-
Hiring for SEO role – compensation?
I’m head of marketing for a software company with little SEO expertise. I understand the role it needs to play for my company but I need to hire this skill set and hoping for this groups help.
Two questions:
• in-house or external?
• average salary for a senior SEO manager level role? (Individual contributor) -
1 Reply
-
It’s hard to say. Internal, you’ll get more bang for your buck but probably pay more bucks across an annual salary.
External, you can fire them but I worked for an agency before and they’ll do what you tell them to the letter, and no more. Plus there are a LOT of BS agencies out there.
So on the balance, I’d go internal. But it needs to be the ONLY thing they do. So many are generic digital people and they get lumbered with all kinds of jobs.
-
For a low-medium COL area you’re going to need to offer 85k-95k base minimum to attract someone with the experience necessary to fully audit, create a strategy, and execute that strategy.
For a higher COL area, more. Possibly less for a full remote position, but a solid SEO probably won’t take a haircut for the privilege of full time WFH anymore.
If your current agency or external vendor is asking *you* what needs to be done, fire them. No SEO agency worth anything is going to be asking the client about tasks, they’re going to be telling you what they’ve identified needs to be done and getting your sign off on the strategy and content required.
If you don’t want to commit to in-house yet (it’s tough without background, there’s a lot of BSers), tap your network for recommendations. Guarantee you know someone who has worked with a real SEO pro or agency.
Stay away from large media companies, they’re turn and burn shops.
-
SEO must be in-house as you can keep control on it & salary that depends on location & experience.
If you don’t want to hire a team of for digital marketing than hiring an agency or freelancer is good however do the complete checklist before hiring them.
There are many salary portals that will give you a rough idea abt the salary part
Log in to reply.