What an SEO specialist is, what they do, and when you need a team instead of one person

What an SEO specialist does

Summed up, the tasks usually assigned to a search engine optimization specialist form a fairly broad list: analyzing the site’s content and structure, giving technical recommendations for its development, working on page content, taking part in business-growth campaigns, analyzing keywords and search queries, advising on promotion in specific countries and regions, training the team on the basics of search optimization when needed, and, more recently, advising on how generative search systems perceive the site.

By nature, these tasks aren’t spread evenly over time. Some of the work is one-off or periodic: analyzing the site’s structure and content, setting up analytics, training the team. Some of it runs in parallel and continuously, as the site develops and pages are added: the technical side, content work, query analysis, and the growth campaigns themselves. This difference in rhythm is one reason the question “one person or a team” isn’t settled once and for all — we’ll look at what it depends on below.

If you haven’t fully gotten to grips with the term SEO itself yet, start with the article on what SEO is and how it works.

What access and data the specialist needs

To carry out these tasks, the specialist needs access to data about the site — but not just any access to everything at once. Google explicitly warns against giving an SEO specialist full access to Search Console; read-only access is usually enough for the work.

Search Console does have several access levels: an owner manages the property’s settings and can add other users; a full-access user sees all the data and performs some actions, but doesn’t manage owners or add new users; a restricted-access user sees most of the statistics but can’t change anything. For an outside specialist or agency, the last option is usually enough.

Yandex Webmaster (Yandex’s counterpart of Google Search Console) works on similar logic: site rights are managed by the user with the “Owner” role — they’re the one who grants, edits or revokes other users’ access. If the specialist isn’t working on behalf of the site owner, it’s the owner who grants them rights, not the other way around, and those rights can be narrowed or revoked at any time.

If the specialist needs broader access — for example, FTP access to the site’s files to make technical fixes — they should explain every change they make on the site. Besides access to Search Console and Yandex Webmaster, the specialist usually needs view access to the site’s web analytics system: without it, you can see what happens in search results, but not what visitors do on the site afterward. Besides access, the specialist also needs certain data up front: what has already been changed on the site, who makes decisions on content and development, and who to contact if a fix can’t be made directly.

What is and isn’t in an SEO specialist’s remit

The list of tasks shows where the specialist’s remit ends. They analyze the site’s structure and give technical recommendations for development — but recommendations aren’t the same as development: changes to code, markup or server settings are usually made by the development team or the hosting provider, not by the specialist themselves.

It’s a similar story with content: the specialist takes part in developing page content and analyzes keywords, but that doesn’t replace the work of a copywriter, designer or editor if the site has separate roles for those tasks — the specialist is more about determining which queries the text should target and what it should convey.

PPC (paid search) advertising and targeted (paid social) advertising are a separate area that isn’t part of an SEO specialist’s job: SEO works with free, organic search, not paid ads. If a business needs both channels, that means either two different specialists or an agency where a separate person is responsible for each one.

Setting up web analytics itself is another borderline case. The specialist usually works with data already collected by analytics systems and search engine reports, rather than setting up goals and tracking tags on the site from scratch: installing the tracking tag is the development team’s job, but the specialist can advise on which goals are worth tracking specifically to evaluate search performance.

When one specialist is enough

For a small company, much of this list can be handled in-house or by one person. That one person can work in two different formats. A freelance (private) specialist runs SEO under a contract, usually alongside other projects, and is brought in for a specific scope of work. An in-house specialist works only on your site, on a permanent basis within the company. Both formats are a single person — the only difference is how involved they are specifically in your project.

This format is usually enough if the site is small, tasks don’t actively run in parallel with each other, and one person can get through them personally within the normal workflow.

When one person isn’t enough

The tasks from the first section — the technical side, content, internal linking, analytics, prioritization — require different skills and ideally should move in parallel, not one after another. If the site is large, has many sections and keeps growing, one person physically can’t handle all of these areas in depth at the same time: while they’re busy with texts, technical tasks will wait their turn, and vice versa.

Under that kind of load, the single-specialist format — freelance or in-house — usually starts to struggle regardless of how competent that person is: it’s not about skill, it’s about the number of areas that need to be handled at the same time. This is where a team or agency takes over from one person, with different people covering different areas in parallel.

How to evaluate a specialist or agency before starting work

You can check whether a specific specialist or agency is a good fit using a few pointers from hiring guidance: ask to see examples of previous work, ask whether the specialist follows search engines’ general guidelines, clarify what result they expect to get and by when, and how they’ll report on it, and pay attention to whether they’re actually interested in your specific business.

It’s worth separately agreeing on how communication will be set up during the work, not just at the start: Google’s recommended hiring questions explicitly include how the specialist will communicate changes made to the site. If the specialist has access to make edits on the site, they should explain what they’re changing and why, rather than making edits unnoticed. How often this happens — say, weekly or monthly — is usually agreed in advance and becomes part of the workflow, rather than a one-off report at the end.

Exactly what should be in the work report itself is a separate topic, covered in the article on what should be in an SEO report.

Good work is built on the quality of the site’s content and technical side, not on artificial tactics. For example, excessive keyword use in text for the sake of visible volume is a violation that search engines look for and that a site can be penalized for.

If there’s nothing to compare against and you have to start from zero, an independent SEO audit can be a starting point: it records the site’s baseline state independently of who you end up hiring.

Frequently asked questions

Are an SEO specialist and an SEO agency the same thing?

No. A specialist is one person, either in-house or freelance. An agency is a team with different areas of responsibility: someone handles the technical side, someone else handles content and links. The difference is whether several areas can be handled in parallel.

Can SEO be done without bringing in a specialist at all?

For a small company, a lot can be done in-house. After that, it’s a question of whether the team has enough time and depth of knowledge for it.

How does a freelance SEO specialist differ from an in-house specialist?

Mainly in the employment format: a freelance specialist usually works under a contract and alongside other projects, while an in-house specialist works only on your site, on a permanent basis. It’s a question of the cooperation format, not of who is better.

Do you need an agency if the company already has an in-house specialist?

It depends on the volume of work: if there are more areas than one person can handle in parallel, an agency can take on part of the work or specific areas without fully replacing the in-house specialist.

Does the specialist need full access to the site and analytics?

No, and that’s not necessary even at the start: Google recommends not giving the specialist full access to Search Console while read-only access is enough, and opening up broader access only as needed and with an explanation of every change. Site rights are managed by the owner either way — they’re the one who decides what access to grant and when to narrow it.