Should I do SEO or ads?

Owners usually ask this when budget is limited and they suspect one of the two is wasting money. The honest answer is that they are not rivals. They solve different problems on different timescales, and the choice is mostly about which problem you have first and how long you can wait for the slower one to pay back.

What does each one actually do?

It helps to separate three things that often get lumped together.

• Social ads on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok put your business in front of people who were not looking for you. They create demand: someone who had vaguely meant to redo the kitchen sees yours and enquires.
• Search ads, such as Google Ads, appear when someone searches for the service. They capture demand that already exists, and you pay when someone clicks.
• SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of making your website rank in the free, organic results for the searches your buyers make. It also captures existing demand, without paying per click, but it takes time to build.

There is now a fourth place buyers look. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews answer "who should I hire?" questions by searching the web and summarising what they find. Visibility there is built on the same foundations as SEO, which the guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT covers in detail.

Ads rent attention and stop the day you stop paying. SEO builds visibility you own and keeps working without a daily budget, but it is slow to start.

When should you start with ads?

Start with ads when speed matters more than cost over the long run:

• You need enquiries this month. A well-built campaign can start producing enquiries within weeks of launch. SEO usually cannot.
• Buyers do not search for what you sell. If people would not think to search for a bespoke wardrobe until they see one, search has little demand to capture, and social ads create it.
• You want to test an offer. Ads tell you within weeks whether "free design visit" or "fixed-price quote in 48 hours" brings more enquiries. SEO would take months to answer the same question.
• You are launching something new. A new service, a new area, a new showroom. Nobody is searching for it yet.

Ads only work if the basics are right: the right campaign objective, tracking that lets the platform see each enquiry, and a page built to convert. The main guide to ads that bring enquiries covers all three, and the guide to what a lead should cost helps you set a budget you can justify.

When should you start with SEO?

Lean towards SEO first when:

• Buyers already search for your service by name and place. "Accountant in Harrogate", "emergency roofer Leeds". The demand exists; you are just not in front of it.
• You can wait three to six months for movement. That is the typical range for new pages to rank, though it depends on competition and the state of your site. The guide to how long SEO takes explains what moves it.
• Your margins cannot carry a steady ad budget. Organic enquiries have a cost, the work to earn them, but no cost per click.
• Your website has basic problems. A slow site that does not say clearly what you do will waste ad money too. Fixing it first helps every channel.

If you are not sure whether search demand exists for your service, Google Search Console shows which searches your site already appears for, even if it ranks poorly. The guide to Search Console for business owners shows where to look.

How do ads and SEO make each other cheaper?

Run together, each one feeds the other in ways that are easy to miss when they are handled by different suppliers.

1. Ads find the message; SEO publishes it. The ad headline that brings the cheapest enquiries is a strong candidate for a service page title and opening line, because it has been tested on real buyers.
2. SEO pages become better landing pages. A detailed service page with prices, process and reviews often converts ad traffic well, and the guide to landing pages for paid ads covers what to add or remove.
3. Retargeting catches organic visitors. With the Meta Pixel installed, you can build a website Custom Audience of people who visited your service pages, from Google or anywhere else, and show them an ad if they left without enquiring.
4. Ads build the signals search values. People who see your ads later search your name, leave reviews after a job, and mention you. Those do help your visibility in Google and in AI answers, even though ad spend itself is not a ranking factor.
5. Organic enquiries lower your blended cost. As search brings more enquiries without a click cost, your average cost per job across all channels falls, and the ads budget can drop or move to growth.

How should you split the budget?

There is no correct percentage, and anyone quoting one without knowing your margins and your market is guessing. A sounder way to decide is to work from what each part needs.

• Ads: start from the number of jobs you want, your close rate and your maximum cost per lead. If you want three jobs a month, win one enquiry in ten, and can afford £150 a lead, the ads need to bring about thirty enquiries, which is roughly £4,500 of spend at that ceiling. If that is more than you can carry, aim for fewer jobs from ads and let other channels do more.
• SEO: budget a steady amount of work every month, such as a set number of new pages, rather than a lump sum. SEO pays back through consistency over quarters, not bursts.
• The website: if it is slow or unclear, fix that before scaling either. Both channels send people there.

Review the split each quarter using the enquiry log. Move money towards whichever is producing jobs at the lower cost, while remembering that SEO's cost per job usually falls over time and ads' does not.

How do you compare them fairly?

Compare them on the same terms: cost per genuine enquiry and cost per job won, by source. Traffic, impressions and click-through rates measure activity, not business.

That needs three habits. Log every enquiry with its source. Ask every new enquirer how they found you, because people who saw an ad often search your name later, and the last click does not tell the whole story. And check Search Console monthly for the searches your service pages appear for, so you can see SEO building before it shows up as enquiries.

Running both well means someone has to look at all of it together. M/AFZAL's Growth Partner retainer is built that way, with ads, new SEO pages, an AI visibility check and one monthly report on leads and cost per lead; the details are on the packages page. If you would rather split the work between suppliers, insist that they report on the same enquiry log, so neither can claim the other's results.