Usually both, but not with equal weight at the same time. Google Ads buys you visibility today that stops as soon as you stop paying; SEO builds an asset that only pays off after months, but then keeps working without click costs. Start with Google Ads if you need enquiries quickly, with SEO if clicks are expensive or your customers ask questions first.
What often gets mixed up: advertising doesn't help your organic rankings. "Investment in paid search has no impact on your organic search ranking," Google writes [1]. Anyone who hears otherwise from an SEO agency or a Google Ads specialist is being told a myth.
Where do you start? The decision table
| Your situation | Start with | The second channel comes in |
|---|---|---|
| New website or new business | Google Ads: a new site has no rankings yet | As soon as you know which search terms convert: you build SEO pages for those |
| Urgent demand, a season or a promotion | Google Ads: SEO is too slow for a peak | SEO for the permanent service and region pages |
| Expensive clicks in your sector | SEO, with a narrow search campaign alongside | Google Ads stays on the terms with the highest purchase intent |
| Lots of questions before the purchase ("how much does", "difference between") | SEO: an article that answers those questions brings in traffic for months | A search campaign on the commercial terms |
| Shop, practice or tradesperson in one region | Google Business Profile and local SEO | A local search campaign for your main services |
If hardly anyone searches for what you sell, no search channel has anything to catch: create demand through other channels first. And if your website doesn't turn visitors into enquiries, fix that first. How far along your site is, you can see in the free SEO scan, without us needing access to your site.
Renting versus owning
| Google Ads | SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Per click, through an auction [1], [2] | In hours: technology, content, authority |
| When it works | As soon as your ads are approved and running | Some changes after a few hours, others after months [3] |
| When you stop | Your visibility stops immediately | Your rankings stay, but slip without maintenance |
| Guarantee | None: the auction decides for each search whether and where you appear [2] | None: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" [4] |
Google Ads is renting: your costs grow with your traffic, and the day you stop, you're gone. SEO is owning, with a start-up cost: for the first months you pay for work without visible results, after that no longer per visitor. We count on three to six months for the first movement and a year for structural growth.
When does SEO pay off more than advertising?
A click in Belgium costs a median of €1.88, measured on French-language keywords in July 2026 [5]. According to Belgian providers, SEO support for an SME usually costs €400 to €1,500 per month, excluding VAT [6]. A simple test: divide your monthly SEO fee by the cost per click in your sector.
At €900 per month and €1.88 per click, SEO has to deliver about 480 organic clicks per month on non-brand search terms to match the traffic of €900 in ads. At €11.94 per click, what plumbers pay in the same measurement [5], it is only 75. An organic click is not an ad click, but the sum shows why SEO pays off faster in sectors with expensive clicks.
What SEO costs in Belgium is covered in how much does SEO cost per month. What advertising costs, per click and per enquiry, is in how much does Google Ads cost in Belgium.
How they reinforce each other
1. The paid & organic report shows for each search whether you appear paid, organic or both, once you link Search Console to Google Ads [1], [7]. Searches where you are only visible through ads are candidates for an SEO page. The organic data only starts on the day of linking [1]: so link today.
2. The search terms report shows which actual searches triggered your ads and which converted [8]. Search terms that bring in enquiries at a good price deserve their own page; how to choose and group them is in how to do keyword research.
3. The Search Console performance report. Searches with many impressions but few clicks [9] show where a better title or page helps, or an ad if you need traffic right away.
And your brand name? In a Google study from 2012, on average 50% of ad clicks were still incremental when the advertiser's own organic result ranked first [10]. That is old research, from before AI Overviews. So test it yourself: pause your brand campaign for four weeks in one region and compare the total of paid and organic clicks and enquiries.
Measure the mix, not each channel separately
Look at the whole picture:
- enquiries or sales per channel: paid, organic and direct;
- cost per enquiry for Google Ads, and your monthly SEO fee divided by your organic enquiries;
- the share of traffic on your brand name, so you don't attribute your growing awareness to one channel;
- organic impressions and clicks on non-brand search terms, from Search Console.
Google Ads and Google Analytics don't show the same figures, because they count and attribute differently. Which figure to use for what is explained by my colleague Cédric in why GA4 and Google Ads show different numbers.
And AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are available in Belgium and in Dutch [11]. Ads in them are, in September 2026, only available in English and in twelve countries, not including Belgium [12]. That changes little for your choice; how to appear as a source in AI answers is a separate discipline (GEO) that my colleague Bert writes about.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SEO and SEA?
SEO is work on your website to rank higher in the regular search results, without a cost per click. SEA, in practice usually Google Ads, means paying for the ad positions: you pay per click, and your visibility stops when you stop paying.
Does advertising in Google Ads help my organic rankings?
No. Google keeps search and advertising strictly separate. The channels do help each other indirectly: the search terms from your ads show which topics deserve their own SEO page.
Should I advertise on my own brand name if I already rank at the top?
Not always. Google research from 2012 found that half of the ad clicks were still incremental when the advertiser's own organic result ranked first. Test it yourself: pause your brand campaign for a few weeks and compare the total clicks and enquiries.
How long does SEO take to deliver results?
According to Google, some changes take effect within hours, others only after months. We count on three to six months for the first movement and a year for structural growth. Google Ads delivers clicks as soon as your campaign runs, but stops as soon as your budget runs out.
Sources
- About measuring paid and organic search results — Google Ads Help, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- Auction — Google Ads Help, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- SEO Starter Guide: The Basics — Google Search Central, 10 Dec 2025, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- Do you need an SEO? — Google Search Central, 5 Jun 2026, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- How much does Google Ads really cost for a Belgian SME? 2026 benchmarks by sector — Nexuro Digital, 17 Jul 2026, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- Wat kost SEO in België? Prijzen voor 2026 — samtech, 2026-09, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- Product Linking: Link Search Console and Google Ads — Google Ads Help, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- About the search terms report — Google Ads Help, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup — Search Console Help, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- Impact Of Ranking Of Organic Search Results On The Incrementality Of Search Ads — Google Research (Chan, Kumar, Ma, Koehler), 2012, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- Find information in faster & easier ways with AI Overviews in Google Search — Google Search Help, accessed 27 Sep 2026
- About ads and AI Overviews — Google Ads Help, accessed 27 Sep 2026