Should Your Small Business Invest in SEO or Google Ads First?

Oct 20

5 min read

You want more of the right customers finding your business. You’ve heard SEO can help. You’ve also heard Google Ads can get you in front of people faster.

Both require an investment. So which deserves your attention first?

I’d generally prioritize SEO when your business can support a longer development period and needs a stronger search presence. I’d consider Google Search Ads first when you need nearer-term opportunities, have a clear service to promote, and can fund a measured test.

But before either, I’d check your website and follow-up process. Paying to send people to a confusing page with a broken contact form is an expensive way to discover a broken contact form.

Here’s how I’d make the decision.

Understand What You’re Investing In

SEO involves improving your website so search engines can understand it and people can find useful, relevant information through unpaid search results.

Google Search Ads let you bid for opportunities to show advertisements when people search. For this comparison, I’m focusing on Search campaigns rather than every advertising format Google offers.

Google’s explanation of SEO and pay-per-click advertising makes an important distinction: buying ads doesn’t improve your organic search rankings. These are separate ways to reach potential customers.

SEO doesn’t carry a charge for each organic click, but the research, writing, website improvements, and ongoing work still cost time or money.

With ads, account for both advertising spend and the work required to manage the campaign and improve its landing page.

Neither channel comes with complimentary customers.

Consider SEO First When You Have Room To Build

SEO may deserve the larger share of your attention when referrals already keep you reasonably busy, but your online presence doesn’t reflect the quality of your business.

Maybe you’re an established contractor with excellent project photos, yet your website has one general services page and barely explains what you handle. You have useful material to work with, but prospective customers aren’t getting enough information.

I’d consider investing in clearer service pages, genuine project examples, a useful site structure, and accurate business information.

For local search, your Google Business Profile also deserves attention. Google’s local ranking guidance identifies relevance, distance, and prominence as the main considerations. Improving information and credibility can help, but you can’t control your distance from every searcher.

This approach makes sense when you can keep operating while the work develops.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide explains that changes may take anywhere from hours to several months to affect search results, and some changes won’t produce a noticeable impact. That isn’t a timetable for booked jobs.

My advice: choose SEO because the underlying improvements support your business and you can give them time, not because someone promised next month’s calendar will fill itself.

Consider Google Ads First When The Opportunity Is Specific

Search Ads may be a sensible starting point when you have capacity available and a clearly defined service you want to promote.

Imagine a painting company that wants more interior painting estimates within a manageable service area. It has a strong service page, genuine work photos, a working inquiry form, and someone available to respond.

That’s a more useful starting point than “we need more business.”

Before launching, I’d want answers to four questions:

What service are we promoting? Pick something specific enough to explain clearly.
Where can we profitably deliver it? Use the actual service area.
What should someone do after clicking? Call, request an estimate, or complete another meaningful action.
What makes an inquiry worth pursuing? Define project fit before evaluating results.

Paid search can provide a faster route to visibility than waiting for organic improvements, as Google’s comparison of the two approaches explains.

That speed still doesn’t guarantee profitable leads.

You need a budget you can commit to learning from, clear spending limits, and a plan for reviewing the quality of the inquiries.

If every advertising dollar must immediately return enough cash to cover tomorrow’s bills, I wouldn’t treat an untested campaign as a dependable rescue plan.

Fix The Shared Foundation Before Increasing Traffic

Both channels eventually ask a person to evaluate your business.

That means some improvements deserve attention regardless of which channel comes first.

Open the page you’d send customers to and check:

Does it clearly explain the service being offered?
Can visitors confirm you serve their location?
Are there credible photos or other relevant evidence?
Is the next step easy to find on a phone?
Do calls and form submissions reach the right person?
Can your business respond and handle the work?

A homeowner searching for deck repair shouldn’t have to search your website again to discover whether you repair decks.

I’d also check whether your message matches your capacity. Promoting emergency availability when nobody can answer promptly creates a problem that better targeting won’t fix.

These are practical business checks. You don’t need to wait for a full redesign to address an obvious obstacle.

Compare Channels Using The Same Business Outcomes

It’s easy to compare an SEO traffic report with an advertising lead report and draw the wrong conclusion. They’re measuring different things.

For either channel, I’d track the path from inquiry to business outcome:

Legitimate inquiry → suitable project → estimate → booked work.

Keep a simple record of the requested service, location, source when known, and outcome.

Then compare the total investment with the work it helped produce. Include management fees, advertising spend, and relevant website or content expenses.

A lower cost per inquiry isn’t automatically better if those inquiries mostly concern services you don’t provide. Likewise, increased organic traffic isn’t enough if it comes from people outside your market.

Agree on what success means before the reports arrive. It makes those conversations considerably more useful.

You Can Choose a Sequence Without Choosing Forever

For many small businesses, I’d recommend one primary investment while maintaining the basics of the other.

Your situation	Where I’d start
Steady referral work, weak service pages, time to develop visibility	Website and SEO improvements
Clear offer, available capacity, strong landing page, test budget	A focused Search Ads test
Broken forms, unclear services, slow follow-up	Fix the customer experience first
Both channels already produce suitable inquiries	Compare booked work and total costs before reallocating

These are starting points, not universal rules. Competition, local demand, project value, and your current website all affect the decision.

At Matt Davis Marketing, this is where Diagnose, Build, Refine earns its place. Diagnose the gap, build what the business needs, then refine the investment using actual customer outcomes.