Do I Need Google Ads to Get Found, or Is SEO Enough?

The short answer is that for most local trades, search is the better long term investment and ads are a tool for specific situations rather than a permanent cost. But that answer changes depending on your trade, and getting it wrong is expensive in both directions.

This is how the two actually differ, when each wins, and the case where spending on ads is straightforwardly a mistake.

What you are actually buying

With Google Ads you buy a position at the top of the results, immediately, for as long as you keep paying. You are charged per click, whether or not that click ever rings you.

With search work you earn a position underneath, slowly, by having a site and a listing Google can trust. It takes weeks to months, and once it is there it keeps working without further payment.

One is rent and one is a purchase, which is the same distinction that runs through most decisions in this business.

The case for ads

• They work this afternoon. Nothing else in search does.
• You can point them precisely. One town, one service, the hours you actually answer the phone.
• The numbers are visible. Spend, clicks, calls. You can work out what an enquiry cost you, which you cannot easily do with a recommendation.
• They cover you while the slow work lands. A brand new business with no reviews and no rankings is invisible, and ads are the only way to be seen in month one.

The case against

• It stops when you stop. Pause the spend and you are invisible again the same day.
• Clicks are not enquiries. You pay for every misdial, every competitor checking, every person who wanted a different town.
• Some trades are genuinely expensive. Emergency plumbing and anything with a high job value can run to several pounds a click, and a handful of wasted clicks is real money.
• It is a job, not a setting. Ads left alone drift and waste money. Ads managed properly cost either your evenings or somebody's fee.

The map block, which is neither

There is a third result that people forget, and for local trades it is frequently the most valuable. The map block with three businesses and a pin sits above the ordinary results and, on a phone, often above everything but the ads.

It is free. It is driven by your Google Business Profile and your reviews. Most trades have never finished theirs. Before anybody spends a pound on advertising they should spend an afternoon on this, because it is the best return available to a local business and it costs nothing but the afternoon.

When ads are the right answer

1. You are brand new. No reviews, no rankings, no recommendations. Ads buy visibility while the rest builds.
2. The work is urgent by nature. Emergency callouts, lockouts, leaks. Those people click the first thing and do not scroll.
3. You have genuine spare capacity and a job is worth a lot. If one job is worth four figures, a hundred pounds of clicks to win one is an easy decision.
4. It is seasonal. Gutter clearing in October, gritting in December. Turn it on for the window and off again.

When search work is the right answer

1. You are established and want to stop paying for something you could own.
2. Your customers research before they choose. Kitchens, extensions, anything where somebody looks at four websites before ringing one.
3. Your trade is competitive on ads but thin on decent websites, which describes a surprising number of local trades.
4. You want it to keep working when money is tight. That is exactly when ads get switched off and exactly when you need the work.

How we would actually sequence it

For a typical local trade, in order:

1. Finish the Google Business Profile. Free, an afternoon, moves the block that sits highest.
2. Start collecting reviews properly and reply to all of them. Free, ongoing.
3. Get a site with a real page per service and honest pages for the areas you cover.
4. Make sure it is quick on a phone and the number is tappable on every page.
5. Then, if you still want more work or you need it faster, run ads on your two most profitable services only, in the towns you actually want, during the hours you answer the phone.

Doing five before one to four is the most common way small businesses waste money on marketing, and it is completely avoidable.

Where we sit

We build the site and set up the Google Business Profile alongside it, because those are the parts that keep working. We do not run ad campaigns, and we are not going to pretend to be an advertising agency to keep a conversation going. If ads are what you need, you need somebody who does that properly.

Builds are £395, £650 or £1,200, paid once, and you own the site. A build can be split into three payments, same price, no interest and no fees, within twelve months. Care plans are £45, £85 or £150 a month with no minimum term.

And you see the site before you pay for it. We build a real working preview in 48 hours, and if it is not right you say so and there is no cost and no chase.

Common questions

Written by Salvo Della Gana, co-founder of SH Studios. He writes the code behind every SH Studios site and keeps the live ones running.