My younger brother is employed by an SEO marketing company. He ridicules anyone who uses PPC for their business. Pay per click is when the business owner pays to have a google ad listed at the top of a page. If a potential customer searches for Heating or A/C repair, the HVAC business would show up at the top of the page. The ad is highlighted. That HVAC company has paid dearly for that spot. This type of advertising is called pay per click. That is literally what it is. Everytime a client clicks on the ad, the HVAC business is required to pay for that lead. The strategy is that the HVAC business is paying to get people to find and access their website. SEO is when a customer would naturally find the business. My sibling uses keywords such as Heating, furnace, boiler, air quality and A/C repair or maintenance. If anyone types in those words, the HVAC business who up on the first page one of google. They don’t get the top spot. The google ads are reserved for those first spots. But his business could be located directly below the ads. Anytime a potential customer clicks on the link to the website, no money has to be exchanged. The business is still listed on page one but this visibility doesn’t cost anything. SEM has been proven effective. So has SEO. My younger brother doesn’t understand why anyone would be willing to pay for a service he can provide for free. I believe the reason is that the HVAC companies still have to pay either way. They either pay for the PPC, or they pay an SEO professional to get their website to rank high on google. For us regular people, we are unable to do the things that my younger brother does.