What are your Google Ads really costing you?
Pick your trade and market, enter how many clicks you buy a month, and see the annual burn. Every click is rent — here's the meter, and what you could be building alongside it.
$61,152
$5,096/month · 100 clicks at $50.96 each
Every click you buy is rent. The meter never stops, and the day you stop paying you disappear from the results.
Those ads can keep running. But there's a smarter asset worth building alongside them: a real person optimizing your site against real organic search data, with twice-yearly Visibility Reviews — visibility you actually own.
Clicks are rent. Rankings are an asset.
When you buy Google Ads, you rent the top of the results. The day your budget runs out, you disappear — and your competitors take the spot. There is nothing wrong with renting while you need the leads. The mistake is renting forever and never building anything you own.
Organic search visibility is the asset. It takes longer to build, but once you rank, a growing share of your leads arrive without paying per click. The Growth tier puts a real person on your site, optimizing against real organic search data with twice-yearly Visibility Reviews — so your rankings keep climbing instead of decaying.
Frequently asked questions
How much do Google Ads cost for contractors?+
In the Shenandoah Valley, a single ad click runs roughly $6 to $51 depending on trade and city. HVAC in Charlottesville tops the list near $51 per click; tree service runs closer to $6 to $9. At 100 clicks a month, that is anywhere from $7,000 to over $60,000 a year in ad spend.
Are Google Ads worth it for trade businesses?+
Ads work — they put you at the top of the results today. The catch is that every click is rent: the moment you stop paying, you vanish. They are worth running, but they are not an asset. The smartest move is to run ads while you build organic visibility you actually own alongside them.
How is this estimate calculated?+
Monthly spend is simply your clicks per month multiplied by the cost-per-click for your trade and city. Annual spend is that figure times twelve. The default cost-per-click figures come from Semrush US data pulled in April 2026 for real Valley search terms. You can override the cost-per-click with your own number for an exact result.
Will SEO let me stop running Google Ads?+
No — and you should not try to. The honest answer is to run both. Ads cover you today; organic search visibility compounds over time so a larger share of your leads arrive without paying per click. SEO lowers your dependence on ad spend rather than replacing it overnight.
What is a good cost-per-click for HVAC, plumbing, or roofing?+
There is no universal "good" number — it is set by competition in your market. Valley figures range from about $12 for plumbing in Harrisonburg to nearly $51 for HVAC in Charlottesville. What matters more than the per-click price is how much of your traffic you can earn organically instead of renting.
Cost-per-click figures sourced from Semrush US data (April 2026) for real Shenandoah Valley search terms across Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, and Staunton. Actual costs vary with competition, season, and Google Ads Quality Score. This tool gives an estimate to start a conversation, not a quote.