If you need enquiries this quarter, start with Google Ads, which is Google’s paid advertising. If you can wait two or three quarters, and your customers search for what you sell, start with SEO (search engine optimisation), the work of earning a place in Google’s free results. And if customers visit your shop or you visit them, set up your Google Business Profile. That is the free listing that puts your business on Google Maps and in Search. Do it before you pay for either.
One thing to know before you read on. xSquare sells SEO. We do not run Google Ads for anyone. So we gain nothing when you pick ads, and this page says plainly when you should.
Google’s free results are the ones nobody pays to be in. Google Ads works differently. You set a bid, which is the most you will pay for one click. Then an auction on each search decides whose ad shows. For a search ad, you pay when someone clicks.
Four things decide which one to fund first. How soon you need enquiries. What each costs every month to keep going. What is left when you stop paying. And whether your buyers search for what you sell at all.
SEO and Google Ads side by side
| SEO | Google Ads | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | The work on your site and its pages, done by you or someone you pay | Clicks, at a price an auction sets on each search |
| What Google charges | Nothing to appear in the free results | A price per click, never more than your bid |
| How soon it can start | Google says a change can take from a few hours to several months to show | Google says most new ads are reviewed within one business day |
| Monthly cost | The fee for the work. Ours: S$1,090 or S$2,180 a month | Your ad budget. One day can cost up to twice your average daily budget |
| When you stop paying | The pages and fixes stay on your site | The ads stop showing |
| Does it lift the other? | No. Google says advertising with it has no effect on its free results. | |
How soon does each bring visits?
Google Ads can start within about a day. Every new ad is checked against Google’s advertising rules before it runs. Google says most ads are reviewed within one business day, though some take longer. Once an ad is approved, it can show on the next search where it wins the auction.
SEO is measured in months. Google’s own starter guide on SEO says every change takes time to show on Google: “Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months.” It suggests waiting a few weeks before you judge whether a change worked. Our note on Google’s own SEO documentation shows where the rest of that advice lives.
Our own estimate for SEO clients is two or three quarters, which is six to nine months. The first quarter goes on fixing what is holding the site back. Signs of improvement then usually show three to six months after that work begins.
So if the business needs enquiries before this quarter ends, SEO will not get there in time. That is the clearest reason to start with ads.
What does each cost to keep running?
Google Ads: you pay per click, at a price set by an auction. Google runs an auction every time someone searches. You never pay more than your bid, and Google says what you actually pay is often less.
What you pay for one click is called the cost per click. It has no fixed price. The auction sets it, search by search. Your bid counts. So does the quality of your ad and of your landing page, the page people reach when they click your ad. So does who else is bidding.
In Google Ads, keywords are the words you pick so your ad can show when people search for them. Google says a business with more relevant keywords and ads can win a higher spot at a lower price than a competitor who bids more.
Inside your Google Ads account you will see a Quality Score from 1 to 10 beside each keyword. It is easy to mistake for the price. Google says it is a diagnostic tool, and that “Quality Score is not an input in the ad auction.” Read it as a hint about where your ad or landing page is weak, nothing more.
One setting is easy to misread: the daily budget.
On a given day, your campaign might spend up to twice your average daily budget to take advantage of fluctuations of traffic.
So a daily budget is an average, not a ceiling for the day. Google balances it over the month: by the end of the month, it says, you will have spent no more than 30.4 times your average daily budget. That 30.4 is about the number of days in an average month: 365 days divided by 12. Say you set S$20 a day. A busy day can cost up to S$40. A month can cost up to about S$608.
| Label | Singapore dollars |
|---|---|
| Average daily budget | S$20 |
| Most on any one day | S$40 |
The safe way is to plan from the month, not the day. Decide the most you can spend in a month. Divide it by 30.4. That is the daily budget to enter. For S$600 a month, it comes to about S$19.70 a day.
SEO: you pay for the work, not the clicks. Google charges nothing to appear in its free results. What costs money is the work: fixing the site, writing pages for what your customers search, and keeping them current. You can do it yourself with your own time, or pay someone. If you are still deciding whether that spend is worth it at all, see is SEO worth it when Google’s AI answers first.
Our prices are published. As of October 2026 they are S$1,090 a month for small and new sites, and S$2,180 a month for medium and older sites. A small and new site gets under roughly 1,000 visits a month from Google’s free results, or went live in the last couple of years. A medium or older site gets roughly 1,000 such visits a month or more, or is three years old or older.
Both prices are in Singapore dollars and include GST, Singapore’s goods and services tax. Both run on a 12-month term. Over the full term that is S$13,080 or S$26,160. Our SEO pricing page sets out both in full.
Those two numbers are not directly comparable. An ad budget buys visits this month. An SEO fee buys work that may bring visits in later months, with no promise of how many. The honest comparison is the next section: what you still have when the money stops.
Does paying for Google Ads help your organic ranking?
No. Organic ranking means your place in Google’s free results, and paying for ads does not move it up or down. Google’s own page on hiring an SEO is direct about it: “Advertising with Google won’t have any effect on your site’s presence in our search results.” The same page adds that Google never takes money to include or rank a site.
That answers a question some owners ask after a few months of SEO: will switching ads back on undo the SEO? It will not. It will not speed the work up either.
There is one more place ads can now show. On many searches Google puts an AI Overview at the top, a short summary written by Google’s AI. Google’s Ads help says ads can appear above, below or within these overviews, and that ads within them are available in English in Singapore. Google does not show ads inside AI Overviews for sensitive areas such as finance and healthcare. So a clinic or a financial adviser cannot have its ad inside that summary.
What is left when you stop paying?
Stop Google Ads, and the ad visits stop the same day. An ad only shows when it takes part in the auction that runs on each search. With no budget left, it takes part in none. Nothing of the ad stays on Google’s page.
What you can keep is what you learned: which searches and which ads brought paying customers. Write that down before you pause. It is useful whichever way you go next.
Stop SEO work, and what was built stays. The pages you wrote and the fixes to your site remain yours, and Google charges nothing for them to keep appearing. If a page earned a good place, it does not lose it on the day the invoices stop.
It will not hold that place for ever. Competitors keep publishing, and a place you earned can slip. No one can promise you a ranking, and Google warns owners against anyone who does: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
This is the real difference in what each costs. Ads are paid for as long as you want the visits. SEO is paid for while it runs, and what SEO built keeps working for a while after.
Before either: your free Google Business Profile
If customers come to your premises, or you go to theirs, there is a third option that costs nothing. Your Google Business Profile shows your hours, phone number, photos and reviews on Google Maps and in Search. Google says you can manage how your business shows there “at no charge”.
Not every business can have one. Google says only businesses that meet customers face to face are eligible. A business that sells only online, with no premises customers visit and no visits to customers, does not qualify. Google’s own help page points those businesses to Google Ads instead.
For a clinic, a shop, a contractor or a tuition centre, fix this listing before you pay anyone for anything. Our guide to what moves your Google Maps ranking in Singapore goes through the fields that matter.
Which businesses should start with ads?
We sell SEO, so this is the section to read most closely. Our advice to our own clients is to start with ads in four cases, and to start with SEO in two.
Start with Google Ads if…
You need enquiries this quarter. A new business, a new branch, or a slow month you cannot carry. SEO will not arrive in time.
What you sell has a deadline. A seasonal offer, an event, a course intake. When the date passes, a ranking earned months later is no use.
You do not yet know if people search for it. If your site is live, look first in Google Search Console, Google’s free service for your site’s place in its search results. It shows which searches already bring up your site. Then a small ad budget for a month shows whether your ads get seen and clicked at all. Better to learn that in a month than after months of SEO aimed at searches nobody makes.
You sell online only. You cannot have a free Business Profile, and ads get you onto Google’s page sooner while the SEO work builds.
Start with SEO if…
You can wait two or three quarters. Then the money goes into something that stays.
Your customers research before they buy. People comparing clinics, contractors, software or advisers read before they call. A page that answers their questions well can keep being found long after it is written.
And if your buyers do not search for what you sell at all, neither one is the answer. Put the money into what does reach your buyers, such as referrals or a sales call. We would rather tell you that now than sign you up for 12 months of SEO.
When to run both, or turn ads back on
Running both makes sense once the budget can carry both without starving either. We would split it by search. Ads cover the searches where your site does not yet appear near the top. SEO builds the pages for those searches, so the ads can step back from each one as the free result gets there.
If you paused ads to fund SEO and now wonder when to switch them back on, use the same split. Turn them on for the searches that matter to you where you are still far down the free results. Leave them off where your own free result already shows near the top. Then compare the next month’s enquiries with the last.
If one agency runs both for you, ask for the report in two halves. What the ads brought, and what they cost. What the free results brought, on their own. Search Console shows that second half: which searches bring up your site and how often people click. Without that split, three months of mixed numbers cannot show you which half is working. Our guide to where the search terms live shows which Google tool does which job.
Is there a grant for either?
There can be, but it follows the package, not the channel. Singapore’s Productivity Solutions Grant, run by Enterprise Singapore, supports up to 50 per cent of eligible costs for local small businesses. So it can pay up to half of what it covers. It only covers solutions that are pre-approved, bought from the vendor listed with them.
Its directory has a digital marketing category, with fixed packages from listed vendors that can include SEO and search ads. One listed package, for example, bundles SEO with search ads for three months at S$7,400. Its support level for small businesses is 50 per cent, so the grant can pay up to half. The grant does not take half off any agency you choose. Check that a vendor’s exact package is on the grant’s page on the government’s GoBusiness site before you count on it.
Not sure which fits your business?
The answer depends on numbers only you have: how soon the business needs enquiries, what you can spend every month without strain, and whether your customers search before they buy.
If you want a second view, book a short call with us. We will ask what you sell, who buys it and how soon you need enquiries. Then we will tell you which of the two fits, and what the first quarter would involve. If ads or something else would serve you better, we will say that instead. You can see what our SEO work covers on our SEO services page.
Sources
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?
- Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide
- Google Ads Help, About the ad review process
- Google Ads Help, How the Google Ads auction works
- Google Ads Help, About Quality Score for Search campaigns
- Google Ads Help, Why daily costs might exceed your average daily budget
- Google Ads Help, About ads and AI Overviews
- Google Business Profile Help, Get started with Google Business Profile
- Search Console Help, About Search Console
- Enterprise Singapore, Productivity Solutions Grant