January 6, 2026
Author: Jason Faber
For most companies, there are four common ways companies hire for SEO: agency, freelancer, in-house, and fractional SEO consultant.
On the surface, these options can look interchangeable. In practice, they solve very different problems, and choosing the wrong model at the wrong time is one of the fastest ways to stall organic growth.
Most leaders don’t make this decision based on strategy. They make it based on cost, urgency, or perceived risk. That’s understandable. SEO is complex, outcomes are delayed, and it’s often unclear what “good” even looks like. But optimizing for short-term convenience is exactly how teams end up locked into expensive contracts, undoing past work, or constantly restarting their SEO efforts from scratch.
If you’re trying to decide how to hire for SEO, the most important step is to first understand what you actually need right now: execution, leadership, or ownership. The right choice becomes much clearer once that’s explicit.
When I speak with founders and marketing leaders, the stories tend to repeat themselves almost word for word.
“We have an SEO agency, but we aren’t seeing results. We get a templated report every month, they’re publishing a lot of AI-generated content and buying some links, but we don’t really know why we’re doing any of it. We’re locked into a long contract and it’s expensive.”
“We hired an SEO freelancer off UpWork. They fixed a few things, but broke others in the process. It was cheap upfront, but it cost us far more in the long run.”
“We know SEO matters, but we don’t have the budget or headcount for a full-time hire. We need someone experienced who can actually drive progress.”
None of these teams are wrong for trying the options they did. The problem isn’t effort, it’s misalignment between the hiring model and the actual need.
Let’s break each option down properly.
SEO agencies are built for scale and execution. They are optimized to deliver work across many clients at once, using repeatable processes and standardized playbooks.
Typically, agencies:
This can work well if strategy is already clear and execution is the main bottleneck.
Where agencies often struggle is ownership. They rarely make hard prioritization calls, push back on low-impact initiatives, or deeply align SEO to revenue, product, or positioning. Incentives are tied to deliverables and retainers—not outcomes.
Best for: Execution at scale when direction is already set
Strengths: Processes, production capacity, predictability
Tradeoffs: Limited strategic ownership, slower to adapt, misaligned incentives, expensive long-term contracts
Typical Costs: $15,000-$25,000 per month
Agencies do SEO work. They rarely lead SEO.
SEO freelancers are often the first stop because they’re accessible, flexible, and inexpensive. For narrowly scoped tasks, that can be perfectly reasonable.
In many cases, however:
Freelancers can be effective when the work is clearly defined and tightly managed. But when freelancers are asked to decide what to work on—instead of simply executing—it’s where things tend to break down.
The hidden cost shows up later: technical debt, diluted strategy, or work that has to be undone once someone more senior gets involved.
Best for: Isolated tasks and short-term support
Strengths: Low cost, flexible, easy to hire
Tradeoffs: Limited strategic depth, higher long-term risk
Typical Costs: $50-$150 per hour
Cheap SEO is rarely inexpensive.
Hiring in-house offers focus, proximity, and long-term investment, but it’s also the most demanding option.
Common tradeoffs include:
For companies with a mature SEO function and a clear mandate, in-house leadership can be the right destination. But many teams hire too early—or hire for execution when they actually need strategy—which leads to slow progress and expensive learning curves.
Best for: Companies with established SEO maturity
Strengths: Focus, proximity, long-term ownership
Tradeoffs: High cost, long ramp, hiring risk
Typical Costs: $175,000-$225,000 per year
In-house SEO works best when the craft and role is already well-defined.
A fractional SEO consultant sits between all of these options.
This model provides:
The role exists to turn SEO from a collection of disconnected tactics into a coherent growth function, where strategy, execution, and business goals actually align.
Fractional SEO consultants are most valuable when SEO is becoming important, complex, or risky, but the company isn’t ready (or willing) to commit to a full-time executive hire.
Best for: Growth-stage companies that need leadership without headcount
Strengths: Strategic ownership, faster decisions, clarity, speed to impact, low commitment and risk
Tradeoffs: Requires collaboration, alignment, and executive buy-in
Typical Costs: $8,000-$12,000 per month
A fractional SEO consultant exists to bridge the gap between execution and leadership, bringing clarity, direction, and accountability before SEO becomes too complex or too expensive to fix later.
When teams struggle with SEO, it’s rarely because they picked the “wrong” option in isolation. It’s because they hired for execution when they needed leadership, or for cost when they needed clarity.
If you already know exactly what needs to be done and just need help doing it, an agency or freelancer can work.
If you need someone to decide what matters, what doesn’t, and how SEO supports the business, then leadership (not output) is the missing piece.
That’s where fractional SEO consulting tends to have the greatest impact.
Choosing how to hire for SEO isn’t about finding the cheapest option or the most activity, it’s about choosing the structure that gives your business the best chance to win. Each model has a place, but they aren’t interchangeable, and the cost of choosing the wrong one often shows up months later in stalled growth, rework, or missed opportunity.
If you’re weighing your options and want a second opinion from someone who’s seen these models play out across different stages and teams, I work with founders and marketing leaders as a fractional SEO consultant, helping bring clarity, direction, and accountability to SEO without the overhead of a full-time hire. If that sounds useful, I’m always happy to talk.
