SEO In-house vs. Agency – Revisited

After writing my most recent post about In-house vs. Agency, I decided to do a little research on companies that I spoken with about our search engine optimization (SEO) services and their decision to use their in-house IT department.

One company I had spoken to last December had done just that. When I had presented our credentials back in December, the company showed great interest in what we could do for them. At that time, there were 49,500 monthly searches for their three most important keyword phrases just on Google.

The company recognized the value of this audience and communicated great interest in getting an SEO program in place – and quickly. At the last minute before contract signing, however, the client decided to have his IT department do the job.

Several days ago I revisited their Web site and underlying code. To my surprise (or perhaps no surprise), nothing had been done to make their Web site search engine friendly through SEO!

I called the client to discuss this outcome. As it turned out, the IT department got busy on other assignments and the SEO initiative had to be put on hold indefinitely.

I was not too surprised with this news. IT departments are not in place to perform search engine marketing functions. Said another way, SEO is neither a priority nor a core competency.

My most recent investigation also showed that search volume had more than doubled to 115,200 searches on Google for April. So in the five months that passed, literally hundreds of thousands of potential sales prospects were lost because search marketing was not deployed. In a recessionary economy it is so painful to see a client lose potential business. But sometimes, clients look for ways to economize that turn out to be missed opportunities.