Why I Tell Every New Client to Run Google Ads and SEO at the Same Time

This is the fourth and final piece in a series on Google Ads and SEO for Australian small businesses. Earlier in the cluster: when to start with Google Ads vs SEO, what the platforms won’t tell you about running Google Ads, and whether professional Google Ads management is worth it.

For over 25 years I’ve been telling new clients the same thing, and it still surprises people. If Google Ads and SEO are both a genuine fit for your business, you should be running them together from the start. Not sequenced, not one-then-the-other, not a “let’s see how Ads goes and then think about SEO in six months.” Together, from week one.

The most common question I hear from Australian SMB owners in their first conversation with us is some version of: “Should I start with Google Ads or SEO?” And I get why the question exists. Most agencies frame it as a choice. Most industry content treats it as an either/or debate. Even our own recent article on when to start with each channel is framed as a comparison, because that’s the question SMBs actually ask.

But the honest answer, after 25 years of running campaigns across every industry you can think of, is that the question itself is the wrong frame. For the majority of Australian SMBs where both channels are a genuine fit, running them together from day one produces better results than running either one alone, and better results than running them sequentially.

Let me be clear about why.

Each channel does something the other genuinely can’t

Start with what each channel actually offers, because the two aren’t interchangeable.

Google Ads gives you visibility from day one. You set up the account properly, you launch the campaigns, and within 24 hours you’re showing up in search results for the terms you’re bidding on. If someone’s searching for “emergency plumber Parramatta” at 2 am on a Tuesday, and you’re running Ads properly, you’re in the auction. That immediacy is genuinely valuable, especially for businesses where the sales cycle is short, and the search intent is high.

But Ads only works while you’re paying. Turn off the campaign, and visibility disappears the moment you do. It’s rented visibility, not owned visibility. And every click you generate goes to a landing page and then evaporates. No compounding, no long-term signal to Google that your business belongs at the top of the results.

SEO does the opposite thing. It builds slowly. It takes months to see meaningful movement, sometimes six months to a year for competitive terms. Nothing about SEO is fast. But once you rank organically for the terms your customers search with, that visibility keeps generating traffic for years, and every piece of content you publish, every backlink you earn, every technical improvement you make, compounds. The gap between month one and month twelve isn’t linear. It’s exponential.

Neither channel replaces the other. Ads give you today. SEO gives you the next five years. Running one without the other means you’re either buying visibility you’ll never own, or building visibility that won’t help you for months.

What happens when they run together

This is where the argument gets interesting, and where most SMBs I’ve spoken to over the years have never had it properly explained to them.

Typically, when people think about running Ads and SEO together, they think about it additively. You get some Ads traffic. You get some SEO traffic. Together, you get both. Which is true, but understates what actually happens.

The real story is that each channel makes the other work harder.

Brand recall from organic rankings makes your Ad clicks more likely.

When someone sees your business listed at the top of the organic results, and then sees your Ad above it, the second listing carries more weight than an unfamiliar business would. Research supports this, but you don’t need it to understand it. If a search returns two businesses you’ve never heard of and one business you recognise, you’re more likely to click the recognisable one. SEO builds that recognition. Ads then convert it faster.

Landing pages built for Ads improve your SEO signals.

A properly optimised Ads landing page loads fast, matches user intent tightly, and converts well. All three are organic search ranking factors. The work you do for Ads campaigns generally improves the site’s overall SEO performance, even for pages not directly targeted by Ads.

Search Console data from SEO helps Ads targeting.

The impressions data in Search Console shows you which search terms Google is already matching your site against, including terms you didn’t specifically target. Some of those terms are ones your Ads campaigns should be bidding on but aren’t. Feeding Search Console data into Ads keyword research reliably surfaces opportunities that pure keyword tools miss.

Ads data on what converts helps SEO prioritisation.

Google Ads tells you in real time which keywords generate qualified leads and which don’t. That means when you’re deciding what SEO content to prioritise, you have live conversion data showing which terms are worth chasing organically. You’re not guessing. You’re prioritising against evidence.

Add these four effects together, and the combined outcome is meaningfully bigger than running the two channels separately. I’ve watched it play out consistently across every industry I’ve worked in over the last 25+ years, and the pattern doesn’t change.

The metaphor that finally landed for me

A metaphor I’ve used for years with clients who push back on this is the tree-and-shop framing. It’s a common way to think about the SEO vs. Ads trade-off, and it lands where the numbers often don’t.

Running SEO without Ads is like planting a tree and waiting for it to grow before you can eat any fruit. Which works, but you’re hungry the whole time. Running Ads without SEO is like buying fruit from the shop every day forever. Which works, but you never own the tree. Running them together means you’re eating from the shop while your tree grows, and by the time the tree is producing, you can start buying less from the shop.

Most SMB owners I’ve explained it to have stopped fighting the recommendation after hearing it framed that way.

The honest cases where the combined approach isn’t right

I want to be fair about this, because the combined approach isn’t universally correct. Even after 25 years of arguing for it, there are cases where I’d tell a client to focus on just one channel.

If your total monthly marketing budget is under $500, running both channels properly is difficult. Ad spend needs to be meaningful to generate learning data, and SEO investment needs to be sustained to see results. If you split it too thin, both channels underperform. In that situation, I usually recommend focusing on SEO and Google Business Profile optimisation first, then adding Ads once the budget can support both.

If your business genuinely doesn’t get customers through search, neither channel will help you. Some businesses run almost entirely on referrals, tenders, or existing relationships. Search isn’t their channel. In that case, running Ads and SEO together just means burning money in two directions instead of one.

And if your website isn’t converting the organic traffic it already gets, adding paid traffic won’t fix that problem. Landing page and site work usually needs to happen first, before either channel is worth investing in seriously.

But outside those cases, and most SMBs I speak to aren’t in those cases, the combined approach is what I recommend. And I recommend it from day one, not as a phase two.

What running them together actually looks like practically

The reason most SMB owners resist the combined approach isn’t philosophical. It’s practical. They think running both channels means twice the work, twice the cost, and twice the complexity. Which is a reasonable assumption if you’ve never seen it done properly.

In practice, running both channels together is closer to 1.5x the work of running one, not 2x. The keyword research feeds both. The landing pages built for Ads become the pages SEO targets. The reporting covers both channels in a single monthly review. The account manager handles both, not two separate people. The overlap in tools and workflow is significant.

Cost-wise, the answer depends on the business. For an accountant I’ve worked with for years, the total combined spend across Ads and SEO is less than what many of their peers spend on Ads alone, because the SEO reduces their dependence on paid clicks over time. For a cafe just getting started, the combined spend is higher in the first year than either channel alone, but compounding SEO returns mean the cost per lead drops steadily from year two onward.

The right frame isn’t “can I afford to run both?” It’s “over three years, which approach generates more qualified leads for the total investment?” And in almost every case where both channels are a genuine fit, the answer is running both together.

Why I lead with this conversation

There’s a version of the SEO agency business where you sell each service separately. Ads is one product. SEO is another. Website work is a third. You quote them individually, you sign the client to one, and if they later decide they want another, you upsell them into it.

That’s not how we run things at SFSBA, and this article is part of why. If I know from the first conversation with a new client that the combined approach will serve their business better, telling them to start with just one channel isn’t good service. It sets them up to underperform in the first year and then rebuild their strategy from scratch when they realise the other channel was always needed.

The honest framing at the start saves the client time, saves the agency the awkward conversation later, and delivers better results faster. Which is what the client is actually paying us for.

The honest summary

For most Australian SMBs where search is a genuine channel for finding customers, Google Ads and SEO belong together from day one. Not one then the other. Not “let’s see how Ads goes first.” Together.

Ads gives you the visibility you need today. SEO builds the visibility you’ll own for the next five years. And when they run together, each channel makes the other work harder, which is where the real leverage sits.

The exceptions are real. Very small budgets, businesses where search isn’t the right channel, and websites that need work before paid traffic is sensible are all honest reasons to focus on just one channel or hold off entirely. But outside those cases, over 25 years of running SMB campaigns have taught me the combined approach is the right answer.

If you’ve been running just one channel and wondering whether adding the other is worth it, the answer is almost certainly yes. And the sooner you add it, the sooner the compounding starts.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can’t I just start with Google Ads and add SEO later once I know it’s working?

You can, and plenty of SMBs do. But the SEO you add in month twelve is starting from zero, which means you’re still 6-12 months away from meaningful organic results even after you start. If you’d added SEO alongside Ads from day one, you’d be reaching that point at month twelve rather than month twenty-four. The delay costs you at least a year of compounding organic returns you can’t get back.

2. What’s the minimum budget for running Google Ads and SEO together properly?

Genuinely depends on the business and the market you’re competing in. As a very rough guide, most Australian SMBs where the combined approach makes sense spend between $1,500 and $5,000 per month across both channels, with the split weighted by how competitive their search terms are and how quickly they need results. Under $1,500 combined, the maths gets harder. Under $500, focus on SEO first.

3. If I’m running both channels, does my agency need to be doing both?

Ideally, yes, because the leverage effects between the two channels only fully materialise when the same team manages both. Running Ads with one agency and SEO with another means the data doesn’t flow between them, the strategy isn’t coordinated, and neither team has full visibility into what’s driving results. It can work, but it works less well than one team handling both.

4. How long before I see the combined approach paying off compared to running just one channel?

Ads results are immediate; you’re generating leads within the first month. SEO results start becoming visible around months three to six and reach meaningful scale by month twelve. The combined leverage effects (Ads clicks converting better because of organic brand recall, SEO priorities informed by Ads conversion data) start showing up around month six and compound from there. By month twelve, you should be seeing measurably better results per dollar than a single-channel approach would have produced.