SEO is simply a hard task to bash connected your own. So having a squad tin marque ranking connected Google overmuch easier.

But however bash you physique an SEO team? Is it worthy the investment? Where bash you find the radical you need?

Today, we reply each these questions and more. 

Is gathering an SEO squad adjacent worthy it? The reply depends connected your goals and budget.

Hiring a squad is close for anyone who wants to physique and standard their SEO portion besides grooming radical who volition go assets to their company. 

It is not for those who aren’t consenting to spell done the lengthy process of finding, hiring, managing, and perchance firing radical and going done the full process again.

It’s besides not close for those looking to minimize their in-house overheads, arsenic they’ll typically wage a $30K-60K wage per squad member, positive an further $2.5K to $4.5K per twelvemonth successful SEO tools. This means gathering a squad (1-10 people) volition scope from $32.5K to $300K+ per year.

Here are the benefits of gathering an SEO team:

• You get afloat power implicit your SEO.
• You’re not reliant connected 3rd parties for your business’s income from search, arsenic is the lawsuit erstwhile hiring an SEO agency
• You’ll often prevention wealth (compared to hiring an SEO agency, which usually costs anyplace from $3K to tens of thousands of dollars per month)

On the different hand, hiring an SEO agency means a batch little enactment uncovering and grooming employees, little overhead, and you tin person an adept travel successful and bash everything for you.

Whether you’re gathering an in-house oregon bureau SEO team, there’s nary azygous close mode to bash it—every business’s demands are different. 

The astir important happening to retrieve is that you request to operation your SEO squad to efficaciously woody with the demands of the work.

Let’s instrumentality a look astatine immoderate examples of SEO squad structures, truthful you tin get started gathering yours.

1. Small in-house SEO team

Here’s an illustration of a operation I’ve seen smaller in-house SEO teams use. 

The SEO manager, who has a scope of SEO skills, manages 3 specialists successful method SEO, content, and outreach. 

This operation covers the basics of SEO. If you were much acrophobic with method SEO than getting links, past you could simply prosecute 2 method SEO specialists—or more. Whatever the needs of the business, you request to bespeak that wrong the SEO team. 

2. Large in-house team

Here’s different illustration of a bigger in-house SEO squad kindly shared by the folks astatine NordVPN. 

In this example, they’ve divided their squad broadly into on-site, off-site, and video. As NordVPN is simply a big, well-known company, it’s not astonishing that they person a ample squad for on-site and off-site SEO. 

It’s besides absorbing to spot that they person a dedicated video SEO manager—not thing each enactment has.

Here’s what it involves and wherefore they need it:

“The Video SEO relation astatine NordVPN is focused astir optimizing our YouTube videos to fertile successful the Google and boost our marque visibility. We identified that video contented is truly important for our brand, some successful Google and connected YouTube.”

3. Small bureau team

The SEO agencies I’ve worked astatine person typically hired radical with a wide accomplishment set. This acts arsenic an security argumentation if anyone abruptly leaves the company—there is simply a accomplishment overlap. 

And if a lawsuit leaves the business, having a wide accomplishment acceptable makes it easier to reassign the worker to different clients. 

Here is an illustration of a squad operation taken from a integer selling bureau I utilized to enactment astatine that had ~50 integer marketers.

In my experience, SEOs astatine agencies are expected to person an knowing of some method and contented SEO. They volition person a preferred specialism, but that whitethorn not beryllium evident done their job title.

4. Larger bureau team

When it comes to larger agencies, the squad operation is usually designed to bespeak the demands of enterprise SEO clients. 

Here’s a larger SEO squad operation I person seen work. (I person simplified it to acceptable it connected the page)

5. International SEO team

Here’s an illustration of a squad operation created specifically for e-commerce SEO teams moving crossed aggregate countries (courtesy of SEOmindset.) The cardinal quality is the summation of a country-specific SEO lead.

6. Agency pod structure

Here’s different squad operation illustration from SEO bureau Bubblegum Search. The squad is built successful a “pod” structure, making it comparatively casual to prosecute and standard up the squad whenever a caller lawsuit joins.

As Matt Cayless explains:

“Each lawsuit is matched with a pod consisting of an relationship manager, an SEO specialist, and an outreach specialist. This ensures that the lawsuit receives a well-rounded service, with each subordinate bringing their unsocial expertise to the table.”

7. Flat squad structure

Another antithetic attack comes from Position Digital. In this example, the full bureau works collaboratively towards a quarterly target—and it’s nary antithetic for the SEO team.

Visualized, the squad operation is flat. Everyone successful the SEO squad is focused connected definite SEO tasks and reaching an agreed goal.

This goal-oriented attack means that everyone successful the SEO squad is focused connected the transportation alternatively than conscionable being disposable erstwhile your lawsuit calls oregon emails you.

Now you’ve got a consciousness of what SEO squad structures look like, let’s look astatine however we tin physique your SEO dream team.

Building an SEO squad falls into three steps:

1. Determining your goals and hiring needs
2. Finding your talent
3. Setting up your task absorption bundle to negociate it all

1. Determine your goals and hiring needs

The size of your squad depends connected what you’re trying to bash and however overmuch wealth you have. 

The archetypal happening you should bash earlier hiring anyone is to figure retired your competitory landscape. You tin bash this utilizing Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and Content Gap tool. You’re trying to fig retired 3 things:

1. What kinds of keywords americium I going after?
2. How competitory are these keywords?
3. What roles bash I request to capable the most?

For instance, if you presently person a batch of contented but it’s not ranking, you’ll request to allocate much fund to nexus building, particularly if you’re targeting highly competitory keywords. But if you don’t person overmuch contented yet, your absorption should beryllium much connected gathering a contented team.

There are 2 speedy ways you tin usage Ahrefs to find your team’s needs:

1. Use the SERP overview successful Keywords Explorer to find if you need links

The SERP overview allows you to spot what pages are ranking for a fixed keyword and however galore links those pages have. You tin besides spot each leafage URL’s Domain Rating (DR) score.

Using this tool, you tin find if your pages request much links successful bid to bushed the competition. For example, if we instrumentality a look astatine the keyword “seo tools,” we tin spot that Ahrefs is presently successful presumption #4, with 1,872 backlinks from 646 referring domains.

The competitors beating america person thousands much links than we do, truthful this tells america that we may need nexus gathering to fertile higher for this keyword. (I accidental “may” due to the fact that Google’s hunt algorithm is complicated, and we tin ne'er accidental with 100% certainty that 1 happening unsocial is the origin of rankings.)

If you person a batch of contented already and—after reviewing your keywords—find, connected average, you’re not beating your competitors owed to a deficiency of backlinks, past you should prioritize putting unneurotic a nexus gathering team.

2. Use the Site Audit instrumentality to cheque your method SEO

Ahrefs’ Site Audit allows you to instrumentality a peek wrong your website’s method SEO. 

When you tally an audit connected your URL, you’ll beryllium fixed a Health Score that shows you however steadfast your site’s method SEO is. This people is based connected a assortment of factors, including page speed, CSS and HTML, meta tags, and more.

If you tally an audit connected your tract and find that you person a mediocre score, you cognize you request to prosecute a developer to assistance instrumentality attraction of your method SEO issues. Better yet, you tin springiness them the audit report. They volition cognize precisely what they request to bash successful bid to hole your site’s issues.

2. Find your talent

Once you’ve determined who you need, you person to larn how to find and hire them.

There are galore ways to find radical to enactment for your company. These see searching online occupation boards, asking friends and family, going done endowment agencies, etc.

A fewer large options include:

1. Indeed oregon Zip Recruiter for wide occupation listings
2. ProBlogger oregon Mediabistro for uncovering writers
3. Upwork oregon Fiverr for hiring freelancers

You tin besides cheque retired immoderate of these occupation boards for marketers. This “job boards” nonfiction is written for marketers looking for a job, but you tin spell to the boards arsenic an leader as well.

Note that the prime of radical you pull from these occupation boards is straight related to the prime of your occupation listing. If your listing doesn’t dependable absorbing and enticing, the higher-quality candidates won’t adjacent apply. Feel escaped to get our SEO specializer occupation statement template.

If you request much assistance figuring retired however to prosecute large people, I powerfully urge the publication “Who: A Method for Hiring.” It was written by Geoff Smart and Randy Street, 2 serial entrepreneurs who developed a four-step process for finding, hiring, and retaining the champion talent. 

3. Set up your task absorption software

Once you’ve recovered your squad members, you’ll request to support them organized and efficient. This is wherever task absorption bundle similar Trello oregon Asana comes in.

I’ve utilized both. But I similar Asana, arsenic it’s much robust. You’re capable to physique to-do lists, Kanban-style boards, projects for circumstantial tasks oregon teams, and more.

Here’s an illustration of the board-style task page:

Inside Asana, you tin make antithetic projects for antithetic teams wrong your business, which you tin spot successful the bottommost near country of the screenshot above. I person abstracted projects for abstracted businesses, arsenic good arsenic a “personal tasks” task for things I request to instrumentality attraction of that my employees and colleagues don’t request to see.

For your SEO team, you tin make a squad called “SEO,” and past make projects for each SEO process. 

For example, you tin make a “Content” project, which lone includes the contented squad and the upcoming, in-progress, and finished content; a “Developer” task to delegate tasks to and enactment with your developer; and an “Outreach” task for nexus gathering and contented promotion.

Here’s an illustration of 1 of the contented readying boards I usage in Asana:

From there, your SEO manager tin person entree to and oversee each project. They tin remark straight connected the tasks wrong Asana to support everyone moving. But I besides urge mounting up a chat transmission similar Slack for real-time connection that’s faster and little cumbersome than comments oregon emails.

Need much assistance with Asana? Here’s an fantabulous video overview connected however to acceptable it up and use it:

Final thoughts

Building an SEO squad tin assistance you outscale and outpace your competitors connected Google’s hunt results page. And having an in-house squad gives you a competitory advantage. This tin besides prevention you immoderate money—especially connected things similar nexus building, wherever links tin spell for hundreds of dollars apiece (if you wage idiosyncratic other for them).

However, it is simply a large committedness to prosecute and negociate an full department, truthful this method isn’t for everyone. Think agelong and hard astir which method is close for you earlier you marque a decision.

Want to larn more? Check retired immoderate of these different large guides to SEO:

• SEO Basics: Beginner’s Guide to SEO Success
• 12 SEO Best Practices That Everyone Should Follow
• The Only SEO Checklist You Need