The four channels compared

Side by side

	Paid ads	Local search	Organic search	The website
First enquiry possible	Same day	Weeks	Months	Immediately, from other channels
How it charges	Per click	Work, then free	Work, then free	One-off, then upkeep
Stops when you stop paying	Yes, that day	No, slow decay	No, slow decay	No
Main constraint	Budget	Distance to the searcher	Competition and time	Whether it converts
Typical failure	Spending on the wrong searches	Wrong categories, thin profile	Impatience, then abandonment	Traffic arrives and leaves
You can do it yourself	Badly	Yes, and the method is free	Partly	Rarely

What the measured figures add

Paid ads have a price you can look up. Across twenty-five Dublin trades a click ranged from about thirteen dollars for a roofer to about thirty cents for a barber on 9 September 2026. That spread decides whether advertising is a cheap experiment or a serious commitment before any strategy is discussed.

Local search has demand you can look up. Local seo companies dublin draws about 350 searches a month and local seo dublin about 80, which tells you most people in this market are looking for a supplier rather than for information.

Organic search has difficulty you can look up. The terms in this trade range from a difficulty of 29 for locksmith dublin to 65 for digital marketing agency dublin. A trade in the twenties is a different project from one in the sixties.

The website has none of these. Nothing published measures whether your site converts, which is why it is both the most important channel and the one most often skipped in a proposal.

The order most Dublin businesses should follow

Website first, because everything else lands on it. Then local search, because the profile is the largest free lever and moves fastest. Then paid ads, to cover the gap while unpaid work matures and to learn which phrasings convert. Then organic search as the long-run cost reducer.

That order changes if the phone needs to ring immediately, in which case ads move to the front and everything else follows behind them. The next page handles the exceptions.

What no comparison can settle

What a customer is worth to you. Every channel becomes cheap or ruinous depending on that number, and it is the one figure this guide cannot supply.