A colleague asked me a good question last week. Her clients keep asking about SEO, but what they actually want to know is more basic than that. What does it involve, does it work, and why does it cost what it costs.

That last part is the one people skip over, so let’s not skip it here.

What SEO actually is

SEO is the work of making your website easy for Google, and increasingly AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI search, to find, understand, and recommend when someone searches for what you do. No paid placement, no fee per click. Your business shows up because Google trusts that you’re a good answer to the question someone typed in.

In practice that’s a handful of things: content that actually answers what your customers are searching, rather than vague brochure copy; fixing the technical side so Google can properly read your site; keeping your Google Business Profile accurate for anyone searching nearby; and building the kind of credibility signals, other reputable sites linking to yours, that tell Google you’re legitimate.

None of that happens once and stays finished. Google changes how it ranks sites, competitors update their own, and what worked last year quietly stops working this year.

What it actually does for your business

Every enquiry that comes from SEO costs you nothing extra at the point it lands. You’ve already paid for the work that got you found. Compare that to an enquiry from Google Ads, where you pay for that click whether or not it turns into a customer, then pay again for the next one.

That’s the whole case for SEO in one line: it turns future traffic into something you own, instead of something you rent.

It’s slow. But it’s yours.

Why it costs $1,200 a month or more

This is the part that trips people up, so let’s be straight about it. A proper SEO service is ongoing, skilled work: research into what your customers actually search, content written to answer it, technical fixes, and adjustment as rankings shift month to month. A cheap SEO package can’t cover any of that properly. There isn’t enough budget in it for the research or the writing that actually moves a ranking.

Think about what it needs to return to be worth it. If SEO brings you even one extra customer a month you wouldn’t otherwise have had, work out what that customer is worth to your business over a year, and weigh it against the fee. For most regional businesses that maths works out fast once SEO is actually running.

The hard part is trusting it before it’s running, because the first few months don’t look like much.

SEO vs Google Ads: how to actually decide

I explain it to clients like this. I’ve got a handful of mates who are real estate agents, in regional Victoria, one SE Qld, a few in country NSW. Referrals keep them in business, a warm lead that already trusts you and closes easier than one you had to go find. Build up a base of happy past clients and you become the agent everyone recommends. It takes months. Once it’s running, it keeps working with barely any extra effort.

Ads are the other side. If that same agent needs enquiries this month, not in six, they run a letterbox drop, or grab a radio spot in peak hour, or promote some posts on Facebook. Spend $400, get roughly a set number of calls back. Turn the spend up, get more. Turn it off, and the calls stop that same week.

Run $1,200 a month for six months into ads, and at the end of it you’ve spent $7,200 and have nothing left once you stop. Run the same money into SEO, and you’ve built something that keeps bringing enquiries in next year, without spending anything extra to keep it there.

That’s not an argument against ads. If you need leads immediately, while SEO is still building underneath, ads are the right tool for that gap. Plenty of the businesses I work with run both at once.

Neither one replaces the other.

A rough guide

Ads probably make more sense if you need enquiries in the next few weeks, you’re testing a new offer, or a slow patch means you need to fill the gap now.

SEO probably makes more sense if you’re building for the next couple of years, you want your cost per enquiry to fall over time instead of staying flat, or you’re tired of paying for the same customer twice.

Where to start

If you want a plain read on where your website actually stands before spending anything ongoing, that’s what my SEO Audit is for: a full look at your site, your competitors, and what’s actually holding your rankings back, with a clear roadmap to fix it. It’s a one-off $1,200, and it’s the starting point before any ongoing work begins.

If you already know you want the ongoing management, that starts from $1,200 a month, covering the research, content and technical work that actually moves the needle.

Tell me a bit about your business and I’ll tell you where I’d start →