A business owner once asked me whether they should focus on Google Ads or SEO. My answer was: “Before we decide, let’s look at what’s happening on your website.”
I get why the question comes up. You want more customers, and you’re trying to figure out where your marketing budget will make the biggest difference. Google Ads and SEO can both help people find your business, but getting someone to your website is only part of the job. Once they arrive, they need to understand what you offer and feel confident taking the next step.
That’s why I like to look at all three together.
Google Ads can help you reach people searching right now
Google Ads gives you a way to put your business in front of people searching for the products or services you offer. If you’re a home service company, for example, you might want to reach someone looking for a sunroom installer in your area.
A well-managed campaign can start bringing in traffic once it’s running, which makes paid search useful when you’re trying to generate leads while building longer-term visibility. But paying for clicks doesn’t automatically mean you’re paying for good clicks—or that those visitors will become customers.
That’s why Google Ads management involves more than setting a budget and walking away. I want to know what people are searching for, which ads they’re responding to, and what happens after they land on your site.
SEO helps people find you over time
SEO is the work of helping search engines understand your website and helping potential customers find useful information when they search. That might mean improving your service pages, answering common customer questions, updating local content, or fixing technical issues that make your site harder to find.
Unlike Google Ads, you aren’t paying for each organic click, but SEO still takes time and ongoing attention. Results can take a while to build, and there’s no guarantee that a particular page will rank where you want it to.
What I like about ongoing SEO work is that the improvements can serve more than one purpose. A clearer service page may help someone find you through search and give a potential customer better information once they arrive.
Your website has to do something with that traffic
Let’s go back to the sunroom company. Your ads are reaching people looking for a local installer, and your SEO work is helping your service pages appear in organic results. Great. But when someone clicks through, can they quickly tell where you work, what you offer, and how to request a quote?
If the page is confusing, the form is hard to find, or the information doesn’t match what brought them there, some visitors may leave without getting in touch. Sending more people to that same page isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem.
When I’m reviewing marketing performance, I want to look beyond the number of clicks. Are people taking the next step? Are the leads a good fit? Is the form actually working and being tracked? Those answers help us decide whether the next priority is the campaign, the website, the tracking, or some combination of all three.
The pieces can teach you something about each other
One of the advantages of looking at Google Ads and SEO together is that each can provide useful clues for the other.
Search terms in an ad account might reveal a service customers are looking for that deserves a clearer page on your website. Questions your team hears from customers might inspire new website content and help us write more relevant ads. And if a page attracts plenty of visitors but very few inquiries, that’s a reason to look more closely at the page itself.
None of these insights replaces a conversation with your team. You know which services you want to grow, which customers are the best fit, and what happens after a lead comes in. My job is to bring that context together with what we’re seeing in your marketing and help figure out what to do next.
Where should you start?
You don’t have to launch a new ad campaign, rewrite your website, and tackle every SEO project at once. The right starting point depends on your goals, your budget, and what’s already happening.
If you need leads soon, paid search may be worth exploring. If people are already visiting your website but aren’t reaching out, improving the page or checking your tracking might come first. And if your business is difficult to find in organic search, SEO can help you work toward stronger visibility over time.
The goal is to make sure each part of your marketing is supporting the others—and that your team knows which work deserves attention first.
Not sure where to start? Let’s talk about what’s working, what isn’t, and where your marketing could use a little help.
