Start With SEO Before Spending Heavily on Google Ads
When you’re building a new business, every pound you spend on marketing matters. Google Ads and other pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can generate traffic quickly, but they can also become expensive—particularly when you’re still learning which services, keywords and offers actually generate profitable customers.
That’s why it can make sense for many small businesses to start by building a strong SEO foundation before committing significant money to PPC advertising.
Build Your Organic Presence First
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is about improving your website so that potential customers can discover your business naturally through Google and other search engines.
Instead of paying for every click, you’re investing in assets that can continue working for your business: useful service pages, local landing pages, helpful content, technical improvements and a stronger reputation online.
SEO isn’t instant. It can take months to achieve meaningful rankings, particularly in competitive markets. But the work you do today can potentially continue generating enquiries long after it was completed.
Learn What Actually Generates Sales
One of the biggest advantages of developing your website and SEO first is that you begin collecting valuable information.
Which services attract enquiries? Which pages convert visitors into customers? What search terms are relevant? Which offers actually produce profitable sales?
Once you understand these things, you’re in a much stronger position to spend money on advertising.
Instead of paying for traffic and hoping it converts, you can build PPC campaigns around products and services that have already demonstrated demand.
Get the Business Profitable, Then Accelerate
A sensible progression could look like this:
SEO → Traffic → Enquiries → Regular Sales → Profit → PPC Investment → Growth
Once your business is generating regular sales and making a sustainable profit, you can reinvest some of that profit into Google Ads.
At this stage, PPC becomes less about desperately trying to create your first customers and more about accelerating something that already works.
SEO and PPC Can Eventually Work Together
This doesn’t mean Google Ads is bad or that every business must wait before advertising. PPC can be extremely effective, and some businesses benefit from using it from day one.
The important issue is economics.
If you know that spending £100 on advertising reliably generates £500 of profitable business, increasing your advertising budget becomes much easier to justify. If you don’t yet understand your conversion rate or customer value, however, an expensive advertising campaign can quickly consume a startup’s limited marketing budget.
A mature digital marketing strategy can therefore use both channels:
- SEO to develop sustainable organic visibility and reduce dependence on paid traffic.
- PPC to generate immediate targeted traffic, test opportunities and scale profitable services.
Build the Engine Before Buying More Fuel
For a small business with a limited budget, SEO can provide the foundation.
Build a professional website. Optimise it for the searches your customers make. Create useful content. Improve your Google visibility. Track enquiries and sales. Work out which parts of the business are genuinely profitable.
Then, when the business is producing regular revenue, consider reinvesting some of those profits into PPC.
SEO builds the engine. PPC can help you put your foot on the accelerator.
