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SEO vs Ads ROI Simulator

Both channels, month by month, over the horizon you choose. The useful answer is not which one wins. It is when the lines cross, and whether your runway reaches that month.

SEO vs Ads ROI Simulator

Live

Runs both channels month by month over your horizon. The interesting number is not which channel wins. It is the month the lines cross, and whether your runway reaches it.

Scenario

Horizon24 months

Comparing these two channels over less than 12 months guarantees paid wins, and that is a property of the horizon, not the channels.

Currency

Shared economics

Held constant so the comparison is fair.

Average order / contract value

Gross margin70%

Paid search

Media budget / month

Average CPC

Click → lead rate3.2%

Lead → customer rate18%

Annual CPC inflationAuction prices rise as competitors enter. Modelling a flat CPC over three years is the most common error in this comparison.9%

Management fee12% of spend

Organic search

SEO investment / month

Organic clicks today / month

Organic clicks at maturity / monthWhere the programme plateaus. Sanity-check it against the total search volume of the terms you intend to rank for, because this is where optimistic SEO business cases usually break.

Months to maturity9 mo

Click → lead rate2.4%

Lead → customer rate24%

Traffic retained if you stopThe asset test. Paid traffic goes to zero the day the card is declined; organic decays slowly. This slider is the whole difference between renting and owning demand.88%

Crossover

Month 6

organic overtakes paid

Paid net position

$73k

23% ROI · $1,371 CAC

Organic net position

$723k

430% ROI · $317 CAC

Advantage at horizon

$650k

in favour of organic

Cumulative profit

Gross profit less channel cost, accumulated. Below the zero line you are still paying the programme back.

Paid searchOrganic search

Organic overtakes paid in month 6

A crossover inside the first year is unusually strong and is normally a sign of high paid CPCs plus real existing domain authority. Front-load the SEO investment, because the compounding starts sooner than the finance team will expect.

Head to head

Totals across the full 24-month window.

Metric	Paid search	Organic search
Total invested	$323k	$168k
Clicks delivered	41k	92k
Customers won	235	530
Cost per customer	$1,371	$317
Revenue generated	$565k	$1.3M
Return on spend	1.8x	7.6x
Break-even month	M1	M4
Monthly clicks if you stop paying	0	4.6k

Recommended split

Sized from measured efficiency, then corrected for your horizon.

Paid search25%

Organic search75%

Organic overtakes paid in month 6. Fund paid heavily until then to hold pipeline flat, and shift toward the 75% organic weighting as rankings land.

The asset argument

Paid traffic the month after you stop

The auction has no memory

0 clicks

Organic traffic the month after you stop

88% retained

4.6k clicks

Value of that residual traffic

Priced at your paid CPC

$30k / mo

Combined net at recommended split

vs $723k for the best single channel

$1.1M

This row is the honest version of the argument. Paid buys traffic; organic buys an asset that keeps producing after the invoice stops. Whether that asset is worth its ramp cost depends entirely on how long you intend to be in business, which is why the horizon slider changes the answer more than any other input here.