In-house SEO: your team does the work, we measure and advise
Since 2012 in Madrid. Your team runs the SEO; we give you external measurement on Google and in AI platforms, and someone to compare notes with.
The first thing I need to tell you is that, if your company has decided to take SEO in-house, you’re in very good company. According to the ANA, the US Association of National Advertisers, 82% of its members already had an in-house team in 2023 doing what an agency used to do. And 65% had moved work previously handled by an agency to that team in the previous three years.
But the same report includes another figure: 92% were still working with agencies.
How do you square that? Quite “easily”. What has changed isn’t whether they work with someone from outside, but what for. And it’s exactly what more and more brands ask us for: not to do their team’s work, but to help them know whether that work is paying off.
In-house SEO
First things first: who does what
To understand the approach properly, without mixing apples and oranges, you have to separate two roles that are often confused: the person who does the SEO and the person who checks whether it’s working.
Forget textbook definitions. Think of a rally co-driver. They don’t drive, they don’t touch the wheel and nobody asks them to. But they carry the pace notes, call out the next bend and, at the end of the stage, go over the times with the driver to see where time was gained and where it was lost.
That’s what we do with an in-house SEO team. Let me explain.
Your team knows the brand, the product and the company’s rhythms better than any agency. What’s usually missing from the inside is perspective: measurement that doesn’t depend on their own tools, an honest comparison with the competition and someone to compare notes with when things don’t go to plan. That’s the part we bring.
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Who is this in-house SEO service for?
For brands that already have their own marketing or SEO team, whether that’s one person or a whole department, and want external support without outsourcing the work again. It usually fits three situations:
- They’ve just built the team and management wants to know where it’s starting from, so progress can be measured against a clear baseline.
- The person in charge of SEO is new and needs a snapshot of how they found things.
- The team has been working for a while and nobody can say with data whether what it’s doing works, especially now that part of search has moved to AI platforms.
Do you remember when checking where the brand ranked on Google was enough to know whether SEO was going well? Today some of your customers ask ChatGPT or Gemini directly, and that conversation doesn’t show up in any rankings report.
In-house SEO
What does your team gain from external support?
What’s usually missing from the inside isn’t talent, it’s perspective. This is what we bring:
1
A starting point
A snapshot of where the brand stands today on Google and in AI platforms. Without it, six months from now nobody will be able to say how far the team has come.
2
Independent measurement
Measurement that doesn’t depend on your own tools or on who prepares the report, across search engines and seven AI platforms.
3
A fair assessment
One that separates what was down to the team from what wasn’t. A badly designed external measurement can make a good team look suspect.
4
A sounding board
Someone from outside to share and discuss decisions with, plus training and mentoring based on your own data.
Let me explain further. When we measured how AI platforms cited a client in the cultural sector, three out of four mentioned it, some even with pages for specific projects. The fourth, the one that relies most on Google’s index, didn’t cite it in any of its five samples.
With that one AI platform alone, the diagnosis would have been “lack of authority” and the culprit, the content. The real problem was technical: how Google was indexing that site. That’s why we never judge a team’s work on data from a single AI platform.
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How do we work with your team?
There are four pieces, and we always start with the first:
We review where the brand stands today on Google and in AI answers, against the competitors who really fight you for each search. It’s the zero point against which everything else will be measured.
If you only need to review the technical state of the website, that’s an SEO audit. The initial snapshot also looks at how AI platforms see you and who they compare you with.
Every week we ask seven AI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot and Google’s AI Overviews) what your customers would ask, with several samples per question. We measure whether the brand appears, whether it’s cited as a source and what share of voice it has against your competitors in AI, which rarely match your competitors on Google. On top of that comes the usual tracking: rankings, indexing, links and traffic, including the traffic already arriving from AI platforms.
Every month, your team and management receive a report with two separate scores, one for search engines and one for AI. We never average them, because a good score in one can hide a poor one in the other. And the report adapts to the client, not the client to the report.
Every three months we sit down with the team and management: what was done, what moved the needle, what didn’t, and which part of the results wasn’t down to the team. That last part is what makes the assessment fair.
If the team needs to get up to speed, especially on how AI platforms decide who to recommend, we organise in-company SEO training based on your own data and your own pages, not on a generic syllabus. And if what’s needed is someone to compare notes with between one review and the next, we set it up as SEO mentoring.
Why seven AI platforms and not one? Because each AI platform chooses its sources by different criteria. In our measurements, for the same question, ChatGPT consulted 26 sources and cited 3; Claude consulted 22 and cited 15. They aren’t versions of the same job: they’re different jobs. Clearly, looking at just one isn’t enough.
If you also want to work directly on the brand’s presence in AI platforms, we do that through AI search engine optimisation.
In-house SEO
What we don’t do
It’s worth making this clear from the start, because it’s what worries a team most when management suggests bringing in someone from outside:
- We don’t replace your team or do its work.
- We don’t tell management anything we haven’t discussed with the team first.
That’s why the same report serves both: it tells management how the brand is doing and gives the team the means to show its work.
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How do we get started?
With the initial snapshot. I recommend starting there even if you’re sure you want ongoing measurement: without a starting point, six months from now nobody will be able to say how far the team has come. The initial snapshot doesn’t commit you to anything else. If you decide to stop there, you keep the diagnosis and a baseline to measure against, whoever does the measuring.
If I were in your position, I’d do three things before the quarter closes. First, set a measured starting point, on Google and in AI platforms, so that the team’s progress can be demonstrated. Second, check who AI platforms really compare you with, because they rarely match the competitors you see on Google. And third, and this is the most important, agree with your team what is going to be measured before measuring it, so that the report is a tool and not an exam.
It isn’t easy, and when it comes to AI nobody has all the answers (we don’t either). But measuring it properly is what lets you stop arguing over opinions. Basically, it’s what a good co-driver brings: the wheel stays in your team’s hands, but they stop driving blind.
Shall we talk about your team? Tell us how your team works and we’ll tell you where we’d start.
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Frequently asked questions
Do you need access to our tools?
To measure in AI platforms, no: we ask from the outside, just as any of your customers would. For tracking on Google, we do need read access to Search Console and your analytics. Read-only: we don’t touch anything. I recommend setting it up with a dedicated user for us, so you can revoke it whenever you like.
Does this replace our in-house SEO team?
No, and the idea is exactly the opposite: the team that knows the brand keeps doing the work and has someone from outside who measures and brings perspective. If what you’re looking for is another company to take on the work, that’s our SEO consultancy.
How is this different from an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a one-off review of the website: it tells you what’s wrong today and how to fix it. This is ongoing support for the team, and it also measures visibility in AI platforms. The audit is the X-ray; this is the follow-up with your GP. See the difference?
How often do you measure and how often do we meet?
AI platforms are measured every week, the report arrives every month and the review with the team and management is quarterly.
