This isn't a question with one right answer — it's a question with a right answer for your stage, budget, and how much SEO actually matters to your revenue.
A single mid-level in-house hire often costs more fully loaded than a strong agency retainer — and gets you one skill set instead of a full team.
In-house is faster on same-day requests. An agency usually covers more specialties — technical, content, links, digital PR — than one hire can.
A small in-house owner paired with an agency or specialist for the parts that need scale or deep expertise is the model that shows up most often once revenue grows.
SEO is core to how the business grows, there's enough budget for more than one hire eventually, and the team needs someone embedded in product and content decisions daily. This is common for content-led SaaS and media businesses where SEO isn't a project, it's the growth engine.
You need broad coverage — technical, content, digital PR — without the overhead of hiring for each, or SEO is important but not the single biggest growth lever, so a full internal team isn't justified yet.
If the product itself hasn't found product-market fit, or the site has fundamental technical or content debt that needs a one-time fix, a scoped project or audit often beats committing to either an ongoing hire or a retainer.
One in-house owner who understands the product and coordinates priorities, paired with an agency or specialists for execution at scale — content production, link building, technical audits. This scales more smoothly than either extreme as the business grows.
“The question we actually get asked is 'should we hire or hire us instead' — but the better question is what stage the business is at. Stage decides this more than preference does.”