The difference in one table
| Google Ads | SEO and your profile | |
|---|---|---|
| How fast | Days | Weeks to months |
| Cost | Every click, plus management | Time or a monthly fee, no cost per click |
| When you stop | Calls stop | Rankings fade slowly |
| Control | High: pick searches, areas, hours | Lower: Google decides |
Start with ads if
- You need jobs in the next few weeks.
- You're new and have no reviews or rankings yet.
- You want to test which jobs and suburbs are worth chasing before committing to SEO.
- Your trade has high-value jobs where one call pays for a month of clicks.
Start with your profile and SEO if
- You can wait a couple of months.
- Your budget is tight and every click would hurt.
- Your Business Profile is half finished. Fixing it is the cheapest win there is.
- Your trade's clicks are expensive in your area.
Running both
The strongest setup is both. Ads cover the searches you don't rank for yet. As your profile and site climb, you can pull ad spend back from searches you now win for free and move it to the next gap.
What both need
Call tracking, a page for each job, reviews, and a phone that gets answered. Without those, neither works as well as it should.
Want it run for you? Our Google Ads management is built around tracked calls, not clicks.