https://open.substack.com/pub/goswamis/p/in-house-vs-outsourced-seo-for-saas?r=5zpq7f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Wondering if in-house or outsourced SEO can supercharge your SaaS in 2025? Discover what really drives growth—with a real SaaS case inside.

Every SaaS founder I know wrestles with this question sooner or later:

“Do I hire an SEO team, or just pay an agency to handle it?”

I’ve seen both sides up close:

• A seed-stage startup I spoke with hired two SEO specialists right away. Six months later, half their budget was tied up in salaries and tools—and traffic barely moved.
• Another SaaS, bootstrapped to $2M ARR, outsourced to a niche SEO agency. Signups doubled in a year. But when the contract ended, nobody in-house understood how the machine worked.

That’s the trade-off. Control vs speed. Cost vs expertise. Short-term wins vs long-term capability.

What In-House SEO Feels Like

• Your SEO person is in Slack with product and growth.
• They understand your ICP better than any agency.
• You decide the roadmap, not someone else’s reporting cycle.

The downside? It’s expensive and slow. A strong SEO hire costs more than your first growth marketer. And unless you’re big enough, you’ll have one person spread thin across content, links, and tech—none done deeply.

What Outsourcing Really Brings

Agencies move fast because they’ve done it before.

• Need backlinks? They’ve got contacts.
• Expanding into Brazil or Germany? They already know how people search there.

But you’re never their only client. Unless you stay hands-on, you risk getting cookie-cutter blog posts and dashboards full of “vanity metrics.”