Is Hiring an SEO Company Worth It? When It Is, and When You Can Do It Yourself
Updated: 5 days ago
By Spencer Capron, founder of Capron Media. Updated October 30, 2026.
Is hiring an SEO company worth it? It can be, when your customers search for what you sell, you cannot do the work every week, and you can see what each month's fee bought. Google's own advice is that a small local business can probably do much of the work itself. Here are both sides.
Is hiring an SEO company worth it?
Hiring an SEO company is worth it when the work has to happen every week and you cannot keep it up, when you cannot tell which changes matter, or when a mistake would be costly, such as a redesign or a move to a new web address. If none of those is true, you may not need one yet.
That is why you need an SEO agency or company, when you do. The case for hiring, in four reasons:
It happens every week. This is a common reason people hire. The work is not difficult; it is relentless, and it is the first thing dropped in a busy month. Paying for it is paying for it to survive your bad months.
Knowing which change matters. There are always many possible improvements and only a few that will move anything. Choosing well is the skill, and it comes from having watched it go wrong before.
Knowing what not to do. Buying links, chasing a phrase nobody searches for, redesigning without redirects. The mistakes avoided can be worth more than the improvements made.
Someone reads the data. Search Console tells you a great deal and is easy to leave unopened. A company that never opens it is not worth having either, which is worth asking before you hire.
Do I need an SEO company, or can I do it myself?
Google's own advice is direct: "If you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself." It recommends starting with its free SEO Starter Guide, and says a great time to hire is when you are planning a redesign or launching a new site.
The case for doing it yourself:
Much of the work is not hard. Submitting the site, writing plain titles and descriptions, completing your Google Business Profile, fixing broken links, publishing pages that answer questions customers really ask. That needs attention more than expertise.
You know your customers better than an outsider does. You hear their objections every week. That knowledge is the scarce ingredient, and it does not come with an agency.
The tools are free. Google says it costs nothing to appear in its organic results, and Search Console is a free Google service. The information an agency reads is available to you.
Four focused hours a month, kept up for a year, will get you somewhere. Many people cannot keep that up. The ones who can may not need to hire.
From Capron Media: the free Lite subscription
Choosing a provider? Know where you stand first
See where your site shows up in Google search, and which searches moved since the last check. Lite does not include the work on your site. Starter does.
What does an SEO company do that you cannot easily do yourself?
An SEO company brings judgement about which changes matter, the time to make them every week, and experience of what has gone wrong elsewhere. Google lists useful services that SEOs and agencies provide, including reviewing your site's content and structure, technical advice, content development, keyword research, training, and optimizing for generative AI.
Who does the SEO | Who makes the changes | Suits you when | Watch for |
You | You | Your site is small and you can keep a steady few hours a month | The weeks it does not happen |
A freelancer or consultant | Often you, from their advice | You want a plan or a second opinion and can make the changes yourself | Advice that never gets made into changes |
An SEO company or agency | The company | The work is ongoing and you cannot keep it up | Monthly reports with no changes listed |
Capron Media (ours) | Starter, our monthly SEO subscription. One subscription covers one website, and Starter covers five optimizations a week on your own site | You want the work done on a fixed weekly count. A person reads every change before it goes on your site. | Starter does not include Google Business Profile or local listings work, link building, a redesign, social media, ads or email marketing. |
For a fuller list of what agencies do, read what SEO agencies do.
When does a small business need an SEO company?
A small business needs an SEO company when the work keeps slipping, when a redesign or move is coming, or when you have tried for months and cannot tell what is working. Before you hire, take this four-question test. It will tell you more than the rest of this page.
Can you name the three pages you most want to be found for, and the question a customer types before buying from you? If not, that is the first job, and it needs an afternoon, not an agency.
Have you opened Search Console in the last month? If it is not set up, do that before paying anyone anything.
Did you publish or improve a page in the last sixty days? If not, be honest about whether an intention is going to become a habit.
Would spending the money hurt? If it would, do it yourself for six months first. You can buy help later with better information.
How much does it cost to hire an SEO company?
It depends on the shape of the fee and the work your site needs. In an Ahrefs poll of 439 SEO providers, updated August 15, 2024, the most common monthly retainer was $501 to $1,000. Whatever the figure, ask what work it buys each month, written down, before you decide whether it is worth it.
We set out the survey figures, the fee shapes and what each buys in how much SEO costs for a small business. Our own prices are on our pricing page.
What is the 80/20 rule for SEO?
The 80/20 rule for SEO is the idea that a small share of the work produces most of the results: a few pages, fixes and searches matter far more than the rest. It is a rule of thumb, not a measured law, and it is why choosing the right changes is much of what an SEO company is for.
In practice it means starting with the pages closest to bringing in customers, fixing anything that stops search engines reading them, and leaving the long list of small improvements until those are done.
Has AI changed whether hiring an SEO company is worth it?
AI changed what the work costs, not whether it needs doing. Drafting, research and analysis are much faster than they were, so one capable person can now cover ground that used to need a team. That strengthens the case for doing it yourself. It does not replace judgement or persistence.
An AI assistant will happily produce fifty pages nobody searches for, and it will not notice. The failure has moved from doing too little to producing too much of the wrong thing, which is harder to spot because it looks like progress.
If a company offers to optimize you for AI answers, sometimes sold as AEO or GEO, Google suggests asking whether that advice follows Google Search's official guidance on its AI features.
What should you ask before you hire an SEO company?
Ask what will change on your site each month and who makes the change, what you keep if you stop, and to see a page they changed and what happened to it afterwards. Google adds one warning worth remembering: no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google.
What will change on my site each month, and who makes the change?
What do I keep if we stop working together? The site, the Business Profile and the analytics should be in accounts you own.
Can you show me a page you changed, and what happened to it afterwards?
What did not work for another client, and what did you do next?
These questions, the costs and the red flags are covered properly in how to choose an SEO company, which also shows one of our past clients' weekly results, including where positions fell back, and the situations where we are the wrong choice. For a longer list to take into a sales call, see questions to ask an SEO agency. Whether SEO itself is worth paying for, before you think about who does it, is a separate question we answer in is SEO worth it for a small business.
If you want help deciding whether to hire at all, book a free call about your site.
From Capron Media: the free Lite subscription
Now see how your own site is doing
See what on your site needs fixing, counted by urgency, with the top three in plain words. Lite does not include the work on your site. Starter does.
If you would rather have the work done for you, Starter is five optimizations a week, made for you on the site you already own, and each one shown in your portal. See every price.
Written by Spencer Capron, founder of Capron Media, a Middleborough, Massachusetts SEO service for small business owners. Spencer is HubSpot SEO II certified, holds CompTIA Security+, and has run recurring SEO programs for 30+ small-business clients. He wrote this post in collaboration with our AI agents, and he reviews everything published here.
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