What Does an In-house SEO Do?

Understanding the Role of Strategist, Executor, and Educator

As an in-house SEO professional with 8 years of experience, I can tell you this.

As an in-house SEO professional, you’re responsible for the strategy and execution of all SEO tasks, with or without your team’s help. In companies with a large SEO team, you could be focusing on technical SEO, link building, or content. But when you’re the only SEO specialist in the team, you will have to split your time between on-page and off-page SEO, working closely with the Marketing and Development teams. In some instances, especially in SaaS, you’ll be working with the Product and Design teams too.

The most important thing to note in being an in-house SEO is that you’ll be responsible not just for executing the SEO strategy but also for educating your team and the company. No one is more knowledgeable about SEO than you, and you’ll learn that it takes a lot of time and patience to implement a healthy SEO roadmap.

Taking a Systematic Approach

To stay organized as an in-house SEO, it’s crucial to establish a systematic approach. Start by conducting comprehensive keyword research to identify the phrases and terms your target audience is searching for. This will help you align your content strategy with their needs and preferences.

Next, create a content calendar to plan and schedule your website’s content production. This will ensure a consistent flow of high-quality content that is optimized for search engines and attracts organic traffic. Regularly updating and improving existing content is also important.

In addition to content, focus on the technical aspects of SEO. This includes optimizing website speed, ensuring proper URL structure, and implementing meta tags and descriptions. Regularly monitor and analyze your website’s performance using analytical tools to identify areas for improvement.

Collaboration with other teams, such as web development and marketing, is essential.

Encompassing Broad Responsibilities

An in-house SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professional is responsible for improving a company’s website visibility and organic search rankings on search engines such as Google. Their primary focus is to optimize the website’s content, structure, and technical aspects to increase its chances of appearing higher in SERPs (search engine results page) for relevant keywords and phrases.

Other responsibilities include keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, content creation, off-page optimization, performance monitoring, site audits, and keeping on top of industry trends.

Seeing the Advantages Over Outsourcing

In my experience, an in-house SEO is responsible for doing everything an outsourced SEO would do, but with the added benefit of being able to make changes at a moment’s notice. Outsourced SEOs are great at what they do, but they can’t necessarily make changes or fix things in real time.

I’ve found that working with an in-house SEO has been great because you have someone who knows your business and how it works behind the scenes. They know what types of content you should be producing and how to optimize it for search engines so it will rank higher than other websites, which means more traffic coming to your site and ultimately more opportunities for sales.

Monitoring and Strategizing

An in-house SEO monitors a company’s digital presence. For instance, they use tools to monitor your website and landing pages to see whether they generate more traffic. They can also categorize the traffic on your website to determine if they were from organic searches or paid ads.

An in-house SEO also strategizes if you need to use paid search, which keywords to use, and who to target. They can also help plan the type of content your company website should have and which keywords to use not just to generate traffic but also to get ahead of your competitors.

Viewing the Similarities with Remote Specialists

An in-house SEO does exactly what a remote SEO specialist does. They optimize the website’s content by using relevant keywords and optimizing them to suit what people usually search for. They also perform technical audits on the website to ensure that the site performs well in terms of speed and mobile responsiveness. They also fix broken backlinks.