SEO vs Google Ads: which is better for your business?

1. Urgency – if you need immediate results then Google ads is preferable because it has immediate impact. Turn the ads on and you can have leads that day. SEO can take anywhere from four weeks to 6 months to see rankings movement depending on the industry you’re in.
2. Speaking of industries that will also affect which service you opt for. Many industries like finance, crypto, insurance and even general traits like plumbing are extremely competitive. Given that Google ads is an auction model that means that the cost per click is expensive and your daily budget is consumed fast. By using Google’s free keyword planner, you can see the expected cost per click in your industry and you can make a judgement call from there. Hint: to really understand if Google ads is going to work, calculate the expected number of conversions by working out how many clicks your daily budget would give you, click a call rate and then call a conversion rate.
3. Nature of your industry. If reputation and authenticity are a big factor in whether people choose your type of product or service then SEO is preferable. For example, if you win the lottery and you need to invest $10 million you are much more likely to choose an organic listing because of the implied trust coming from a listing at the top of your organic results. You’re not going to just pick a Google ads advertiser because it was very easy for them just to appear at the top of the results and it was not through skill.

If your product or service offering has a compelling look or difference that jumps out of the page then Meta ads can outperform Google ads. For example, if you have extremely powerful imagery or videos which would appeal to people then Facebook and Instagram would be the right platform. Essentially if you have something which will “stop the scroll” then Meta ads would be worth considering. Having said that there is a lot of clutter out there in social media Marketing and we must remember that people don’t generally go to these platforms with a product or service in mind. They are there for social scrolling. Therefore, Google ads often have better return on investment for advertisers because its uses are there specifically to get products and services. Furthermore, it has great controls on the type of traffic and uses you can bring in by optimising keywords, audiences etc.

Here at Search Rescue we are big enough to have the resources and services to run a hyper efficient campaign but small enough to care and be agile. Generally speaking you get passed around between different staff members at big agencies with very little accountability. They are also slower to move and embrace new technology, in particular AI. Small agencies or sole traders will often have limitations in the amount of services they can offer and scalability. We sit right in between these two and provide the services and results that have gained us over 175 star reviews at Google.