Agency, freelancer, or in-house? Shopify SEO options compared
What each route costs, what you get, and who each option genuinely suits. No "agency is always best" filler.
Quick comparison
Honest framing
Three routes. Different jobs.
In-house, freelancer, and agency each suit different catalogue sizes and internal capacity. Pick the model that matches the work, not the sales pitch.
See GBP ranges in our Shopify SEO pricing guide. Download the free checklist first if you are still researching.
Pick the model that matches the work
In-house
Very small catalogues under a few hundred SKUs, where the founder or a marketing generalist can own titles, collections, and basic content. You already employ someone with SEO bandwidth and a developer who can ship theme changes within a week. Your niche is uncompetitive and technical debt is low: no migration mess, minimal app bloat, clean indexation.
Freelancer
Mid-size stores needing audits, content briefs, or a focused migration redirect review without a full retainer. Tighter budgets where you can implement recommendations yourself or with an existing dev on hourly support. Short projects: pre-launch checklist, post-migration audit, or a single category hub rebuild.
Agency
Growing catalogues where speed, schema, filters, and content must run in parallel. Limited internal time: you need orders reported monthly, not a slide deck of keyword positions. Stores that need multiple specialisms: technical SEO, CRO, content, and dev on the same account. LoudCrowd fits here: six in-house people on typical ecommerce accounts, UK delivery, UK case studies.
Questions to ask before you decide
- Who actually does the work day to day, and can you name them?
- Does reporting tie to orders and revenue URLs, or keyword ranks only?
- Is Shopify template and app work included, or billed separately?
- What happens in the first 90 days: audit deck or shipped fixes?
- Can they show UK ecommerce case studies with verifiable metrics?
- How do they prioritise when everything in the crawl export is red?
Specialty catalogue proof: our Shopify SEO agency work.
See which route fits your store
Ask for the free audit, then book 15 minutes if you want a straight recommendation.
Google rating and Trustpilot SEO outcomes when you are weighing agency vs freelancer vs in-house.
FAQ
Can I switch from a freelancer to an agency mid-project?
Yes. Bring your Search Console data, redirect maps, and any audit exports. A good agency will re-prioritise against revenue URLs rather than restart from scratch.
Is in-house SEO cheaper than an agency?
Cash cost can be lower if you already employ a marketer with SEO time. Fully loaded cost of a mid-level SEO plus dev support often exceeds a specialist agency retainer once you account for salary, tools, and opportunity cost.
Shopify SEO services
The guides explain the problem. These pages are the work.
- Shopify SEOThe full service
- Shopify migration SEOKeep rankings through a replatform
- Collection page SEOWhere the search volume is
- Product page SEOTitles, schema, descriptions
- PricesFrom £497 a month, published in full
- All Shopify SEO guidesCosts, audits, checklists, problems
- Shopify SEO problems, diagnosedTraffic drops, lost rankings, duplicate collections
Ready when you are
Tell us what you are trying to rank for and we will look at the site and the search results before we reply. You get a straight answer, including if SEO is not the right spend for you yet.