Ads Don't Fail. Websites Do.

I talk to contractors pretty regularly who've "tried Google Ads and they didn't work." Budget ran out. Calls didn't come. They moved on.

When I look at what actually happened, almost every time the story is the same. The ads were running fine. The clicks were real. The problem was the page those clicks landed on.

They sent paid traffic to their homepage. The homepage had the company name at the top, a general list of services in the middle, and a phone number buried somewhere near the bottom. On a phone, that number wasn't even tappable.

Here's the thing: Google Ads are a delivery mechanism. Their only job is to get a person from a search result to your website. What happens after that is entirely your website's problem.

When someone searches "HVAC repair Asheville" and clicks your ad, they're expecting to land on a page specifically about HVAC repair in Asheville. If they land on a generic homepage instead, they have no confirmation they're in the right place. Most of them leave. You paid for that click and got nothing.

The fix is sequencing this correctly. SEO builds the service pages and location pages that give ads somewhere useful to send people. A page built around "water heater replacement in Asheville" will convert paid traffic. A homepage won't. Build the infrastructure first — then turn on the ads. Both channels will perform better because of it.

Step 1: Pull up your website on your phone. Search for your most common service and pretend you're a new customer. Can you immediately tell you're in the right place and tap a number to call?

Step 2: Check whether you have dedicated pages for your top 2-3 services. If everything lives on your homepage, that's the first thing to fix before spending on ads.

Step 3: If your pages are solid and you want to test paid traffic, start with Google LSA ads. You pay per call, not per click — and calls from people who already searched your service convert at a much higher rate than cold traffic.

→ Why Your Homepage Can't Rank You — And What to Build Instead

→ Inconsistent leads are a visibility problem, not a hustle problem. The Traction Sprint fixes that in 90 days. See What's Included

Q: I've been told to run Google Ads AND do SEO at the same time. Is that actually worth it or am I spreading my budget too thin?

A: You can run both simultaneously, but the order of operations matters. If your website only has a homepage and no service pages yet, every dollar you put into ads is going to underperform until those pages exist. I'd put the first 60-90 days into building the foundation — service pages, location pages, GBP — and then layer LSA ads on top. Once the pages are there, running both at the same time makes sense. The SEO builds long-term organic rankings while the ads bring in calls while you wait for that momentum to compound.

Keep going!

— John