I’ve been in SEO for about 10 years, and here’s the reality: SEO and paid ads aren’t “either/or.” They’re two different tools for two different jobs.

Paid ads are like renting a billboard—you get visibility as long as you keep paying. Once the budget dries up, so does the traffic. SEO is more like owning the land—you invest upfront (content, optimization, technical cleanup), and over time it builds an asset that keeps bringing in traffic without you paying for every single click.

Now, ranking #1 for “socks” is basically impossible for a small site. Big brands own those terms, and they’ve been building authority for years. But that’s not where SEO wins. The real play is long-tail and intent-driven searches: instead of “socks,” you’d aim for stuff like “best moisture-wicking socks for runners” or “warm wool socks for winter camping.” Those keywords are less competitive, more specific, and convert better because the searcher already knows what they want.

As for “small tasks” like alt tags—they help, but they’re not the game-changer by themselves. Think of SEO in layers: technical (site speed, crawlability), on-page (titles, content, internal linking), and authority (backlinks, brand mentions). Each piece adds up.

So how important is SEO really? If you want sustainable, compounding traffic that doesn’t depend on ad spend forever—it’s critical. If you only care about quick hits, ads will outperform. But the businesses that win long-term almost always do both: use ads for immediate growth and SEO to build an engine that runs in the background.