Six signs SEO is the wrong spend right now
SEO is probably not your best spend right now if any of these sound like you:
- You need customers this month, not in six months
- You are brand new and still working out what you sell
- You are already as busy as you want to be
- Your jobs are small and one of them would not cover a few hours of work
- Almost nobody searches for what you do
- You already own the top of the page for your town
If none of those fit, SEO is probably worth a conversation. The rest of this page is why, and what to do instead if one of them does fit.
Does your trade actually earn money in your town?
Here is a rough test that works better than it should.
Think about an established business in your industry, in your town. Not a national chain. A real local one that has been going a while. Roughly what does it turn over in a year?
If the answer is comfortably into the hundreds of thousands, that money came from somewhere. People needed the service, went looking, and found somebody. The demand is real. And a share of it is being decided on Google right now, by people who do not know any of the names yet.
If the honest answer is that nobody in your trade around here makes much, that is worth listening to. It usually means one of two things: there is not much demand locally, or the demand is not decided by searching. Neither is a problem SEO fixes.
That is why we say around half a million a year in revenue is usually the turning point. Not because of the size of the business. Because a business that size proves the demand is there to be won.
Need work this month? Do these four things instead
SEO is slow. On the thirteen accounts we measured, rankings moved in a few months and the visits followed after that. If your calendar is empty in three weeks, that timeline does not help you.
What works faster:
- Your Google Business Profile. It is free, it is the map result people actually tap, and most profiles are half set up. This is the single fastest thing most local businesses can fix
- Google Ads or Local Services Ads. You pay for each click or lead, and they start the day you turn them on. Expensive per job, but immediate
- Asking the customers you already have. A direct ask, to people who liked the work, outperforms almost any marketing spend and costs nothing
- Answering faster. Most trades take days to return an inquiry. Answering in minutes wins work that is already coming to you
None of that is a reason to skip SEO forever. It is a reason to fix the fast things first and start the slow thing alongside them.
Brand new business: fix these first
A business in its first year is still finding out what it sells, who buys it, and what to charge. SEO built around the wrong answer to those questions is money spent pointing at the wrong door.
Get a simple site up that says clearly what you do and how to reach you. Claim the Google Business Profile. Then go and get customers however you can - referrals, networking, knocking on doors, the phone.
Come back to SEO when you know which of your services actually sells. That knowledge is what the work gets built on, and you cannot buy it in advance.
The next three sections are the long version of that. This is where most first-time owners lose money. What shape your business really is. What ads are genuinely good for. And why the cheapest option open to you is also the slowest.
Work out how your business actually makes money
This sounds obvious. It is the thing first-time owners skip, and it decides which kind of marketing is worth buying.
Most local businesses fall into one of three rough shapes, and they do not get customers the same way.
- People come looking when something goes wrong
- Plumbers, roofers, locksmiths, dentists, tow trucks. Nobody wants you until they need you, and then they need you today. They open Google and pick from what is there. Search is where these customers are.
- People buy because somebody vouched for you
- Contractors on larger jobs, accountants, lawyers, consultants, anything business-to-business. The customer is choosing who to trust with something that matters. They ask around before they search. Referrals beat search here, usually by a lot.
- People buy on habit or impulse
- Coffee shops, restaurants, retail, salons. The decision is small and made near where they already are. Being findable on the map and having good photos matters more than ranking for anything.
Most businesses are mostly one of these with a bit of the others. Work out which one is mostly you, and you have already narrowed down where your money should go.
Then two more numbers. What is one customer worth to you, and do they come back? A roofer earns thousands once. A hairdresser earns forty dollars forty times. Both work fine. But they can afford very different things to win a customer. Owners who skip that sum tend to overspend on the wrong channel.
Ads: expensive per job, and the fastest way to learn
Google Ads and Local Services Ads put you at the top of the page today. You pay for each click, or each lead. Turn them off and they stop the same afternoon.
Per job they usually cost more than SEO does once SEO is working. That is the honest trade: you are renting the top of the page instead of earning it.
But for a brand new business, ads do something SEO cannot, and it is worth more than the leads.
They tell you what people actually search for, and what those searches are worth. Within a couple of months you will know three things. Which of your services people look for. What a click costs in your town. And which inquiries turn into real work. That is real information about your own market, bought quickly.
Most new owners guess at that and guess wrong. They build a whole website around the service they like doing, and the calls come in for something else entirely.
So there is a sensible order for a lot of new businesses. Run ads for a few months and watch what happens. Then build the SEO around whatever actually earned money. You will be building on evidence instead of a hunch, and the SEO gets cheaper because it is aimed at the right thing.
Networking: borrowing trust you have not earned yet
A new business has no reputation. That is the real problem, not visibility. People are not refusing to hire you, they have no reason to believe you yet.
A referral fixes that in one step. Somebody the customer already trusts says you are fine, and you inherit that trust before you have earned any of your own. Nothing else you can buy does that.
It also costs time rather than money, which is the right way round when you are new.
- Structured referral groups, which meet weekly and expect you to pass work to other people as well as receive it
- Your chamber of commerce, and any trade association for your industry
- The other trades who are already in the houses you want to be in - the electrician, the plumber, the realtor
- The customers you already have. Ask them directly. Most people are glad to help and nobody ever asks them
We will say plainly that this is how our own business was built. Almost every client we have traces back to somebody who knew our work and put our name forward. That was before any of the SEO on this site existed.
It is not free, though, and anyone telling you it is has not done it. It takes months before it pays anything, it needs you to turn up every week without fail, and it works on giving first. If you cannot commit to being there, it will not work and you will conclude that networking is useless.
Already booked out? More inquiries will not help
This one is more common than people expect, and it is a real answer.
If you are booked out and turning work away, more inquiries do not help you. They cost you time to sort through and they annoy the people you cannot serve.
The better spend is usually raising prices, hiring, or getting faster at the jobs you already have. Come back when you have room you want to fill. Or when you want to trade cheap jobs for better ones - that is a real reason to do this work, just a different one.
Small jobs: do the math before you spend
Do the sum before you spend anything. Our work bills at $130 an hour. If a typical job earns you $80, it takes a lot of new customers to pay for even a few hours.
That does not mean small-ticket businesses cannot win online. It means the numbers have to work on volume. So ask yourself two things. How many extra customers a month would you need? And is that a realistic number in a town this size?
If it does not, put the money into repeat custom instead. Keeping a customer is almost always cheaper than finding one.
Nobody searches for what you sell? Here is how to check
Some work simply is not found this way. Very specialised business-to-business services, brand new categories nobody has a word for yet, anything sold entirely on relationships or contracts.
There is a quick check. Search for what you sell, the way a customer would say it, with your town on the end. If the results are thin, or nothing like your business shows up, that is a signal - and worth ten minutes before anyone spends anything.
Where that is the case, referral networking, industry associations and direct outreach usually beat search. That is not a consolation prize. It is where the customers actually are.
When SEO is worth the money
When people search for what you sell. When you have room for more work. And when one job is worth enough that a few of them pay for the effort.
For most established local businesses, all three are true. That is why we do this work. But we would rather tell you it is the wrong month than take money for something that will not pay you back.
Not sure? We will tell you straight, for free
Send us your web address. We will look at your site and your market and tell you straight whether this is worth your money. If it is not, we will say so and tell you what we would do instead. It costs nothing either way.
Common questions
Would you really tell me not to hire you?
Yes, and we do. A client who spends money on the wrong thing does not come back and does not refer anybody. Telling you it is the wrong month costs us one job. Taking the money anyway costs us a reputation.
How long does SEO take to pay off?
Rankings usually move in a few months. Visits follow after that. On the thirteen accounts we measured, every one improved where it ranked, most gained clicks, and the engagements mostly ran four months. If you need work in three weeks, this is the wrong tool.
What is the fastest thing I can do instead?
Your Google Business Profile, almost always. It is free, it is what people tap on the map, and most are half finished. After that, paid ads if you need leads immediately, and asking your existing customers for referrals, which costs nothing at all.
My business is small. Is SEO only for big companies?
No. It is about whether one job is worth enough that a few of them cover the work, and whether people search for what you sell. A two-person roofing company clears that bar easily. A business selling ten-dollar items may not.
How do I know if people search for what I do?
Search for it yourself, the way a customer would say it, with your town on the end. If businesses like yours come up, the demand is there. If the results are thin or unrelated, that tells you something worth knowing before you spend.