full-time writer who may not have enough work to
fill those hours, you can use the freelancers on an as-needed basis. 7 x Whether you’re building an in-house or agency SEO team, there’s no single right way to do it—every business’s demands are different. The most important thing to remember is that you need to structure your SEO team to effectively deal with the demands of the work. Let’s take a look at some examples of SEO team structures, so you can get started building yours. 1. Small in-house SEO team Here’s an example of a structure I’ve seen smaller in-house SEO teams use. The SEO manager, who has a range of SEO skills, manages three specialists in technical SEO, content, and outreach. small inhouse seo team illustration SIDENOTE. Every in-house team will look slightly different and will have different titles or
roles. This structure covers the basics of SEO
. If you were more concerned with technical SEO than getting links, then you could simply hire two technical SEO specialists—or more. Whatever the needs of the business, you need to reflect that within the SEO team. 2. Large in-house team Here’s another example of a bigger in-house SEO team kindly shared by the folks at NordVPN. Nord VPN large in-house SEO team structure example In this example, they’ve divided their team broadly into on-site, off-site, and video. As NordVPN is a big, well-known
company, it’s not surprising that they have
a large team for on-site and off-site SEO. It’s also interesting to see that they have a dedicated video SEO manager—not something every organization has. Here’s what it involves and why they need it: “The Video SEO role at NordVPN is focused around optimizing our YouTube videos to rank in the Google and boost our brand visibility. We identified that video content is really important for our brand, both in
Google and on YouTube.” Billy Briliant Billy
Briliant, Senior Video SEO List of Japan Cell Phone Numbers Manager NordVPN 3. Small agency team The SEO agencies I’ve worked at have typically hired people with a broad skill set. This acts as an insurance policy if anyone suddenly leaves the company—there is a skill overlap. And if a client leaves the business, having a broad skill set makes it easier to reassign the employee to other clients. Here is an example of a team structure taken from a digital marketing agency I used to work at that had ~50 digital marketers. small agency team illustration In my experience, SEOs at agencies are expected to have an understanding of both technical
and content SEO. They will have a preferred
specialism, but that may not be obvious through their job title. 4. Larger agency team When it comes to larger agencies, the team structure is usually designed to reflect the demands of enterprise SEO clients. Here’s a larger SEO team structure I have seen work. (I have simplified it to fit it on the page) Large SEO agency team SIDENOTE. Like the previous examples we’ve seen, larger SEO agencies will also hire specialists—but typically only if there is a requirement from the client combined with a skill gap in the
company. For example, if the client wanted
a Google Tag Manager (GTM) specialist—they A META DESCRIPTION IS AN HTML ATTRIBUTE might look to find a dedicated person for this SEO role. 5. International SEO team Here’s an example of a team structure created specifically for e-commerce SEO teams working across multiple countries (courtesy of SEOmindset.) The key difference is the addition of a country-specific SEO lead. International SEO team structure example 6. Agency pod structure Here’s another team structure example from SEO agency Bubblegum Search. The team is built in
