September and October 2026 bring something specific for Brazilian businesses that rely on Google Ads and Meta Ads: the first round of the general elections is on October 4, and the runoff, where there is one, on October 25. During this period, public attention is split with political news, candidates and parties also buy digital media space, and many companies use the moment to review costs before the end of the year.
For the small business owner who put almost all customer acquisition into paid ads, the practical question is only one: if I cut or pause the budget now, where will leads come from? This article covers that without magic promises. We show what changes between paid and organic traffic, where local SEO fits, what can be done in 30, 60 and 90 days, and how to track it all with free Google tools.
Why ads weigh more on the budget in an election year
Ads on Google and Meta work as an auction. The price of each click or of each thousand impressions depends on how many advertisers compete for the same audience, at the same moment, and on how much each one is willing to pay. There is no fixed price list: today's price is not next month's price.
In an election year, Brazilian law allows candidates, parties and coalitions to pay for content boosting online. That puts more players competing for attention on the same screens, especially on social media. How much this affects your cost per click depends on your industry, your region and your target audience, and we will not make up a percentage. What you can do is look at your own history:
- Compare cost per click and cost per lead for August and September this year with the same months of 2025 and 2024 (which was also an election year, for municipal offices).
- Look at the conversion rate, not just the click. If clicks got more expensive and conversion dropped, each new customer is costing more.
- Split by channel: Google search network, display, Instagram and Facebook usually behave differently.
If cost per lead went up and cash is tight, cutting ads is a rational decision. The problem shows up when ads were the only source of customers. Then a budget cut becomes a revenue cut.
Paid and organic traffic: what happens when the money stops
The core difference is simple. With paid traffic, you rent the position: while you pay, you show up; when you stop, you disappear the same day. With organic, you build the position through content, technical work and reputation. It takes longer to arrive, but it does not vanish when the month turns.
| Aspect | Paid traffic (Google Ads, Meta Ads) | SEO (organic search and map) |
|---|---|---|
| When it starts bringing visits | The day the campaign is approved | Weeks to months, depending on competition and the state of the site |
| If the budget stops | Visits stop with it | Positions already earned keep generating visits |
| How the cost behaves | Recurring cost per click or impression, subject to the auction | Investment in work (content, technical, links); clicks are not charged |
| Sensitivity to seasonal competition | High: more advertisers, more competition for the same space | No auction; competition is on relevance |
| How it appears to the user | With the sponsored label | No label, in regular results and on the map, next to reviews |
| Short-term control | High: on, off, targeting by audience, region and time | Lower: depends on accumulated work and Google updates |
| What remains afterwards | Campaign data; visibility ends with it | Pages, content, reviews and domain authority remain yours |
It is not a choice of one against the other. Ads are great for testing offers, launching products and covering searches where you do not show up yet. SEO reduces dependence: the more searches you answer organically, the less your revenue swings with auction prices.
For the technical side (speed, indexing, structured data), our technical SEO 2026 guide goes into detail.
Local SEO: the shortcut most small businesses leave idle
A large share of the searches that bring customers to small businesses has local intent: "accountant in Curitiba", "vet clinic near me", "air conditioning repair south side". For these searches, Google usually shows a map block with a few businesses before the regular results. Showing up there costs no click.
Google Business Profile
This is the listing that appears on the map and in search. It is free, but it is almost always poorly filled in. The minimum:
- Correct primary category and secondary categories that describe what you actually do.
- Name, address, phone and hours identical to your website and social media. Inconsistent data confuses Google.
- Services or products listed with a description, not just a name.
- Real, up-to-date photos of the place, the team and the work.
- Regular posts: news, offers, answers to common questions.
Reviews
Reviews are a reputation signal for Google and for whoever is choosing. Ask satisfied customers for a review right after delivery, with the direct link, and reply to all of them, including negative ones, politely and without arguing. Never buy reviews or offer gifts in exchange for ratings: it violates Google policies and can take the profile down.
Pages per service and per region
If you serve several cities or neighborhoods, a generic "we serve the whole region" page rarely performs well. One page for each main service, and one for each city where you really operate, with its own content (not the same text with only the city name swapped), gives Google what it needs to show you in the right search.
What can be done in 30, 60 and 90 days
SEO does not deliver results in a week, and anyone promising that is selling something else. But it also does not need a year to start showing signs. A realistic plan for those starting now, right in the election stretch:
First 30 days: put the house in order
- Connect the site to Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4, if not already done, and record the baseline: clicks, impressions, average position and leads from organic.
- Technical audit: pages out of the index, 404 errors, broken redirects, mobile speed, duplicate titles and descriptions.
- Fix what blocks Google: sitemap, robots.txt, canonical tags, slow pages.
- Google Business Profile complete and reviewed.
- Keyword research: what your customer types when they need what you sell, focusing on searches with buying intent.
Days 30 to 60: content that answers the search
- Rewrite the most important service pages based on the keywords: clear title, what you do, for whom, where, FAQs and a call to contact.
- Create or adjust local pages, one per city or region you truly serve.
- Publish the first blog posts that answer real customer questions (the same ones that arrive on WhatsApp).
- Review landing pages to turn visits into leads: short form, visible WhatsApp button, proof of work.
On the conversion side, our anatomy of a converting landing page is worth reading.
Days 60 to 90: authority and fine-tuning
- Quality links: partners, suppliers, industry associations, local press. A few relevant ones are worth more than many random ones.
- Review routine running: a request after every delivery, a reply to every review.
- Reading Search Console: pages already appearing near the first page are the quickest candidates to climb with title, content and internal link tweaks.
- Comparison with the day-one baseline to decide what to reinforce and what to drop.
In less competitive markets, the first gains usually show up within this period. In highly competitive segments, 90 days is the time to build the foundation, and growth comes after. In neither case can anyone promise a position: Google does not sell organic rankings, and nobody outside Google controls the algorithm.
Do not switch ads off blindly
Before cutting the budget, write down how many leads per week come from paid and how many come from organic, the map and referrals. If ads bring most of them, reduce gradually, keep brand campaigns and the best-converting keywords, and use the difference to fund SEO. Cutting everything at once, with no organic base, usually means weeks of a silent phone.
How to measure: Search Console and Analytics, kept simple
Without measurement, SEO becomes a matter of faith. The two tools below are free and answer most of the questions that matter.
Google Search Console
Shows how Google sees your site: which searches generate impressions and clicks, the average position of each page, indexing errors and mobile issues. It keeps 16 months of history, which lets you compare this October with last year's. Focus on:
- Clicks and impressions in the performance report, filtered by page and by query.
- Average position for the queries that matter to your business, not all of them.
- CTR (click-through rate): many impressions and few clicks point to weak titles and descriptions.
- Page indexing: important pages that were left out of the index.
Google Analytics 4
Shows what visitors do after they arrive. In GA4, the "Organic Search" channel isolates visitors from organic search. What matters here is not visits, it is leads. Set these up as key events:
- Click on the WhatsApp button.
- Form submission.
- Click on the phone number (on mobile).
- Completed order, if there is an online store.
With this, you stop asking "how many visits did I get" and start asking "how many leads did organic bring this week, and what would they cost in ads". The second question is the one that helps decide the budget.
Weekly report: what should land on your desk
Nobody reads a monthly report with thirty charts. A short weekly summary, read in five minutes, keeps the owner informed and holds the work accountable. What it needs:
- Organic clicks and impressions for the week, compared with the previous week and the baseline.
- Leads from organic and the map (WhatsApp, form, phone).
- Queries that went up or down in position, with the matching page.
- What was done during the week: pages published, technical fixes, links earned, reviews answered.
- What will be done next week.
- Alerts: indexing drops, pages down, negative reviews without a reply.
If your SEO provider cannot say in one sentence what they did this week, little was probably done.
SEO done by people, supported by AI
AI has changed how SEO work gets done, and ignoring it would be naive. It speeds up repetitive tasks: grouping hundreds of keywords by intent, suggesting page structure, reviewing titles and descriptions in bulk, crossing Search Console data to find opportunities and drafting answers to frequent questions.
What AI does not do well on its own: know what your customer really asks at the counter, decide which services have margin and deserve their own page, check whether a piece of data is correct, write in your company's voice and take responsibility for the outcome. Mass-generated content, without review and without real experience behind it, tends to be treated by Google as low-quality content, which is the opposite of what you want.
The model that works is people deciding and reviewing, with AI doing the heavy lifting. Strategy, business knowledge and final review are human; volume and speed come from the tool. That is how we work in our websites and SEO service.
"Ads buy today's visit. SEO builds the channel that keeps bringing visits when the budget gets tight. In an election year, the difference between the two shows up in the cash flow."
Want to depend less on ads?
We look at your site, your Google Business Profile and the searches in your industry, and show you what can be done in the next 90 days. Straight talk, no commitment.
Chat on WhatsAppConclusion
An election year is no reason to panic, but it is a good dependence test. If revenue drops every time the ad auction heats up or cash requires cuts, the company is renting every customer it has.
The way forward is not to abandon ads, but to build, in parallel, a channel that keeps bringing leads without charging per click: a technically sound site, pages that answer what customers search for, a well-kept Google Business Profile, reviews and weekly measurement. Starting now, the next budget cut finds the company in a different position.
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth starting SEO in the middle of the election if results take time?
Yes, precisely because it takes time. Work done in October starts showing in the following months, when the election campaign is over and the end-of-year competition begins. Waiting for the election to pass before starting only pushes results further away.
Should I turn off Google Ads and Meta Ads?
Not necessarily. Ideally, measure how many leads each channel brings and how much each lead costs. Keep the campaigns with the best return, such as brand campaigns and high buying-intent keywords, and cut those that cost more than they bring. As organic grows, you can reduce the budget without losing volume.
How long does SEO take to bring results?
It depends on competition in your industry, your region and the current state of the site. In local, less competitive niches, the first signs usually appear within a few months; in highly competitive markets, it takes longer. Be wary of anyone promising the first page within a fixed deadline: nobody outside Google controls the rankings.
Do I need a blog to do SEO?
It is not mandatory. For many small businesses, what generates the most leads are well-written service pages, local pages and the Google Business Profile. The blog comes in to answer questions customers research before buying and to give the site more topics it can be found for.
How do I know SEO is working?
Through Search Console (clicks, impressions and average position for the searches that matter) and Google Analytics 4 (leads from the organic channel: WhatsApp, form, phone). Always compare with the baseline recorded before the work started and track it week by week.
