You have $1,500 a month for marketing. Maybe $2,000 if things are good. You know you need to show up on Google. But every time you start researching, you get pulled in two directions: run Google Ads and get leads tomorrow, or invest in SEO and build something that lasts.
So which one gets your money first?
This is the question we hear more than any other from small business owners around Pittsburgh. The roofer in Robinson who just launched his own company. The dentist in Mt. Lebanon whose website hasn’t been touched since 2019. The landscaping crew out of Cranberry Township that crushes it from April to October but goes quiet every winter.
They all want the same thing: more calls, more jobs, more revenue. They just don’t know which lever to pull.
The 30-Second Version
Google Ads is a vending machine. Put money in, leads come out. Stop putting money in, no more leads.
SEO is a garden. Plant it, water it, wait. It takes months before you harvest anything. But once it’s growing, it keeps producing without paying per pick.
Neither one is “better.” They solve different problems at different speeds. The real question is which problem you have right now.
How Google Ads Actually Works (And What It Costs in Pittsburgh)
When someone searches “emergency plumber near me” at 2 AM with water pouring out of a burst pipe, the first things they see are ads. Google Ads puts you there. You pick the search terms, set your budget, write your ad, and you only pay when someone actually clicks.
The speed is the whole point. You can build a campaign before lunch and get a call by dinner.
But here’s what catches people off guard: the cost per click varies wildly depending on your industry. And in a market like Pittsburgh, competition sets the price.
Let’s do some quick math. Say you’re a Pittsburgh kitchen remodeler and clicks cost $25. You get 10 clicks a day at $250/day, that’s $7,500/month in ad spend. If 1 in 10 clicks calls you and 1 in 3 callers becomes a job, you’re getting about 10 new jobs a month. If your average kitchen remodel is $25,000, you just turned $7,500 into $250,000 in revenue.
That math is why Google Ads works. When the numbers make sense, they really make sense.
But when they don’t? You’re burning cash watching people click your ad and bounce off your website without calling. Usually because the landing page is bad, the targeting is too broad, or the budget is too thin to learn anything useful.
How SEO Actually Works (And Why It Takes So Long)
SEO gets your website into the organic results. The non-ad listings. The spots people actually trust.
When someone searches “best electrician in South Hills” and your website shows up on page one without you paying for that click, that’s SEO. And unlike ads, that click didn’t cost you a dime.
Sounds great. So why doesn’t everyone just do SEO?
Because it’s slow. Genuinely, painfully slow.
For a brand new website or a business that’s never invested in SEO, you’re looking at 4 to 8 months before you start seeing real movement. For competitive keywords, sometimes a year or more. During that time, you’re writing content, optimizing pages, building citations, managing your Google Business Profile, getting reviews, and improving your website’s technical health. All while the phone isn’t ringing any more than it was before.
That waiting period kills most small businesses’ patience. And honestly? That’s fair. If you need revenue this quarter, being told “check back in six months” isn’t helpful.
The other thing people get wrong: SEO isn’t free. You’re paying an agency, a freelancer, or you’re spending your own time. Content creation, technical fixes, link building, local citation management. That’s real work with real costs. The “free” part is that once you rank, the ongoing clicks don’t have a per-click fee. Your cost per lead drops every month you maintain those rankings.
A plumber we work with in the Strip District spent about $2,000/month on SEO for eight months before the real results kicked in. That’s $16,000 invested. Now he ranks in the top 3 for a dozen high-intent keywords across Pittsburgh and pulls in 30 to 40 organic leads per month. His effective cost per lead dropped below $10 and keeps falling. Try getting that from ads.
The Head-to-Head Comparison
Here’s where the two stand when you put them side by side:
| Factor | Google Ads | SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Speed to results | Days. Launch Monday, get calls Tuesday. | 4 to 8+ months for meaningful traffic. |
| Cost per lead (short-term) | Higher. Every click costs money. | Very high initially (you’re investing with no return yet). |
| Cost per lead (long-term) | Stays the same or increases as competition grows. | Drops dramatically over time as rankings stick. |
| Sustainability | Stops the day you stop paying. Zero residual. | Rankings fade slowly over months if you stop, not overnight. |
| Control | Total. You pick keywords, budgets, ad copy, schedule, geography. | Limited. You optimize and Google decides where you rank. |
| Predictability | High. You can estimate cost-per-lead within a couple weeks. | Low at first. Hard to predict which keywords you’ll win. |
| Trust factor | Lower. 70-80% of users skip ads entirely. | Higher. Organic results carry implicit credibility. |
| Scalability | Linear. Spend more, get more. Spend less, get less. | Exponential. One well-ranked page can drive leads for years. |
| Best for | Immediate leads, seasonal businesses, testing new markets. | Long-term pipeline, competitive markets, local dominance. |
| Risk | Wasted spend if poorly managed. Budget disappears fast. | Wasted time if strategy is wrong. Slow feedback loop. |
Neither column is all green. Neither is all red. That’s the whole point.
When Google Ads Should Get Your Money First
Your phone needs to ring this month. Not in six months. Not “eventually.” This month.
Maybe you just opened a new chiropractic office in Squirrel Hill. You have rent, staff, and equipment payments. You need patients walking through the door. SEO won’t save you right now, but a well-targeted Google Ads campaign for “chiropractor Squirrel Hill” can start sending people your way within a week.
Or maybe you’re a home services company and summer is your make-or-break season. You don’t have the luxury of waiting for organic rankings to build. You need to capture every “deck builder near me” search in the South Hills from May through August, and you need to do it now.
Google Ads also wins when you’re testing something. Thinking about offering a new service? Don’t invest months of SEO work into it. Run a $500 Google Ads test for 30 days. If nobody clicks or calls, you just saved yourself from a dead end. If the phone lights up, now you know it’s worth the long-term SEO investment.
The key question: Is one new customer worth significantly more than what you’ll spend to get them?
If your average job is worth $3,000 and it costs you $300 in ad spend to land it, that’s a 10x return. Run those ads all day long.
When SEO Should Get Your Money First
You’re not desperate for leads next week. You have enough work coming in through referrals, repeat customers, or other channels. But you know that relying on word-of-mouth alone isn’t a growth strategy, and you want to build something more predictable.
This is where SEO shines. You’re playing the long game.
Think about a family law attorney in Mt. Lebanon. Clicks for “divorce attorney Pittsburgh” might cost $60 to $100. If she’s spending $3,000/month on ads, that’s maybe 30 to 50 clicks and a handful of leads. But if she invests that same $3,000/month into SEO and after 6 months she’s ranking on page one? She’s getting those same clicks for free, month after month, for years.
Local SEO is especially powerful for service businesses in Pittsburgh. Ranking in the Google Map Pack, that three-pack of businesses that shows up with the map, is some of the most valuable real estate on the internet. When someone searches “plumber Carnegie PA” and you show up in that map pack with a 4.8-star rating and 200 reviews, you’re getting calls. No ad spend required.
The Real Answer: Both. But Sequenced.
You knew this was coming. And yeah, the best strategy is usually both. But “do both” isn’t helpful advice unless you know the order.
Here’s how it actually works for most Pittsburgh small businesses:
Months 1 through 3: Launch Google Ads to generate immediate leads. Use that revenue to fund your SEO investment. While ads are running, start the foundational SEO work: fix your website’s technical issues, set up your Google Business Profile properly, build out your service pages with real content, and start earning reviews.
Months 4 through 6: SEO work continues. Ads are still your primary lead source. You start to see early organic movement. Maybe you’re ranking on page 2 for a few keywords. Keep going.
Months 7 through 12: Organic traffic starts to climb. You’re showing up in the map pack for some searches. Leads are coming from both channels now. Start reducing ad spend on keywords where you rank organically. Shift that ad budget to new keywords or services where you don’t rank yet.
Month 12+: SEO handles your baseline lead flow. Google Ads becomes a surgical tool for seasonal pushes, new service launches, or geographic expansion. Your cost per lead has dropped significantly because you’re not paying for every single click anymore.
That “renting vs. owning” analogy gets thrown around a lot, and it’s accurate. But here’s what most people miss: smart businesses rent while they’re building equity. You don’t have to choose one forever. You phase from one into the other.
The Traps to Avoid
A few things that trip up small business owners every time.
Don’t spread your budget too thin across both. If you only have $1,500/month total, putting $750 toward ads and $750 toward SEO means you’re probably underfunding both. Better to go all-in on one, get it working, then layer in the other.
Be skeptical of guarantees. Nobody can guarantee you page-one rankings. Google’s algorithm considers hundreds of factors, and no agency controls it. Anyone promising “#1 on Google in 30 days” is either lying or using shortcuts that will eventually get your site penalized. Real SEO takes time. Period.
Track everything. If you can’t tell which leads came from ads and which came from organic search, you can’t make good decisions about where to spend. Call tracking, form attribution, and Google Analytics aren’t optional. They’re how you know what’s working.
So What Do You Do Monday Morning?
Forget the theory for a second. Here’s the practical decision tree.
Your business is new or you need leads immediately: Start with Google Ads. Set a real budget (minimum $1,000/month in ad spend for most Pittsburgh industries). Get a professional to set it up or invest serious time learning it yourself. Bad Google Ads campaigns are expensive in a hurry.
Your business is established and you can invest for 6+ months: Start with SEO. Get your website right, your Google Business Profile dialed in, and your content strategy mapped out. You’ll thank yourself a year from now.
You have $2,500+/month for marketing: Do both. Run ads for immediate leads while building your organic foundation. Phase the budget toward SEO over time as rankings grow.
You have less than $1,000/month: Focus entirely on free and low-cost tactics first. Optimize your Google Business Profile, ask every happy customer for a review, and create useful content on your website. Build the foundation before you start spending on ads.
The worst thing you can do is nothing. Every month you’re not showing up on Google is a month your competitors in Cranberry, in the South Hills, in Robinson are picking up the customers who should have been yours.
Figure out which problem you’re solving, short-term leads or long-term growth, and put your money there first. Then build toward both.
That’s how you win.