The Real Cost of an Empty SEO Seat
The Salary Stops. The Work Doesn’t.
When someone leaves your SEO team, the salary saving is easy to calculate. The cost of leaving their role unfilled isn’t always so obvious.
Accounts still need attention, senior staff may be pulled back into delivery, and recruitment can take longer than planned.
Temporary SEO support is an additional expense. But sometimes that short-term investment makes more commercial sense than leaving your existing team to absorb the gap.
It’s not just about what you spend. It’s about what that spend protects.
Getting Someone Through the Door Isn’t the Same as Getting the Right Person.
A poor appointment can mean repeating recruitment, onboarding and training, while your existing team covers the gap all over again.
Having temporary support in place doesn’t remove that risk. It gives you more freedom to assess candidates properly, wait for the right person and avoid making a permanent decision under unnecessary pressure.
What Does Buying Yourself Time Actually Cost?
Let’s say your agency loses an SEO Manager earning £40,000 a year. Leaving the position vacant for 13 weeks saves approximately £10,000 in gross salary, before accounting for other employment costs.
But what if you need experienced SEO support during that period?
Rather than paying for five days a week throughout, the agency starts with more support and gradually reduces it as recruitment progresses and the new hire settles in. For £9,300, the agency has purchased 31 days of experienced SEO capacity across a 13-week transition. That isn’t automatically a saving compared with leaving the role vacant.
The value is in what those 31 days allow the agency to protect.
When Is Temporary Cover Worth the Investment?
There’s no universal answer. It depends on the workload, the team and the likely recruitment period. Temporary SEO cover may make commercial sense when:
- Senior time is being diverted. Managers are spending time on day-to-day delivery instead of strategy, client development or growing the department.
- Client revenue needs protecting. Important accounts need consistent attention while the permanent team changes.
- Your existing team is at capacity. Redistributing the work for several months could affect delivery, morale and retention.
- Recruitment needs more time. You want the freedom to wait for a suitable candidate rather than appointing someone because the team can’t cope.
Equally, if the gap is short, workloads are manageable and you’ve already found the right replacement, bringing in temporary support might not be necessary. The aim isn’t to sell you more days than you need. It’s to work out whether additional capacity would make a meaningful difference.
You’re Not Buying a Cheaper Employee. You’re Buying Time.
Your clients have already seen someone leave. The last thing they need is to feel like they’re being passed to yet another SEO who’ll disappear again in a few months.
That’s why SEO Super Sub doesn’t have to mean introducing us as their new SEO Manager. I can work behind the scenes, support your existing team, or step into a client-facing role as experienced temporary support.
With 15+ years in SEO and digital marketing, we can talk confidently about the work, answer questions, challenge where needed and keep conversations moving. We are not there simply to relay messages between the client and your SEO team.
The aim isn’t to become another new face they have to get used to. It’s to make the transition between the old team and the new one feel as seamless as possible.
Is an Empty SEO Seat Costing Your Agency More Than You Think?
Let’s talk through the workload, the likely recruitment period and whether temporary support makes financial sense.