Soma Brief #27: SEO, Google Ads or a Website Fix: What Does Your Business Actually Need First?

When marketing isn’t producing enough revenue or leads, the default response is usually to add something.

More SEO. More Google Ads. A redesigned website.More content.

That can be the wrong first move.

Before I recommend any of those, I want to know where the system is actually breaking.

Because these are different problems:

• People can’t find the business.

• The wrong people are finding it.

• The right people are arriving, but the website is creating friction.

• Marketing is working, but the tracking is too messy to prove it.

• The business has enough traffic and simply needs a clearer path to conversion.

Those problems should not get the same solution.

Start with the business problem, not the marketing tactic

When I review an account, I’m usually trying to answer four questions:

1. Visibility: Are enough qualified people finding the business?

2. Traffic quality: Are those visitors actually relevant?

3. Conversion path: Once they arrive, is it obvious what they should do next?

4. Measurement: Can I trust the data telling me what happened?

The recommendation comes after that.

Not before.

When SEO should come first

SEO makes sense when the business has a usable website and a clear offer, but Google is not consistently connecting it with the searches that matter.

What I saw

In one local account, branded visibility was already strong. People searching specifically for the business could find it.

The gap was broader service and local discovery.

What I ruled out

The website did not need to be rebuilt.

The offer was understandable. The core service pages existed. There was already enough structure to support stronger search visibility.

More paid traffic would have added visitors, but it would not have fixed the organic visibility gap.

What I recommended

Focus the work on:

• local targeting

• service-page relevance

• internal linking

• metadata and heading structure

• content tied to real customer questions

• monitoring which pages were already gaining impressions

Why

The constraint was visibility.

That is an SEO problem.

Not every search problem requires a major website project.

When Google Ads should come first

Paid search works best when demand already exists and the business wants to capture it faster.

What I saw

In another account, the search-term data showed people were already looking for exactly what the business sells.

There was clear commercial intent.

What I ruled out

The problem was not a lack of demand.

Waiting months for organic visibility to grow was not the only reasonable option.

What I recommended

Use paid search around the strongest high-intent searches while tightening:

• search terms

• negative keywords

• ad messaging

• landing-page alignment

• conversion goals

Why

The opportunity was already there.

Google Ads could put the business in front of that demand now.

But there is an important condition:

I need to trust the conversion tracking first.

Otherwise, I’m optimizing toward numbers that may not represent actual business results.

When the website should come first

Sometimes traffic is not the problem at all.

That becomes obvious when search visibility is healthy, people are reaching the site, and the experience still makes it difficult to shop, understand the offer or take the next step.

What I saw

On a recent ecommerce project, organic visibility was holding.

People were finding the site.

The business already had product demand, local recognition and traffic.

The bigger issue was what happened after they arrived.

The shopping experience needed stronger organization. Important collections were not prioritized clearly. Merchandising felt generic. The connection between the physical store, community and ecommerce experience was weak.

What I ruled out

This was not a “get more traffic” problem.

Sending more paid or organic traffic into the same experience would not solve the underlying friction.

What I recommended

Fix the website layer:

• homepage priorities

• collection structure

• product discovery

• mobile usability

• merchandising

• local/store information

• conversion paths

Why

Acquisition was already doing its job.

The website needed to do a better job with the traffic it already had.

Sometimes tracking comes before all three

This is the decision that gets skipped most often.

A business can look like it has a marketing problem when it actually has a measurement problem.

What I saw

One Google Ads account was reporting a large number of conversions.

That looked great at first.

Then I looked at what those conversions actually represented.

The total included actions like store visits and phone calls, while a separate Search campaign was spending money and reporting zero conversions.

What I ruled out

I did not immediately conclude that Search was failing.

I also did not assume the account was producing hundreds of purchases.

Neither conclusion was supported yet.

What I recommended

Audit the measurement first:

• identify every conversion action

• separate purchases, calls and store visits

• confirm Primary vs. Secondary conversions

• verify GA4 and Google Ads linking

• confirm purchase tracking is actually firing

Why

If the measurement is wrong, every decision after it gets weaker.

Budget decisions. Campaign optimization. SEO reporting. Website priorities. Revenue attribution.

You need a trustworthy measuring system before you start making expensive changes.

So which should you do first?

Use this as the starting point.

Start with SEO when: The offer and website are solid, but qualified organic visibility is weak.

Start with Google Ads when: There is clear demand, you need faster access to it, and the conversion path is ready.

Start with the website when: Traffic already exists, but people are getting confused, dropping off or struggling to convert.

Start with tracking when: You cannot confidently explain which channels or actions are producing actual business results.

The order matters.

More traffic is not automatically the answer

A business with weak sales may have a traffic problem.

It may also have:

• a conversion problem

• a positioning problem

• a measurement problem

• an ecommerce structure problem

• a local visibility problem

From the outside, they can all look like the same thing:

“Marketing isn’t working.”

That is why I do not start with the tactic.

I start by figuring out what the evidence says is limiting the business.

Then I decide what deserves to be fixed first.

That is the point of strategy.

Not doing more.

Doing the right thing next.

Need help figuring out what comes first?

If you know something in your marketing is underperforming but you are not sure whether the problem is SEO, paid search, the website or tracking, that is what the Soma Kickstart Session is built for.

We look at the current system, identify the real bottleneck and leave with a clear order of operations.