Perry Bernard 👑
It totally depends on your skill set, and the resource you have available to assign to the task. If either of those are lacking compared to a professional, then there's a probability that you lose ground, or worse. Generally, the cost of having that expertise in house is greater than the cost of hiring an expert. The cost of making mistakes is even more. But this does depend on picking the right consultant. One who has proven expertise is often more expensive per hour but more effective and much less likely to make errors in direction.
Josh
How many skus?

Ammon Johns 👑
Yes.
There are three main sources of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and all three have certain strengths and weaknesses.
The in-house SEO team give the most value for money, since you get ALL of their salaried time devoted to your site. That's a lot cheaper than paying an agency about the cost of one junior to mid skill SEO users salary for just a few hours a week on your case. BUT, being in-house, they have the least exposure to other markets, to cross-training their knowledge and staying up to date. The skill level of an in-house team tends to narrow and decline over time unless the company is super-strict with itself about not using all their time, and basically having about 20% of their time dedicated to learning, branching out, and honing their skills constantly.
In-house gives the company the absolute highest value for money, but is the fastest to go stale.
The agency SEO has the most exposure to multiple markets and techniques, and has co-workers to constantly trade ideas and skills with. But you pay through the nose for the agency SEO. I think this one is clear – absolutely the worst for cost, but one of the best for not being blinkered by a single case or project.
The third way is the consultant or freelancer. These may often be a sort of midway between the other two – rarely having as many clients on the go at a time as an agency, but still far more than any in-house staff. Far cheaper than an agency, as they have less layers of middlemen, managers, and support staff to pay from the fees. Often freelancers are the absolute best way to get specialists for particular tasks or skills, such as Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) or whatever.
One thing I strongly recommend is that you pick any 2 of the three. Usually the value for money of the in-house is an obvious choice, so then either use an agency or freelancer to do the more strategic side, and to help keep the in-house guy(s) trained up and aware of what's new outside of the one site.
Rudolf
Depends on your business and skillset. If you are running a local business, you can probably do it yourself. If you are running an online business — get an agency.
Even if you have all the skills and knowledge, like I do, you will quickly find out that it takes up a lot of your time and you will not be able to do link building yourself as you do not have the resources.
Word of advice — do not pick the cheapest (e.q. from India) And do not pick those those who promise you to get you on the first page in a short time. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long, continuously evolving process.

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Delah
We hired an agency and basically threw $40,000 down the drain.
We've done the SEO ourselves for the past 18 months and have gone from 800 visitors per month to 1200 visitors per day.
If you have the time to learn the process then definitely, do it yourself.

Jaroslaw
Don't ever use Agency's, as Delah wrote waste of space and money.

Rienzi
My clients make more $$$ coz they let us do the SEO for them. Not every agency is trash. You just have to learn how to find the right ones. Proof is the number of quotations for my client for month of August:
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Rienzi
Hey Niclas there's always two sides of the coin here. I've worked with clients where I help them build their own in-house team and it worked great because they want to get their hands dirty.
But most of my clients wants to focus solely on what they do best – their business.
Both options are great but it comes with caveats.
Christine Hansen 🎓
I so like Ammon Johns idea of hiring a freelancer. Perhaps a 50/50 would be a good choice, leaving the freelance captain at the helm of the whole project, whilst interactively doing the SEO day-to-day choirs by whatever rules the freelancer sets, having this person overlook and adjust everything.
Adam J. Humphreys 👑
I would want references of their other work in particular your niche. Go on Google ads plunk into the keywords ad planner tool (free) your niche you'd like to rank for and isolate the competitive terms. See if they have ranked for those anywhere.
Tim Capper 👑
I think learning the basics is always beneficial, because you look at online assest you have available with a … how can I leverage this.
Back to the original question – do you have the time to learn an entire new field? What time do you have available as opposed to running your business?