Why SEO Can’t Be a One-Person Job

I get it. As a hiring manager, you need to stick within the budget and an entire section on the floor just for SEO will raise quite a lot of eyebrows. And when you’re scaling your business, it makes sense to hire a jack of all trades and label them an “expert” to justify your hiring.

But is SEO a single task? Can someone simply do SEO? It requires strategy, creativity, technical expertise and continuous efforts in researching, link-building and reaching out to potential sites where your content can be featured effectively.

Let me elaborate. This is what you’re really asking when you want someone to “do SEO”:

• SEO Planning — Creating long-term strategies that align with business goals
• Outreach — Building media relationships and creating stories worth covering
• Authority Building — Earning quality backlinks through strategic outreach and paretnerships
• Search Behavior Analysis — Spotting trends and growth opportunities via search data
• Audience Research — Identifying content gaps and understanding user intent before they search
• Performance Content — Creating SEO content that ranks, engages and drives action
• Site Health — Keeping the website fast, crawlable and technically optimized
• Web Integration — Syncing SEO with structured data, architecture and clean code on your website

Each of these require specialization. You may find a few who can cover more than one base, but expecting them to specialise in all of them? You’ll have beet luck finding an actual unicorn.

Treating SEO as a One-Person Job and The Undesirable Outcomes

When companies treat SEO as a small part of their business that can be handled by one person, the outcomes will speak for themselves.

• SEO strategy goes down the drain and it becomes more reactive.
• Rankings drop or plateau because, let’s face it, the “SEO expert” does not have time for deep link-building and audits.
• The content is obviously rushed and bland. It is certainly not optimised well enough to perfom as well as it’s expected to.
• Technical snags will go unresolved so less chances of descoverability.
• Growth will eventually come to a standstill.

With all these issues going on, you will be left scratching your head, wondering where you went wrong. After all, your overworked “SEO expert” is checking all the boxes and doing everything they need to when they “do SEO.” Right? Well, it maybe time to take a step back and see what an actual SEO super unit should be like.

Here Are the Key Players of an SEO Team

So, you want SEO to drive meaningful traffic, engagement and revenue? Here’s what your ideal setup should look like:

• SEO Strategist: The one who owns the roadmap amd makes sure all the parts of the SEO engine are runnign smoothly and keeps an eye on the progress.
• Content Writers: The creative minds that will turn keywords into beautiful stories and insightful articles that will inform and engage your target audience.
• Technical SEO Specialist: You should be able to sleep soundly with a qualfied set of technical experts who monitor the backend performace, make sure your pages are indexed and fix issues that pop up.
• Link Builders: A network of high-suthority links is what gets your website traffic and suthority. Link builders are the ones who make sure of this through outreach and partnerships.
• Data Analyst: Unlocking insights and keeping an eye on KPIs will let you know what is working well for you and what is not. Data analysts will ensure your website stays on top of its game at all times!
• Designers: We don’t usually consider designers to be a part of the SEO team, but they are what makes your content stand out. Stunning visuals boost engagement and on-page time.

You don’t need a big team from day one to start your SEO journey. It’s more about collaboration. Your SEO person shold have some contacts like content writers, developers and technical SEO specialists. This is what truly makes them an expert. The abilty to get the right people for the varuous steps involved in SEO.

So… This is What You Can Do Instead

If you are a small business starting to scale your brand, you can do the following:

• Hire an SEO generalist with strong strategic planning skills and content background.
• Support the generalist in outsourcing technical audits and link building to external agancies.
• Can’t hire a team of writers? Use freelancers.

If you alreadty have your foot in the game and have a bit of traction, you can build a small specialised team. Your SEO expert is the glue that brings it all together.

Final Thoughts:

SEO Isn’t a One-person Job and Shouldn’t be Treated Like One

Even as the founder of your own business, you don’t handle the technical developement of your website, write the content that goes on it, do the marketing, follow up with clients or make the sales. There’s no way you should expect your SEO expert to do the same. Instead, show support by providing them with the resources they require. A good SEO strategy can fuel sustainable, organic growth that can do wonders for your business in the long run.