You know your website needs SEO help. The question is how to get it.
Hire someone in-house? Find an agency? Work with a consultant? Each option has costs and trade-offs that nobody talks about honestly.
If you’re a B2B service business trying to work out the best route, here’s what you need to know before you commit.
There’s a third option most B2B businesses don’t consider – fractional SEO. Senior expertise without the senior salary or agency minimums. Book a call and I’ll explain how it works.
What hiring an in-house SEO really costs
The salary is just the start.
A decent SEO hire in the UK will cost you £35-45K. But that’s before employer’s National Insurance, pension contributions, and benefits. You’re looking at closer to £45-55K in real terms.
Then there’s everything else.
SEO tools aren’t cheap. Ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and the rest will add £3-5K annually. Your new hire needs equipment, training budget, and time to get up to speed with your business.
Recruitment takes 3-6 months if you’re lucky. Longer if you want someone good. That’s half a year of your SEO going nowhere while you interview candidates who may or may not know what they’re doing.
And what happens when they’re off sick? On holiday? Or they hand in their notice after 18 months because a bigger company offered them more money?
You’re back to square one. Again.
Why in-house SEO often fails for B2B service businesses
Imagine you hire an SEO manager. They’re good. Keen. Ready to make a difference.
Six months in, they’ve done a technical audit, fixed some issues, optimised your main pages. The big wins are done. Now what?
They’re twiddling their thumbs. Or worse, creating busywork to justify their salary – writing blog posts nobody reads, chasing minor technical issues that don’t affect your rankings, attending conferences to “stay current.”
You’re paying a full-time salary for what’s essentially part-time work.
Now imagine the opposite. Your SEO hire is ambitious. They want to build a team, run campaigns, do things properly. Except your budget doesn’t stretch to a content writer, a link builder, and the tools they need. They get frustrated. They leave.
Most B2B service businesses don’t need a full-time SEO. They need senior expertise applied strategically, not someone filling 40 hours a week regardless of whether there’s 40 hours of useful work to do.
The agency option and why it’s often overkill
I’ve written about agencies vs freelancers elsewhere, so I’ll keep this brief.
Agencies typically want £2K+ per month minimum. For that, you’ll often get junior staff doing the actual work while senior people handle the pitch and the occasional strategy call. Your account gets slotted into their processes whether those processes suit your business or not.
For large e-commerce sites or businesses with complex technical needs, agencies can make sense. For most B2B service businesses? You’re paying for resources you don’t need and structure that doesn’t fit.
Fractional SEO – the option most businesses don’t know exists
There’s a middle ground.
Fractional SEO (sometimes called outsourced SEO or working with an SEO consultant) gives you senior expertise without the senior salary. You get someone who’s done this for decades, working on your business for the hours you actually need.
No recruitment costs. No NI contributions. No pension. No sick pay. No notice period when they leave for a better offer.
You pay for expertise and results. Not for someone to fill a seat 40 hours a week.
For most B2B service businesses, this is the sweet spot. Enough expertise to make a real difference. Flexible enough to scale up or down. Affordable enough to sustain long-term.
How to decide what’s right for your B2B business
In-house makes sense if you have genuinely full-time SEO needs, budget for salary plus tools plus training, and you’re prepared for the recruitment and retention challenge.
Agencies make sense if you need multiple specialists simultaneously, have complex technical requirements, and can justify £2K+ monthly.
A fractional SEO consultant makes sense if you want senior expertise without senior costs, need flexibility, and would rather pay for results than hours in a chair.
Most B2B service businesses I work with fall into that third category. They don’t need a full-time SEO. They don’t need an agency’s resources. They need someone who knows what they’re doing, applied strategically to the areas that will bring in business.
When to get help deciding
If you’ve been going back and forth on this for months, that’s usually a sign you’re overthinking it.
The right question isn’t “in-house or outsource?” It’s “what does my business actually need, and what’s the most sensible way to get it?”
For most B2B service businesses, the answer is simpler than you think.
Want to talk through your options? Book a discovery call and I’ll give you an honest assessment of what makes sense for your situation – even if that’s not working with me.
