SEO vs PPC: how to split one budget between them over a year
How to split a marketing budget between SEO and PPC across a year: what each costs, how fast each moves, and when to move money from one to the other.
For most businesses that can afford the clicks in their market, the split that works is weighted to PPC at the start of the year and shifts toward SEO as pages begin to rank. Paid search can be live within a day, because Google reviews most ads within one business day (Google Ads Help). Organic rankings cannot be bought at all. Google says it never accepts money to include or rank sites in its search results (Google Search Central). So money in PPC buys answers now, and money in SEO buys a position that takes months to earn.
The split then moves term by term, not all at once. When a page ranks for a search that paid has already proved brings customers, paid spend on that search comes down and moves to searches organic has not reached yet. This post is about how to divide the money across a year. If you have not yet decided which channel to start with, read SEO or Google Ads: which one should a small local business start with? first.
The short version
- PPC buys visibility per click, and the traffic stops the day the budget does. SEO pays for work that keeps bringing visits after it is done.
- Early in the year, most of the budget sits in PPC, and SEO money goes to tracking, site health and pages for services you already sell.
- Paid search data tells you which searches produce customers. Those are the searches worth writing pages for.
- Reduce paid spend on a search once organic ranks well for it, rather than pausing everything. A 2011 Google study found 89% of search ad clicks were not replaced by organic clicks when ads were paused.
- Tracking comes before any split. A conversion action that counts the wrong thing makes every paid decision, and every page chosen from paid data, wrong too.
- If a click costs more than an enquiry is worth to you, the split tilts toward SEO from day one.
How do SEO and PPC compare on cost and speed?
They differ most in how the cost behaves over time. A click costs what the auction says it costs every time. A page that ranks keeps bringing visits without a charge per visit, so the cost of each enquiry from search tends to fall as the page settles in.
| Question | PPC (Google Ads) | SEO |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Each click | The work: pages, fixes, links, reviews |
| How fast it starts | Most ads reviewed within one business day | Months. Google publishes no timeline |
| When you stop paying | Traffic stops the same day | Ranked pages keep bringing visits for a while |
| What sets your position | Bid, ad and landing page quality, competition, search context | Relevance, site health and trust built over time |
| What it teaches you | Which searches bring customers, within weeks | Which questions people ask, over months |
| Best budget use in month one | One tight campaign on your best service | Tracking, technical fixes, service pages |
The auction factors are Google’s own list. They are your bid, the quality of your ads and landing page, and the Ad Rank thresholds. They also include the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search, and the expected impact of your ad assets (Google Ads Help).
What is each one, in plain terms?
SEO is the work of being the result Google shows when nobody paid. The words on the page, the health of the site, links from other sites, and the match between what you wrote and what somebody typed. Nobody can buy the organic position, and Google says no one can guarantee a first-place ranking.
PPC is renting a position above or below those results. You pay each time somebody clicks. Quality matters as well as the bid. Google gives each keyword a Quality Score from 1 to 10, built from expected click rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. It says the score is a diagnostic tool rather than an input to the auction (Google Ads Help). The auction itself uses the quality of the ad and landing page at the moment of the search. In practice this is where many small accounts lose money: an ad about a specific job pointing at a homepage about the company.
How should the budget move across a year?
Weight the start of the year to paid and move money toward SEO as pages earn positions. This is our recommendation for a business whose margin supports the clicks in its market, not a rule. The quarters are a guide, and the real trigger for each move is what the data shows.
| Quarter | PPC | SEO | Check before moving money |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Most of the budget. One tight campaign per core service, exact or phrase match, one landing page each | Tracking, technical fixes, Business Profile, service pages for what you already sell | Conversion actions count only real enquiries or sales |
| 2 | Hold the budget. Cut searches that spend and never convert | Pages for the searches paid proved bring customers | The search terms report shows which searches produce enquiries |
| 3 | Reduce spend on searches where your page now ranks near the top. Move it to searches organic has not reached | More pages, internal links, reviews and links for proven searches | Enquiries on reduced searches held for a month |
| 4 | Keep what organic cannot cover, plus seasonal pushes | Refresh the pages that rank, write for the next set of proven searches | Cost per enquiry measured the same way for both channels |
To size the paid share in quarter one, work backwards. Estimate what an enquiry will cost from the click prices Keyword Planner shows for your terms (Google Ads Help) and a plausible landing page conversion rate. Multiply by the number of enquiries you need to learn from in a month. That is your paid floor. What is left goes to SEO. If the floor is more than you can spend, narrow paid to one service rather than spreading it thin.
Photo: olia danilevich on Pexels.
Why does tracking come before the split?
Because every later decision in the table reads from it. On one Google Ads account managed here, a small San Antonio retailer, add-to-carts, newsletter signups and purchases were all counted as the same conversion, so the bidding had been buying the cheapest of them. Once purchases became the only primary conversion action and the budget moved onto buying searches, the account recorded 787.59 conversions at $4.77 each, with 6.45 in conversion value for every 1 spent.
Those are the totals in the account’s own reports. The period is not recorded with them, and conversion value is revenue, not profit, so read it as one account’s result rather than a rate to expect. The San Antonio case study has the full sequence of changes.
Google Ads uses primary conversion actions for bidding and shows them in the Conversions column. Secondary actions are recorded but not used to optimise campaigns (Google Ads Help). Fix that setting first, and the paid data starts telling you which searches produce customers. Those are the searches worth a page.
When should money move from PPC to SEO?
Move it one search at a time, when your page for that search ranks near the top and paid conversions on it have stopped rising. Reduce the paid spend rather than switching it off, and watch enquiries for that search for a month.
The reason to reduce rather than pause comes from Google’s own research. In more than 400 studies of paused accounts, Google found that on average 89% of the traffic from search ads was not replaced by organic clicks when the ads stopped (Google Research, 2011). The study is old and Google sells the ads, so treat it as a reason to test carefully rather than a figure for your account. The safe test is small: cut one search, measure a month, then decide.
On the SEO side, the payoff builds slowly. La Vela Coffee, a commercial espresso equipment seller in Miami, went from 1.16K to 2.85K organic clicks in six months against the six before, after its product pages were rewritten around what buyers search. That is one account with no control group, and part of the change will belong to the market, but those clicks do not stop when a budget does.
Photo: Lukas Blazek on Pexels.
What should you check before either budget moves?
Five checks, all free, all in accounts you should already own:
- Open Search Console and count the clicks that are not your company name. Its Performance report groups clicks by the query people typed (Search Console Help). If almost everything is your own name, search is not yet working.
- Read the search terms report for the last ninety days. It shows the actual searches that triggered your ads (Google Ads Help). Add up what went to searches you could never serve. That is the first budget cut.
- Open the conversion actions. If a primary action counts a page view, a button click or an add-to-cart, every automated bid so far was aimed at the wrong number.
- Search your two most valuable terms in a private window. If the first page is all ads and directories, paid is the way in. If it is service pages from businesses like yours, a page of your own can compete.
- Write down what a customer is worth. Without that number, neither channel’s cost per lead means anything.
Once you know how to split the money, a second decision sits underneath it: who does the work. The real cost of an agency, a freelancer and an in-house hire compares all three on the same monthly basis.
Where the line is
PPC cannot create demand. If nobody types your category into Google yet, no budget produces a buyer, and the better answer is paid social or a longer content plan. SEO cannot produce revenue this month, and a site that cannot turn its current visitors into enquiries should fix the page before buying more clicks through it.
Two cautions on the numbers you will see elsewhere. Return comparisons between the channels are often published by companies selling one of them. The email figure everybody quotes is a clear example, and where the $36 to $1 email return actually comes from takes it apart. And an average cost per click means little on its own, because a legal click and a plumbing click can sit far apart. Your own account is the benchmark that counts.
The bottom line
Fund the fast answer while you build the one that lasts, and let the data, not the calendar, decide when money moves. A split set once in January and never touched is a guess. A split that moves one proven search at a time is a plan.
Questions people ask about this
How do I check what my conversion actions count?
Open Google Ads, go to Goals, then Conversions, and read the source and category of each action. Anything with page view, button click or scroll in its name is suspect. Then open the action and compare its recent conversion count against the enquiries your inbox actually received. If ads report far more than you received, the account is optimising towards the wrong thing, which is the case this piece describes.
What is a good quality score to aim for?
Higher than your most expensive terms currently show, rather than a fixed figure, because quality score is relative and set per keyword. Sort keywords by cost, check the score on the top ten, and look at the three components: expected click rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. A low landing page score is the one most accounts can fix, by sending a specific ad to a specific page rather than the homepage.
Can I run PPC without a dedicated landing page?
You can, and many small accounts do, which is why they overpay. An ad about drain cleaning pointing at a homepage about the company makes the visitor search again, and a weaker match between ad and page lowers the quality Google uses in the auction. Build one page per service you advertise, with the same words as the ad in the heading and one clear enquiry action. That page later becomes the one that ranks.
How long should I give SEO before judging it?
The guide above puts competitive commercial rankings at months rather than weeks, so judge it in stages rather than once. Inside the first month, check that technical fixes are done and pages are indexed. By the end of the first quarter, non-branded impressions should be rising in Search Console. By the second quarter, non-branded clicks and enquiries should follow. If impressions rise and clicks do not, the titles need work, not the strategy.
What if my competitors outbid me on every term?
Stop competing on the head term and move to the specific versions of it. Long, precise searches cost less and convert better, because the person knows what they want. Pair that with a landing page that matches them exactly. Those same specific terms are also where a page of your own can rank, because the big spenders rarely write pages for them. Being outbid on one word is not being outbid everywhere.
Should I pause ads once organic ranks?
Reduce rather than pause, and do it term by term. Once a page holds a top position for a term and the paid conversions on it have flattened, cut the paid budget on that exact query. Then watch enquiries for a month. If they hold, move the money to terms organic has not reached. Pausing everything at once risks dropping total enquiries, because the two results together win more of the page.
Is PPC worth it for a low-margin business?
Only if the maths works, and you should do the sum before spending. Take what a customer is worth after margin, and divide by the share of enquiries that become customers. That is the most you can pay per enquiry. If the clicks in your category cost more than that allows, paid is not viable at any level of skill. Search then becomes the main channel, and the timeline is longer but the cost holds.
Does SEO help with searches that have no ads?
Yes, and that is a large part of its value. Many research searches, comparison searches and questions show few or no ads, and the organic result does all the work. A page that answers the question a customer asks a month before buying is one paid rarely covers, and it builds the trust the eventual buying search cashes in.
How do I stop paying for customers who would have found me anyway?
Split branded terms from everything else in the ads account. If people are searching your company name and clicking your ad, you may be paying for a visit the organic result would have won. Check the search terms report for your own name and decide deliberately. Keep a small branded campaign if a competitor is bidding on your name. Otherwise, move the money to non-branded terms that bring new customers.
Which should a brand new business fund first?
It depends on searches and margin. If people already search for what you sell and your margin supports the click price, run paid first, because it produces enquiries this month and shows which terms convert. Use that data to write the pages. If the margin does not support it, or nobody searches for your category yet, fix the site, write for specific terms, and consider Meta for demand. Either way, set tracking up before the first dollar.
Do I need an agency to run either channel?
Not necessarily, and the comparison of agency, freelancer and in-house costs linked above covers the trade-offs. A single-service business can run a small paid account with exact match terms and one landing page, and can write its own service pages. Where help pays for itself is the setup: conversion tracking, account structure and the technical audit. Get those done properly once, then decide whether the ongoing work is something you can hold yourself.
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