for SaaS startups guide](https://ignura.com/blog/seo-for-saas-startups) covers the first 90 days in detail. The short list:

1. **Check the technical basics.** Your pages are indexed, the sitemap is submitted in Search Console, titles are unique and robots.txt doesn't block anything you care about. The [technical SEO](https://ignura.com/technical-seo) page lists what we check.
2. **Write the query list.** The questions your buyers type, in their words, from sales calls and support tickets. Twenty is enough to start.
3. **Ship the first few pages yourself.** One page per buyer question, answer first. The [no-budget SEO guide](https://ignura.com/blog/seo-for-startups-no-budget) shows how.
4. **Set up measurement.** Search Console connected, sign-up tracked as a key event, so you can tell later whether the help worked.

If you do these four, any help you hire starts from a clear brief. If you skip them, you pay someone to find out what your sales calls already know.

Google gives similar advice on timing. It says a good time to bring in an SEO is when you're planning a redesign or a new site, so search can be built in from the start ([Google](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo)).

## How to judge an agency or freelancer

Google's page "[Do you need an SEO?](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo)" is the best short checklist here, and it comes from the search engine itself. The red flags it lists:

- **Promised rankings.** Google says "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" and that if someone promises first place, you should find someone else.
- **A special relationship with Google.** Google says to beware of anyone who claims one, or who sells a "priority submit".
- **Unsolicited emails** offering SEO.
- **Link schemes.** Google says you should never have to link to an SEO, and warns against link popularity schemes. A package of "50 backlinks a month" is the same idea with a price tag.
- **Secret methods.** Google says to be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what it intends to do.

Google also says you are responsible for what the people you hire do on your site. If an agency buys links in your name, your site carries the risk.

What to ask for instead:

- Two or three examples of past work, with permission to contact those clients.
- What they'll change in the first month, and how you'll know it worked.
- Who on their side will do the work, not only who sells it.
- How they report: Search Console clicks and sign-ups beat a list of rankings.
- How you exit: notice period, and who owns the pages, data and accounts afterwards.

During an audit, give read access to Search Console, not full ownership. Google suggests exactly that.

**When an agency is the wrong call, us included.** If you haven't done the four steps above, an agency has nothing to aim at. If your product doesn't yet keep the users it has, more traffic won't fix it. If search already works and the work fills a week, a hire will usually build more context than any outside team. In each of those cases, don't hire an agency yet.

## AI answers change the brief

Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews before they search. Google lists "optimizing for generative AI" among the services an SEO may offer, and says that advice should line up with Google's own guidance ([Google](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo)).

So add one question to every interview: how will you check whether we're cited in AI answers, and what will you change if we aren't?

A good answer sounds like a routine. A fixed list of buyer prompts, asked every week in the main assistants, logged, with fixes tied to specific pages. The [guide to getting cited in AI answers](https://ignura.com/blog/how-to-get-cited-in-ai-answers) describes that loop. A weak answer is a new acronym and no method. Nobody can promise a citation either, because the answers change from week to week. Bing's webmaster guidelines say it plainly: "SEO does not guarantee rankings or traffic, and GEO does not guarantee grounding or citations in AI experiences" ([Bing](https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/webmasters-guidelines-30fba23a)).

You can check AI advice against the official docs yourself. Google says AI Overviews need no special markup and no AI text files ([Google](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)), so a pitch built on "AI schema" for Google is a warning sign. [How to show up in Google AI Overviews](https://ignura.com/blog/how-to-show-up-in-google-ai-overviews) and [how to get your SaaS recommended by ChatGPT](https://ignura.com/blog/get-saas-recommended-by-chatgpt) set out what Google and OpenAI actually publish, so you can compare.

## FAQ

### Should a B2B SaaS startup hire an SEO agency or do it in-house?

Start in-house, because the product knowledge that B2B buyers' questions need sits with your team. Bring in an agency or freelancer once you have a brief and need more hours or skills than you have, or for a site rebuild. Hire full-time when search already brings sign-ups and the work fills a week.

### When should a startup make its first SEO hire?

When search already brings sign-ups and the work fills a full week, every week. Before that, a full-time hire often ends up doing a bit of everything, and search is the part that slips.

### What is a fractional SEO?

A part-time senior person who sets the plan and does or checks the key work, usually for a few days a month. It suits startups that need judgement more than volume.

### How much does SEO cost for a startup?

Ahrefs' survey put the average at $3,209 a month for agencies and $1,348.63 for freelancers, with $501 to $1,000 the most common retainer band. Founder-led SEO costs your time and some tools. Our own prices are on the [pricing page](https://ignura.com/pricing).

### Can an agency guarantee first-page rankings?

No. Google says no one can promise a number one ranking, and that you should look elsewhere if someone does.

### Is in-house SEO better than an agency?

Neither is better in general. In-house wins on context once search is proven. An agency or freelancer wins on speed and breadth while it is still a test. The worst option is hiring either before you know what you want them to do.

## Not sure which you need?

The answer depends on where your search work is today: what's indexed, which buyer questions you already answer, and whether search brings any sign-ups yet. We'll look at that with you on a free 15-minute call and tell you which option fits, even if it isn't us.

[Book your free Growth Check](https://ignura.com/book?utm_source=site&utm_medium=blog&utm_content=seo-agency-vs-in-house-for-startups)

Book a 15-minute call about your website: https://ignura.com/book