Now – picture this: you are a Perth business owner, and you are finally ready to get serious about online.

You’ve heard of SEO and Google Ads, but you’re sitting there staring at your budget, trying to figure out which rabbit hole to jump into. Sound familiar?

Here’s the thing: This isn’t about a choice between two marketing strategies.

It’s deciding between the quick pleasure or the lasting boost to building wealth. And honestly? Most companies are wrong on this decision because they are approaching it backwards.

This is always a struggle as we assist Perth companies to determine who to do their digital marketing; there are so many distractions and cross overs of strategies and providers.

Let me sweep aside the marketing fog and draw for you the straight-up truth on each approach and what each of them actually means for your business.

The True Distinction Between Google Ads and SEO

However, before we get into which one you should be doing first, let’s discuss what exactly these two tactics do for your business.

SEO is like buying property

It’s slow to acquire, it needs consistent maintenance, but when you own that digital real estate, it’ll continue creating new value even while you sleep. The catch? You could be waiting 3-6 months before getting any sort of meaningful results.

Both methods can generate targeted traffic to your site, but they are done in completely different manner. Google Ads puts you in charge of who sees your message, and when. SEO builds sustainable visibility that compounds over time.

Why Most Perth Businesses Choose Wrong

Here’s where most business owners screw it up. They consider this choice as if they were weighing up the option of a Toyota versus a Holden. But this is not at all what this is about.

The businesses that are failing online are those that choose one side and ignore the other. The companies that crush competitors and dominate their markets? They know that Google Ads and SEO are more effective together than they are separately.

But because you probably can’t afford to finance both strategies adequately at this point, let’s see which one makes sense for you to begin with.

When Google Ads Should Be Your First Move

If what I’ve just mentioned is your business then it’s no question that Google Ads is the place for you to start:

You want results yesterday: You’re absolutely desperate for new business, need cash flow immediately, or simply can’t afford to wait 3-6 months for your SEO to kick in.
You’ve got a proven sales system: Your niche converts well you just need to get more qualified eyeballs to your offer
Your industry is cutthroat: If you’re trying to outrank established competition organically, you may spend years trying; ads let you compete day one

You have a modest monthly budget (Effective campaigns for competitive markets can take $2,000-$5,000+ per month to get a foothold)

You have seasonal items or services you need to get out there: With Google Ads you can increase visibility during peak times and cut back during quieter periods

The advantage of Google Ads is the fastness and management. If you have the budget it’s possible to be on the first page of Google tomorrow morning. But here’s the part most business owners forget – success is not only in the ads.

For SLINKY, every client campaign that we’ve achieved success with (as is our all our client’s) has this one thing in common – that is, proper landing pages and conversion processes. Drive paid traffic to a trash website and you’re setting money on fire.

When SEO Should Be Your Priority

On the flip side, if these factors describe your situation better, you might want to start with SEO:

You’re playing the long game: Building a business for 10-20 years rather than quick cash; organic rankings become valuable assets
Your budget is limited but consistent: SEO typically starts around $800-$2,000 per month, much less than competitive Google Ads
You’re in a local service business: Plumbers, electricians, landscapers see fantastic results when people search “near me”
Your customers research before buying: High-consideration purchases like solar, renovations, professional services benefit from organic visibility throughout the research process
You have patience and realistic expectations: SEO requires thinking in quarterly timeframes, but results compound beautifully over time

SEO is the long game. So long as you continue to pay them, Google Ads continue to work, but those organic rankings pay off month after month. We’ve had businesses gaining 94% and even 645% more organic traffic results from our SEO services. But those benefits did not happen overnight – they came from months of strategic work.

The Hybrid Approach That Actually Works

Here’s what we’ve seen through experience: the best businesses are not choosing between Google Ads and SEO. They use a tactical mix of current wins and long-term returns.

Begin with Google Ads, funnel back into SEO: Create short-term cash flow, decrease ad spend gradually as organic rankings progress.
Use ads to test, optimise SEO: Paid advertising shows which keywords are converting for you and what messaging is working, so you can make your SEO more targeted
Focus on different customer journey stages: Google Ads for high-intent “ready to buy” searches, SEO for informational “still researching” searches

We will generally advise a joint approach like this to most Perth businesses that we believe have a decent budget. You enjoy the best of both worlds – instant exposure while creating long-lasting assets. And your ad campaigns give you data that make you that much smarter and more targeted with your SEO.

What This Means for Your Perth Business

The competitive landscape in Perth has changed dramatically over the past few years. Industries that were never particularly digital – like trades, professional services, and local retail – now find themselves competing online whether they like it or not.

If your competitors are already dominating search results, you need a strategy that can compete effectively. Sometimes that means starting with Google Ads to level the playing field while you build your organic presence. Other times, it means focusing on local SEO to capture customers in your immediate area.

The key is honest assessment of your situation. Don’t choose Google Ads just because you want quick results if you don’t have the budget to compete effectively. Don’t choose SEO just because it seems cheaper if you need results within the next few months to keep your business afloat.

Making the Decision: A Framework

We have a simple process we walk our clients through to help them make this call:

One tactic + need results in the next 3 months: Begin with Google Ads, but necessarily with a budget to bid aggressively and a plan to transition that effort into organic over time
Two strategies + can wait 6-12 months: The slow way—> Start by doing SEO (local SEO if you are a service business- -a broader SEO strategy for national reach)
Short Timelines and Budget: Divide 70/30, allocating the larger portion to the one that aligns with your timeframe constraints

Keep in mind, there’s no “right” decision here—just the decision that works for where your business is at this moment. The point is to begin with something instead of spending months toiling away while your competition surges ahead.

The Reality Check Nobody Gives You

Here’s the first thing most marketing agencies don’t come out and say straight up: If either Google Ads or SEO are mishandled both can fail spectacularly.

On the one hand, there are the clients who have leeched thousands of dollars away with Google ad campaigns. At the receiving end? Terrible landing pages that drive all traffic off without ever even looking at what you offer. On the other hand, you’ve got companies who spend months working on SEO strategies tailored to keywords their customers don’t really look for.

The strategy you pick is less important than how good it is. A successful Google Ads campaign will always outperform half-decent SEO, and equity versa. If company owner chooses the wrong one, he may spend much more money than he needs without getting acceptable In return from either camp.

From the start, our approach has always been about measurable results and transparency. Whether you go with Google Ads, SEO or a combination of the two, you have to focus on what actually matters: bringing people into your sales funnel and then making them customers. So the most important measures in our business are not just impressions and clicks but qualified leads, sales figures or ROI.

Your Next Steps

Stop overthinking this decision. Google Ads and SEO Both Google Ads and SEO are proven methods that can grow your business if done correctly. There is no “right” option — just the one that is right for where you are today in your universe.

If you’re not quite sure which of the two routes looks best for your Perth business, that’s precisely the type of discussion we find ourselves having with potential clients on a weekly basis.

Come in either end, and you’re likely to feel that a lot of it is not relevant to you, or is too general to be helpful: how to buy a home in your twenties, whether to buy a home, how to raise your credit score before you buy a home, and so on into the future in 10- to 15-year increments.

We’ve been helping businesses make these decisions for more than 20 years, and we’re pretty good at telling which end might look most tempting to you, based on your industry, budget and timeline.

What matters is to get started somewhere. Each month you sit there hemming and hawing over whether Google Ads or SEO is right for your business is another month your competition is building its brand online while you stall.

Ready to quit wondering and finally grow it? You can call us on (08) 6102 8944. We’ll get real about what strategy actually does (and doesn’t) make sense for your business—and more to the point, we’ll talk about how to do it right.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not really about the “right” strategy — it’s about the strategy that you can execute well enough to get traction.