2025 Google Ads & SEO

Clicking on these chapters will open the video on the YouTube site or app.

00:00 – Welcome, Set it and Forget it with Google?
0:44 – Wasted Ad Spend with Google Ads?
1:30 – Google’s Changing Search Results Page / ROI of Organic SEO
3:30 – What Can You Do? Reinvest / Reallocate Your Digital Marketing Budget
4:24 – Alternatives or Supplements to Google Ads / Organic SEO
5:00 – You Have Options / We’re Here to Help

Hey, this is Mark from Sties Creative. You remember that story about the frog in the kettle? You know, that poor soul died because the water kept getting hotter and hotter just gradually and he didn’t jump out of the pot.

Now, if your business has been investing monthly in on site SEO and / or Google ads, you may have unfortunately fallen into a very expensive “set-it-and-forget-it” kind of mentality. But that’s okay, because today I’m going to tell you how you could reinvest into other marketing efforts that can really boost your return on investment.

“But I thought being on the first page of Google was everything.” Well, the answer is it used to be, but it isn’t any longer. And let’s take a look why.

So, number one, do you do Google ads month in, month out? And do you love setting your money on fire? Because in 2024, it was estimated that $71 billion of ads were just going to pages like parks, domains and things like that that only bots and scripts visited. And that was like a 31% increase over the past couple of years of wasted ad spend. And this became such an issue that in October of 2024 Google had to come out and say, “Hey, we promise we’re no longer going to just automatically place your ad on these pages that only bots visit.” I’m not accusing Google of anything, but think about it, that they had to come out and make that statement.

Number two, have you taken a close look at how Google search results pages have been changing? Let’s examine this and take a much closer look. Now what I’m showing you here are some results that we had when we were examining things for a lawyer client that we have in Columbus, Ohio. And you can see at the top of the page that these sponsored ads are screened ads and only the top two payers get shown without a searcher having to click a “More Bankruptcy Lawyers” button. Now I don’t have the stats on how many people click something like that, but think about it. If your ad is placed at the bottom f that list on a second, every page that the user has to click something to take an action to go to, it’s got to be a pretty diminished number.

So below that you have your Google maps and you might think, “Well, I can get on Google Maps because I have a Google business profile.” But look here. See how the top one is sponsored? That’s an ad. So what if most of these become ads or all of these become ads?

And then below that on this particular search, you had eight listing websites that are kind of like Yellow Page sites they just list. In this case, the lawyers in the area take up so much real estate so that at the bottom of this page, there is only one organic listing for a law firm in the area for this search.

So when you have other sections like “People Also Ask” the AI snippet at the top, maybe there’s a Shopping Section depending on if you’re selling products. Again, this is taking up all the space that you were putting money into getting listed organically. You might have one space left on the page to compete for and the chances of you getting that if you’re in a competitive field are slim and people aren’t going to go to the second page on Google. So think about whether spending that money every month for one space on the page makes any sense anymore

So what can you do about it? Well, the average small business spends somewhere between $500 to $1,000 a month on on-website SEO. But remember, that’s competing for maybe just one or two spaces at the bottom of the first page. So that could be around $10,000 that you can reinvest in other forms of marketing and see if you can get a better return on investment.

So if you’re doing Google ads month over month or maybe social media ads because they have some similar practices, that’s big money because you’re talking between a thousand and $10,000 a month. All for what? On the Google search results page, maybe having one of the two spots at the top of the page or maybe one maps listing? So think about that. That’s 10 to $120,000 a year that you could try something new with your marketing plan.

So let’s try something new this year. Let’s just reinvest even a portion of what you were spending for on site SEO or for ads and put it into something like podcasting or a vlog on YouTube (or being on somebody’s podcast or vlog), streaming TV ads, Alexa or voice search, email marketing (email is going to be huge this year), traditional ads like billboard or transit ads, sponsorships, collaborations or working with an influencer.

In fact, Creative has already started helping clients who’ve realized they can’t win this “Google game.” And you have options too! So if we can be of help to you in diversifying your marketing, we love coming up with customized solutions for clients that save them money. And we truly hope that this upcoming year is the most successful and profitable for you and your business.