SEO is a snowball, not a switch: where it fits alongside paid ads
Tom McSherry
29 June 2026 · 6 min read
If you take one thing away about SEO, make it this: it's a snowball, not a switch. It builds slowly, then compounds into your biggest and cheapest source of traffic. But it is not the lever to pull if you need the phone ringing in the next month or two - that's a job for paid ads.
What 'snowball' actually means
When you start SEO, the early months are foundation - fixing pages, sorting structure, beginning to build authority. You don't see much yet. Then it starts to move, and it keeps compounding: rankings earned this quarter still pay next year, and the work stacks on itself. Done right, over time it becomes the largest stream of traffic into most businesses, and the cheapest per lead, because you're not paying for each click. But that curve takes months to bend upward. There's no version where you flip it on and leads arrive next week.
Ads are a tap - on when you pay, off when you stop. SEO is a snowball - slow to start, then hard to stop.
When not to spend on SEO
This is where I'll happily talk a business out of SEO. If your problem is that leads have dried up and you need work in the next one to three months, SEO is the wrong tool. Putting your emergency budget into a channel that pays off in months is a way to run out of money before it works. In that situation you need paid ads or referrals to bridge the gap - something that turns on now.
The healthy way to run both
For most businesses it isn't SEO versus ads, it's timing. Ads give you leads today and let you test what converts. SEO, running underneath, steadily lowers your cost per lead over the following year until you're less dependent on paying for every click. The mistake is expecting either one to do the other's job - ads to compound for free, or SEO to rescue this month's numbers.
So before you commit an SEO budget, be honest about your timeline. If you can afford to play the long game, the snowball is the best asset in marketing. If you can't, fix the short-term lead flow first - then let the snowball build behind it.