People keep telling us SEO is a must, but I don't really get what it is. Should we get into it?

I'm a plumber in Ümraniye. Last year we were throwing 12,000 TL a month at ads. We rewrote our district and service pages on the site from scratch and cleaned up our Google Maps profile. About 7 months in, we dropped our ad budget down to 5,000 TL, but the number of jobs stayed the exact same. You never turn ads off completely, but it seriously balances out the costs.

If anyone tells you "you won't pay a dime for ads ever again," run the other way. For emergencies like a broken boiler, people click the very first sponsored ad they see. Organic results work great for brand trust and scheduled maintenance, but you won't catch peak winter emergency calls on organic search alone.

You don't need to throw thousands of lira at big agencies right off the bat. Just create dedicated landing pages on your site for the neighborhoods you service, like Kadıköy, Bostancı, Moda. Put price ranges, the exact work you do, and real photos of your shop on those pages. Even that alone will get you ranking higher in local searches.

nothing overly technical don't let it scare you. google just reads your site and checks if you're acutally giving users what they're looking for. it's not like ads where you just turn the tap on and off, it takes patience.

What's the current state of your website? Is it built on WordPress or custom software? Also aside from your website, is your Google Maps profile active, and do you get direct calls from there? The answers to these questions will determine where you need to focus.

To start off, get these three steps down: 1) Include the exact district and service name in your service page titles. 2) Optimize your page load speed for mobile devices. 3) Ask your customers to leave reviews on your website and Maps profile. These three will be more than enough to cover the basics.

weve been through the exact same thing man. we couldnt keep up with ad costs anymore. we rewrote the content on the site and added photos of the work we did. nothing happened for three months then in the fourth month people started calling through the site. dont cut off ads right away but definitely start investing in this side bit by bit.

Let me summarize what's been said so far. Trying to do this alone is the most expensive way.

Proven by experience.

I'd appreciate it if you shared the outcome. When you try to change everything at once, nothing settles.

Proven by experience.

I didn't know that.

I went through the same thing.

i disagree with you on this point. i mean ranking is the result search intent is the input. look at intent first.

Exactly like that. Everything goes well for the first three months; problems arise in the fourth.

Trying to do this alone is the most expensive way. Good luck with that.

I went through the same thing. Hasty decisions become decisions you have to fix six months later.

Hope this helps.

You're right. The answer varies greatly by industry; there is no one-size-fits-all rule.

If I were you, I'd go this route.

Let me share my experience. Solutions that work at a small scale collapse when you grow; I learned this late.

The harder it is to reverse a decision, the slower you should make it... Im also curious if anyone does it differently.

Sorry, but this doesn't apply in every case. When we decide without measuring, we always end up in the same place.

Mistakes made on the what is seo basics side are usually reversible but expensive. If you have questions, write them; I'll answer as best I can.

I'd say don't rush. When you try to change everything at once, nothing settles.

If you get three different answers on a topic, the question was asked wrong. Of course, it varies if your situation is different.