Say you want more people to find your tree care business on Google.
You basically have two primary options: You could pay to put ads at the top of Google, or you could work on earning a spot in the organic results below it.
Both can get more eyes on your business, but they do so in different ways and at different speeds. Pay-per-click ads (PPC) can increase your visibility pretty quickly, while search engine optimization (SEO) takes a bit longer.
Neither approach is inherently better than the other; they’re just different approaches. Depending on what your business needs right now and where you want your marketing strategy to take you, there may be a place for SEO, PPC, or both in your strategy.
We’ll explain everything you need to know about both approaches below.
Why Google?
Because it enjoys a whopping 90% of global search traffic across all devices, we’re focusing on Google here. But Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines are also viable platforms to consider for some tree care companies in some markets.
Nevertheless, while there are minor differences, SEO and PPC strategies work in the same basic way for all search engines. So, whether you want to expand your digital presence on Google or one of its competitors, the advice we’ll share below works for them all.
SEO vs. PPC for Tree Services: What’s the Difference?
Pull up Google and search for pretty much any service. You’ll probably see a few results labeled “Sponsored,” followed by the regular (“organic”) search results farther down the page. The former represent the results of a PPC campaign, while the latter are the product of SEO efforts.
While they involve a lot of technical details and strategy, PPC campaigns are — in principle — fairly straightforward. You create ads, craft a landing page, choose the keywords and audiences you want to target, set a budget, and pay each time a potential customer clicks on the ads.
In return, you enjoy pretty direct control over how much you spend, what the ads say, and where your marketing dollars go, as well as the opportunity to make adjustments quickly.
SEO, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated.
Earning visibility in the organic results beneath the ads is a multifaceted discipline, involving everything from creating the actual content designed to rank well to structuring your site in a way that’s easy for Google to understand.
However, you don’t have to pay Google for SEO content to show up, and well-designed SEO content can continue to provide value after you’ve made the investment to create it. This contrasts with PPC ads, which stop appearing the moment you stop paying for them.
Here’s a quick overview of the two:
| SEO | PPC | |
| Where You Show Up | Organic search results | Sponsored search results |
| How Quickly | Builds over time | Can produce visibility quickly |
| What You Pay For | The work that goes into improving organic visibility | Ad clicks and campaign management |
| How Much Control You Have | Search engines ultimately decide where pages rank | You control your budget, targeting, and ads |
| What Happens Over Time | Strong rankings can keep sending traffic to your site | You can scale, adjust, or pause visibility by changing your campaigns and spend |
PPC: The Sprint
PPC works on a much shorter timeline than SEO. Once a campaign is set up, approved, and running, your ads can start appearing for eligible searches more or less immediately, without waiting for a page to climb up the organic rankings.
PPC campaigns also provide you with more control.
You can decide how much you want to spend, narrow down your audience, change your messaging, and adjust campaigns based on what the data is telling you. That can come in handy when you’re promoting a particular service, entering a new market, or trying to reach people during a busy season.
The downside is that PPC campaigns are only effective while you’re paying for the clicks; the second you stop allocating funds to the campaign, your ads will stop running.
You’ll also need to make sure that you’re targeting high-intent keywords, running your ads at the most productive times, and cleaning up the campaign as new information becomes available.
SEO: The Marathon
SEO tends to take more time than PPC campaigns. You might optimize a page or publish a new piece of content, but that doesn’t mean you’ll wake up tomorrow to find it perched on the top of Google search results.
Search engines need time to crawl and evaluate pages, and your competitors are also trying to rank for many of the same search terms you are. To cross the finish line, you may have to improve existing pages, publish new content, fix technical issues, or strengthen your website’s authority.
Building that kind of organic presence takes time, but — theoretically — your efforts and investment will continue to pay some dividends after you’ve made the initial investment in a piece of content, presenting a strong contrast with PPC.
That does not mean you won’t have to invest anything in the future, though. Keeping a high-performing article or service page at the top of Google does take some ongoing work.
Rankings change, competitors can gain ground, and search algorithms evolve. And you will have to make adjustments periodically to keep a high-performing piece of content front-and-center on Google.
Neither One Article Nor One Ad Is Likely to Be Enough for Tree Care Companies
It’s important to note that both PPC ads and SEO-oriented content usually target fairly narrow slices of your particular market. They may be designed to reach specific customers searching for a specific service, in a specific area, at a specific time.
That means that most tree care companies will need to run multiple PPC ads and/or publish a number of different pages, each targeting subsections of your overall market.
For example, whether you lean on paid ads or organic content to increase your visibility, you may need to address tree removal, plant health care, stump grinding, and risk assessments separately. You may also need to break these efforts down geographically.
Given the kind of scope necessary to generate positive results (not to mention a good ROI), most tree care companies will find it necessary to run several ads at the same time and publish a collection of content designed to perform well for various internet searches.
Do Tree Service Companies Have to Choose Between SEO and PPC?
SEO and PPC can fill different roles in the same marketing plan. Since they work on different timelines and give you different ways to reach searchers, using one doesn’t have to mean abandoning the other on the sidelines.
In fact, tree care companies usually find that a combination of both approaches works best.
Say you want to bring in more work after a doozy of a storm skedaddles through your area. PPC can put your business in front of homeowners actively searching for emergency tree removal right now.
SEO, on the other hand, can build your organic presence around services like tree removal, tree trimming, and stump grinding. This should help improve your overall visibility and brand recognition, as well as capture customer eyes when you’re not actively advertising.
Both strategies ultimately serve the same goal — helping you reach people who need the services you provide — but they get there in different ways.
There can also be some useful crossover between the two.
PPC data can show you which search terms are driving clicks and conversions, which may reveal opportunities for SEO content. Organic search data, on the other hand, can show how people are already finding your website and potentially spark ideas for paid campaigns.
Of course, using both doesn’t mean splitting your marketing budget right down the middle and throwing half at each channel. You might lean more heavily on one at a particular point, then adjust as your goals, budget, competition, or priorities change.
The balance should reflect what you’re actually trying to accomplish.
When Should Tree Care Companies Use SEO vs. PPC?
Start by asking yourself, “What am I trying to achieve right now?” A tree company trying to fill its schedule with routine trimming work has a different challenge than one trying to get the phone ringing after a storm.
Exceptions abound, but SEO generally makes sense for the services homeowners search for all year.
This means things like tree removal, tree trimming, stump grinding, plant health care, and similar services can all be part of an organic strategy, especially if you want to improve how often your company appears across the cities you serve.
PPC, on the other hand, often gives you the ability to capture more potential customers with a particular need.
After a bad storm, you might run ads for emergency tree removal in the hardest-hit areas. Similarly, an effective PPC ad may help you add a few more stump grinding jobs to a less-than-full calendar next week.
But as with SEO, there are exceptions. Many tree care companies attract a lot of business by running ongoing ads for the services they provide.
There’s no reason those efforts have to stay in separate lanes. You might already rank well for tree trimming in one city but struggle to show up for tree removal in another. Maybe storm season is coming up and you want paid ads ready even though your organic rankings are solid.
Looking at the actual gaps in your marketing tells you a lot more than simply picking one channel and running with it.
Can Tree Service Companies Handle Their Own SEO & PPC?
In an effort to keep their marketing costs low, some tree care company owners and managers consider taking a DIY approach to SEO and PPC. But caution is warranted.
It is certainly possible to create, edit, or refresh content to help improve its performance in organic search results. You’ll have to research the current SEO best practices and invest significant amounts of time to do so, but you won’t have to cut a check to try.
With that said, you’re unlikely to be able to compete with the SEO professionals attempting to do the same for other tree companies in your area. And you’ll need to be careful to avoid harmful practices that can actually harm your current SEO performance.
So, because your time is a finite and valuable commodity and your company’s rankings are important for your bottom line, you’ll generally enjoy greater ROI by leaving your SEO efforts to the professionals.
However, while it’s theoretically possible to improve your organic rankings on your own, you’re highly unlikely to achieve good results running your own PPC campaign.
PPC advertising involves a remarkably steep learning curve, and it can burn cash more quickly than dropping a tree on a client’s home can. You could conceivably lose tens of thousands of dollars a month with nothing to show for it by running suboptimal PPC ads.
And because SEO and PPC campaigns are often designed to work in tandem, it simply makes the most sense for most tree care companies to leave both strategies to the professionals.
SEO vs. PPC: Frequently Asked Questions
Once you start putting real dollars behind SEO or PPC (or both), the differences start to matter quite a bit. Here are a few questions we often get about using the two.
How long does SEO take compared to PPC?
SEO takes time to build organic visibility, and there’s no guarantee when (or even if) a page will reach a certain position. Meanwhile, PPC campaigns can get your business into the paid search results once the campaign is built, approved, and running.
But to give you a ballpark idea, SEO improvements often take weeks or months to become apparent, while a professionally managed PPC campaign may start generating results within a matter of days.
Is SEO or PPC more expensive?
There isn’t a set price for either one. SEO costs depend on how much content you want, how much work your website needs, and the overall scope of your efforts, among other things.
PPC costs, on the other hand, depend on your ad budget, competition, targeting, and amount of campaign management assistance you need.
Does PPC help SEO rankings?
Nope, paying for Google Ads doesn’t directly improve your organic rankings. The two work separately in the search results. PPC can still give you useful information about the searches that generate clicks and leads, though, which may help shape future SEO work.
Should small tree service companies use SEO or PPC?
Your company’s size won’t necessarily tell you which channel makes the most sense. A small tree service company might use SEO to improve its organic presence across its service area, run PPC around specific services or locations, or use both.
Your existing rankings, competition, budget, and the type of work you want matter much more than size alone.
Can I stop PPC once my SEO rankings improve?
Better organic rankings may change how you use PPC, but they don’t automatically eliminate the need to advertise. You may still want additional visibility for storm cleanup services, a service you’re trying to book more heavily, or an area where your organic presence is weaker.
Can SEO and PPC target the same keywords?
Yep, they sure can. Your tree company could run an ad for “tree removal near me” while working toward an organic ranking for the same search. Paid and organic results are treated separately by Google, so the same search can have a place in both strategies.
How can SEO and PPC work together for a tree service company?
The two channels can cover different needs at the same time. Your SEO work might focus on building organic visibility for core services throughout your service area, while PPC puts extra attention on a service you want to book more of or a particular city.
That balance can change based on what’s happening in your business.
Get Expert Help for All Your SEO and PPC Needs
In practice, most tree care companies find that they need to address both of the primary online marketing strategies — SEO and PPC — to thrive. And given the stakes involved, it’s generally wise to get help from a team of marketing professionals.
As a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping tree care companies enjoy better visibility, ORB Tree Service Marketing makes it easy to find a partner you can rely on.
Contact us now to schedule a call with our president and founder, Austin Lee. During your call, Austin will take the opportunity to learn about your business, so we can create a tailored plan for expanding your reach, filling empty spots on your calendar, and increasing the prices you charge.
Sources & References
- Google Ads Help — “About the Search Terms Report”
Explains how the search terms report shows the searches that triggered ads and how advertisers can use that data to refine keywords and campaigns.
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2472708 - Google Ads Help — “Create a Search Campaign”
Covers the process of creating a search campaign, including setting a budget, choosing bidding options, and selecting campaign targeting.
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9510373 - Google Search Central — “SEO Starter Guide”
Explains how search engines discover, crawl, index, and rank website content and covers the fundamentals of improving a site’s organic search presence.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide - Ahrefs – “SEO Statistics”
Industry blog post compiling current SEO and search behavior statistics, covering organic traffic, ranking factors, and search engine usage trends.
https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-statistics
