I work with a number of agencies who either focus exclusively on SEO or have it as part of their wider services. It’s nearly always been in high demand but has often been hard to sell. It takes time, the work isn’t always visible and let’s not mention attribution…
My work with clients is often focused on helping them sell and market their SEO services. But on this podcast with my old boss, Will Critchlow, who is CEO of SearchPilot, we spoke about the other side – how to get better SEO work from your agency if you work in-house.
In my view, this is something that agencies should be thinking about. What do clients really want and how to they deliver against those expectations?
Here is a quick summary of what we discussed and some takeaways:
- Don’t default to an agency – look in-house first.
- An agency’s real value is decision confidence, not execution.
- Hire for thinking and judgment, not polished AI outputs.
- The person-to-person relationship matters more than the contract.
- Know what your agency is genuinely best at – and where it isn’t.
And here is a longer summary of what we talked about.
Don’t default to an agency – look inward first
Despite a 20-year career in and around agencies, Paddy’s counterintuitive starting point is that brands shouldn’t reflexively reach for an agency. In an ideal world, in-house teams keep as much capability in-house as possible. Too often “we need an agency for SEO/PPC/content” is a default habit rather than a considered decision – sometimes driven by a new hire simply doing things the way they always have.
The biggest value agencies bring now is “decision confidence”
Where agencies consistently earn their keep is helping brands make big strategic calls. An agency working across dozens of clients and industries brings breadth of current experience that an in-house team – focused on a single site or portfolio – can’t easily replicate. For a CMO, decision-making at that level can feel lonely, and having an experienced partner “around the table” to back the call is one of the most valuable things an agency does.
Consulting vs. doing – and which is more at risk
There’s a meaningful split between the consultative side (expertise, frameworks, “we’ve seen this go wrong, watch out for X”) and the “doer” side (paying someone to execute tasks). Site migrations are a good example: technically straightforward, but someone who’s run 20 of them spots the obscure pitfalls. The pure execution work is the part most at risk in future – and the part brands should try to keep in-house where they can.
The looming talent question: where do tomorrow’s experts come from?
Much of an agency career’s value is the firehose of early learning – you can’t be a useful consultant on day one; you get there by seeing 20 migrations. If junior work is hollowed out by AI or budget cuts, it raises an existential question about where the skilled mid-level people of tomorrow will come from.
AI-native talent changes what you hire for
Juniors entering the workforce are increasingly “AI-first” and understand these tools from day one, which makes them more than task-doers. When hiring – in-house or agency – the signal to look for isn’t polished AI outputs but the thinking and logic behind how someone uses the tools. (Paddy’s own 2010 Distilled interview tested site-architecture reasoning on a whiteboard; the modern equivalent is watching someone problem-solve live with Claude or ChatGPT.)
Using AI well is a management skill
AI is powerful in both directions – “you can cook an amazing meal or burn your house down” – so demonstrating good judgment with it matters. Strong communicators have an edge, because getting results means treating the tool like an intern (or a report) you have to brief, manage, and iterate with, rather than firing off a one-liner and hoping.
Founders adopt AI fastest
Alongside AI-native juniors, founders are often quickest to get comfortable at the bleeding edge – they’re already wired to create change by asking people (and now machines) to do things. The excitement comes from recognising how much faster they could have built things years ago with these tools, which reignites curiosity and drives them to learn to use them well.
The agency–brand relationship is person-to-person
These relationships are fundamentally people-to-people, not just business-to-business, and there’s a real power dynamic in play. When a key contact or executive sponsor changes, the near-automatic assumption is that the agency changes too – worth being conscious of on both sides.
The same problems recur – just on different timelines
Across many agencies, Paddy finds the core issues are largely the same; what varies is when they hit (year one, year two, year five) and how they’re solved. Even thriving agencies stay stuck in a “we need more, we need more” cycle – the ones killing it and the ones struggling are often equally stressed, just about different things.
For brands: look for the agency’s areas of brilliance
Because agencies feel pressure to say yes, they may take on work outside their strengths. Brands should do a little due diligence – ask “is this genuinely what you’re best at?” – rather than assuming an agency excels at everything. And be aware of the business-model reality: agencies juggle multiple clients and tend to shift more junior people onto an account over time.
It’s a hard model – but enjoy the journey
Running an agency is relentless “whack-a-mole”: enough work, enough people to do it, and keeping quality high enough, all at once – a tension that isn’t really solvable; it’s just the job. The upside is you can start one with no capital and no investors and grow it from a one-person band. The throughline, echoing SearchPilot’s first value, is to enjoy the journey – good times and bad both pass, but there’s always a challenge in the moment.
