Paid Ads like Google Ads and Google Local Services (GLS) are a great way of delivering instant traffic to your website, and it can be turned on and off. The downside of Paid Ads is that it costs money, either on a pay-per-click or per-lead basis. Paid Ads can also get extremely expensive making it difficult to maintain healthy profit margins. That being said, as long as the ad spend is still generating a positive return on investment (ROI), it can work well as a stop-gap while waiting for longer-term local marketing strategies to take effect.
On the other hand, SEO takes a longer time to work, but the rewards are greater as the more visible a website becomes organically, the less one may have to spend on a paid ads strategy. SEO efforts also compound month-over-month allowing you to realize residual traffic benefits from the previous month’s work. The truth is that both play an essential role in a brand’s overall marketing strategy.