The Question I Get Asked More Than Any Other
I have had this conversation a hundred times. A business owner sits across from me — or more often these days, joins a Zoom call — and asks some version of the same question: “Should I be doing Google Ads or SEO?” And my answer is almost always the same: it depends, but probably both, and the ratio changes over time.
That is not a cop-out. It is the truth. PPC and SEO are not competing strategies. They are different tools that solve different problems at different stages of your business. The mistake I see most often is business owners treating it like a binary choice, picking one, and then wondering why their marketing feels incomplete.
Let me break down when each one makes sense, when it does not, and how to think about splitting your budget in a way that actually builds your business over time.
What PPC and SEO Actually Do (No Jargon)
Before I get into strategy, let me level-set. If you are not totally clear on what SEO is, here is the short version: SEO is the work you do so your website shows up in Google's organic (unpaid) results when someone searches for what you offer. It takes time. It compounds. And when it works, you get traffic without paying per click.
PPC — pay-per-click — is advertising. You bid on keywords in Google Ads (or Bing, or social platforms), and you pay every time someone clicks your ad. It is immediate. You turn it on, you show up. You turn it off, you disappear.
Here is how I explain it to my clients:
- PPC is renting visibility. You pay for every visit. The moment you stop paying, the visits stop.
- SEO is building visibility. It takes longer, but the traffic you earn does not have a meter running.
Neither one is inherently better. They just work on different timelines and serve different purposes.
When PPC Is the Right Move
There are situations where PPC is clearly the better choice, at least in the short term. I am not anti-PPC. I am anti-wasting money on PPC when you do not have a strategy behind it.
You Need Leads Now
If you just opened a practice, launched a new service, or moved into a new market, you cannot wait six months for SEO to kick in. You need the phone to ring. PPC gets you in front of people who are searching for what you do, today. I have seen a new personal injury attorney in Chicago go from zero to fifteen qualified leads in the first month with a well-structured Google Ads campaign. That would never happen with SEO alone on that timeline.
You Are Testing a New Offer or Market
Before you invest thousands in building out content and optimizing for a new service area, it makes sense to validate demand. Run PPC for 60 to 90 days. See if the searches exist, if people click, if they convert. If the numbers work, then you know it is worth the longer SEO investment. If they do not, you just saved yourself a lot of time and money.
You Are in a Highly Competitive, High-Value Space
Some industries — personal injury law, roofing, plumbing in major metros — are so competitive in organic search that it can take a year or more to rank on page one. PPC lets you compete immediately while you build your organic presence in the background. The key is understanding that in these spaces, PPC costs are also high. You need tight targeting, strong landing pages, and actual conversion tracking. Otherwise you are just lighting money on fire.
Seasonal or Time-Sensitive Promotions
If you are an HVAC company and it is the first 95-degree week in Chicago, you want to be at the top of search results for “emergency AC repair” right now. Not in three months when your blog post ranks. PPC handles time-sensitive demand that SEO simply cannot respond to fast enough.
When SEO Is the Right Move
SEO is the long game. And I mean that as a compliment. In my experience, the businesses that commit to SEO consistently for 12 months or more end up in a fundamentally stronger position than those relying entirely on ads.
You Want to Reduce Your Cost Per Lead Over Time
This is the big one. With PPC, your cost per lead stays roughly the same (and often goes up as competition increases). With SEO, your cost per lead goes down over time because you are earning traffic you do not have to keep paying for. I have clients who spent $3,000 a month on PPC to generate 20 leads. After a year of SEO work, they are getting 30 to 40 leads organically and have cut their ad spend in half. That math is hard to argue with.
You Want to Build Authority and Trust
People trust organic results more than ads. That is not my opinion — Google's own data supports it, and I see it in the behavior of my clients' customers. When someone searches “best divorce lawyer in Chicago” and your firm shows up in the organic results AND the map pack, that carries more weight than an ad at the top. Building that kind of search engine optimization presence takes real work, but it signals credibility in a way ads never will.
You Want to Own Your Market Long-Term
If you are a home service business or a professional practice that is going to be around for the next ten or twenty years, SEO is how you build a moat around your market. When you rank for dozens or hundreds of relevant keywords, you are capturing demand across the entire buyer journey — from “do I need a new roof” to “best roofing company near me.” PPC only captures the people actively searching right now. SEO captures everyone, at every stage.
Your Content Can Work for You
If you are in an industry where people have questions — and every industry is — then content-driven SEO is one of the most efficient marketing investments you can make. A well-written, well-optimized page answering a common question can drive traffic for years. I have blog posts I wrote for clients three or four years ago that still generate leads every single month. Try getting that kind of return from a Google Ad.
The Biggest Mistakes I See Business Owners Make
After more than a decade doing this, I have seen the same mistakes over and over. Here are the ones that cost people the most money.
Mistake 1: Running PPC With No Tracking
I cannot tell you how many business owners I have talked to who are spending $2,000, $5,000, even $10,000 a month on Google Ads and cannot tell me how many leads they got from it. If you do not have conversion tracking set up — call tracking, form tracking, the works — you are flying blind. You might as well be guessing. And the agencies that let you run ads without proper tracking are either lazy or they do not want you to see the real numbers.
Mistake 2: Expecting SEO Results in 30 Days
SEO is not a switch. It is a process. If someone promises you page-one rankings in a month, they are either lying or they are targeting keywords nobody searches for. Realistic timelines for competitive terms in most local markets are three to six months to start seeing meaningful movement, and six to twelve months for strong, consistent results. If you are not willing to commit to that timeline, PPC is a better use of your money right now.
Mistake 3: Choosing One and Ignoring the Other Permanently
This is the most common and most expensive mistake. Some business owners go all-in on PPC because they want instant results and never build organic visibility. Five years later, they are still paying the same (or more) per lead and have zero equity in their online presence. Others go all-in on SEO, refuse to spend a dollar on ads, and starve for leads during the six to twelve months it takes to build traction. The right approach is almost always a blend that shifts over time.
Mistake 4: Letting an Agency Run Both Without Understanding the Strategy
You do not need to be an expert. But you should be able to answer basic questions about your own marketing: What keywords are you targeting? What is your cost per lead from ads? Which pages are driving organic traffic? If you cannot answer those, you are not in control of your marketing spend, and that is a dangerous place to be as a business owner.
How to Think About Budgeting Both
There is no universal budget split. Anyone who gives you a one-size-fits-all formula is making it up. But I can give you frameworks based on what I have seen work with real businesses.
If You Are Just Starting Out (Year 1)
Lean heavier into PPC — maybe 60 to 70 percent of your marketing budget — because you need leads now and your SEO has not had time to build. But allocate 30 to 40 percent to SEO from day one. Get your website right, start building content, get your Google Business Profile optimized. You are planting seeds that will pay off in year two and beyond.
If You Are Established but Have Never Done SEO (Year 1 of SEO)
You probably already have PPC running and generating leads. Keep it going, but carve out budget for SEO. In my experience, $1,500 to $3,000 per month is a reasonable starting point for a local business working with someone who knows what they are doing. As your organic traffic grows, you can start pulling back on ad spend selectively — reducing bids on keywords where you now rank well organically.
If You Have Been Doing SEO for 12+ Months and It Is Working
This is where the shift happens. You should be able to reduce PPC spend in areas where your organic rankings are strong and redirect that budget into either more SEO work (targeting new keywords, new locations, new content) or other marketing channels. I have had clients go from 70 percent PPC / 30 percent SEO to 30 percent PPC / 70 percent SEO over two years and see their total lead count go up while their overall spend goes down.
A Practical Rule of Thumb
If you are spending more than $3,000 a month on Google Ads and you are not investing anything in SEO, you are almost certainly leaving money on the table. At that spend level, diverting even $1,500 to $2,000 per month toward SEO will likely produce a better return within 12 months than spending that same money on more ads.
How PPC and SEO Work Together (This Is the Part Most People Miss)
The real power is when you use both channels strategically, together. Here is what that looks like in practice:
- Use PPC data to inform SEO. Your Google Ads account tells you exactly which keywords drive clicks, leads, and conversions. Use that data to prioritize your SEO targets. Why guess which keywords matter when you have real conversion data sitting right there?
- Use SEO to reduce PPC costs. When you rank organically for a keyword, you can lower your PPC bid on that same keyword or pause it entirely. You are still showing up — just not paying for every click.
- Dominate the search results page. When your business shows up in the ads, the organic results, AND the map pack, you take up real estate on that page. That builds trust and increases the likelihood someone clicks through to you instead of a competitor.
- Retarget organic visitors with PPC. Someone visits your site from an organic search but does not convert. You can retarget them with display ads or social ads to bring them back. That is PPC and SEO working as a system, not in silos.
What This Means for Your Business
If you take one thing from this, let it be this: PPC and SEO are not either/or. They are a portfolio. The right mix depends on where your business is right now, how competitive your market is, and what your budget looks like. But the direction of travel should almost always be the same — start with enough PPC to keep leads flowing, invest in SEO consistently, and shift the balance over time as your organic presence grows.
The business owners I work with who get this right end up in a fundamentally different position than their competitors. They have lower costs per lead, less dependence on ad platforms, and a marketing asset — their organic search presence — that they actually own.
If you are trying to figure out the right balance for your business, or if you are spending money on either channel and not sure what you are getting for it, I am happy to take a look. No pitch, no pressure — just an honest assessment of where you stand and what makes sense. Reach out here and we can talk through it.
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