SEO vs Google Ads: Which Should a Local Business Invest in First?

The Short Answer

If you need leads this week, start with Google Ads. If you can invest 3 to 6 months before expecting real return, start with SEO. If your budget allows it, run both from day one. That's what we recommend to most of our clients, and it's what we'd do if we were starting a local business ourselves.

But "it depends" is a frustrating answer when you're trying to make a real decision with real money. So let's get specific about what each channel actually does, what it costs, and when each one makes sense, based on what we've seen work across 100+ local business campaigns in the Seattle metro.

What Each Channel Actually Does

SEO (search engine optimization) improves your organic rankings in Google. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "best remodeler in Seattle" and your website shows up without a sponsored tag, that's SEO. You don't pay Google for those clicks. You earn them through content, technical optimization, and authority building. It's slower. It's harder to measure in week one. But when it kicks in, it's the most cost-effective lead source most local businesses will ever have.

Google Ads puts your business at the top of search results through paid advertising. You bid on keywords, write ads, and pay every time someone clicks. The moment you turn on a campaign, you're visible. The moment you turn it off, you disappear. It's that simple, and that expensive if you're not managing it well.

Most business owners think of SEO as a marketing tactic. It's not. It's infrastructure. Every dollar you put into SEO compounds. Your rankings don't reset at the end of the month like an ad budget does. We have clients paying a fraction of what they paid in year one and getting three times the leads.

Dylan Axelson

SEO Director, Integrity Marketing

SEO vs Google Ads: A side-by-side comparison for local businesses

Side-by-Side Comparison

When to Start With SEO

SEO is the right first move when you're building a business for the long term and you can wait a few months for momentum to build. It's especially powerful for local businesses because of Google's local pack, the map results that show up at the top of local searches.

SEO makes sense when:

When to Start With Google Ads

Google Ads is the fastest path to leads. If you launched your business last month and need the phone to ring, this is where you start. There's no waiting period. You set a budget, target your keywords, and you're live.

The tradeoff is that every click costs money. A typical local service business might pay $8 to $35 per click depending on the industry. A plumber in Seattle might pay $25 per click. A therapist might pay $12. Those costs are real, and they don't go down over time the way SEO costs do relative to the traffic they produce.

But here's what Google Ads gives you that SEO can't: data, fast. Within the first 30 to 60 days, you'll know exactly which keywords drive calls, which ones waste money, and what your real cost per lead is. That intel is gold when you eventually invest in SEO because you're not guessing which keywords to target.

People underestimate how much you learn from running ads. Within 60 days I can tell you exactly what a lead costs in your industry, which services people actually search for, and which zip codes convert. That's not just ad data. That's a business intelligence report you can't get anywhere else.

Brock Olsen

Paid Media Strategist, Integrity Marketing

The Best Strategy: Run Both

The businesses that grow the fastest use both channels together. It's not SEO or Google Ads. It's SEO and Google Ads, phased strategically.

Here's how it typically works for our clients:

The best part about running both is the feedback loop. Brock's team finds a keyword converting at $40 a lead in Google Ads. I know that's a keyword worth building a landing page and content around for organic. Six months later that keyword ranks organically, Brock pulls the ad spend, and the client's getting those leads for free. That's how you win long-term.

Dylan Axelson

SEO Director, Integrity Marketing

How Your Industry Affects the Decision

The right mix depends heavily on what you do and who you're trying to reach.

Home services (contractors, roofers, plumbers, painters): These businesses tend to benefit most from starting with both. Google Ads captures high-intent searches like "emergency plumber Seattle" while SEO builds visibility for broader terms like "best plumber in Seattle" and local pack presence. The search volume is high and the leads are valuable, so investing in both channels early pays off fast.

Professional services (lawyers, therapists, accountants): SEO tends to be the stronger long-term play here because trust and credibility matter more. People research attorneys and therapists before making contact. Content marketing and strong organic presence build that trust. Google Ads works well for capturing immediate demand, but the real growth comes from ranking for informational and comparison keywords.

E-commerce and retail: Google Shopping ads are extremely effective for product-based businesses and should usually be part of the strategy from day one. SEO for e-commerce is a longer game but essential for category and product page visibility.

With home services, I can usually get a client profitable in the first 30 days on Google Ads because the search intent is so strong. Someone searching "emergency roof repair Seattle" isn't browsing. They need someone now. Those are $200-plus leads closing at 30 to 40 percent. The math works immediately.

Brock Olsen

Paid Media Strategist, Integrity Marketing

What About Your Website?

Here's the thing nobody wants to hear: neither SEO nor Google Ads will work well if your website can't convert visitors into leads. We see this constantly. Businesses spending $3,000 a month driving traffic to a site that loads slowly, looks outdated on mobile, or buries the phone number. You're basically paying to send people to a competitor.

Before you invest in either channel, make sure your site loads in under 3 seconds, works on every device, has clear calls to action above the fold, and makes it dead simple for someone to call or fill out a form. If your website is more than a few years old or was built by someone who wasn't thinking about conversions, fixing that first will multiply the return on everything else you do.

The Bottom Line

Stop thinking of this as SEO versus Google Ads. They're not competing strategies. They're two halves of the same system. Ads give you speed and data. SEO gives you compounding value and lower costs over time. The local businesses dominating search right now? Almost all of them are running both.

If you're forced to pick one, match the channel to your timeline. Need the phone to ring this month? Google Ads. Building something that lasts? SEO. Can swing both? That's the move.