PPC vs. SEO: Which Is Better for HVAC Companies?

Ideally, you should use both SEO and PPC in tandem for your home services marketing. Both do a great job of driving traffic to your website.

But realistically, using both PPC and SEO might not make sense for your home services company since each serve two different purposes and generate leads differently.

So how do you know which you should do? Refer to your digital marketing plan.

Your digital marketing plan guides which tactics you use, so your efforts work together to drive your business in the right direction.

But if you don’t have a fleshed out digital marketing plan, use the following rules of thumb.

PPC, also known as pay-per-click, uses search engine advertising to drive traffic to your website (or landing page).

Use PPC if you:

• Want immediate results. With PPC, you can get a better online presence up and running in a month or two.

• Are just getting started in digital marketing. If you don’t have a full-fledged website, you can drive PPC traffic to landing pages to generate leads.

• Are running a seasonal or time-sensitive offer (like tune-ups or drain clearings). You can start and stop campaigns right away, so you’ll only advertise offers when they’re available.

• Want to target your audience by keyword, location or time of day. PPC geo-targeting lets you get specific with where you target your ads, so you can target a specific service area for more relevant traffic.

With PPC, you only pay for the traffic that actually comes to your website or landing pages—so you’ll only pay for results. (Just make sure your website is in order or your leads will leave without contacting you.)

You also pay for prime real estate on the search engine results pages (SERPs), appearing just below the Local Services ads (another way home services companies can get to the top of SERPs):

Learn more about using Local Services ads by Google for your home services company.

Is PPC ever not a good choice?

PPC is great for an immediate boost in lead volume and works well long-term—as long as your campaigns are managed effectively and align with your marketing strategy.

To get the most from your efforts, use PPC and SEO together. As our graphic below shows, a mature website relies mostly on SEO, but also uses PPC.

We recommend marketing your home services company with PPC until you can ramp up your SEO efforts.

SEO is a set of techniques used to rank your website higher on search engine results pages. Google and takes into account ranking factors that signal how relevant your site is to the user’s search query.

Use SEO if you:

• Already have a website, but it needs an upgrade. To really reap the benefits of SEO, you need a full-fledged website, not just landing pages, to drive traffic to. You need the space to create quality content for the keywords you’re targeting.


• Need more consistent traffic to your website. Where PPC is paid traffic, SEO is organic, or natural. This means your traffic doesn’t depend on money spent, so it’s more consistent than it would be with PPC alone.


• Can wait 3+ months to see results. You need a lot of time to ramp up your SEO (run diagnostics on your website, establish your goals, create content, etc.). It often takes three to six months before you start to notice improved rankings for your site.


When it comes to SEO for home security companies, local SEO is what really matters. As a service-based business, you want to show up in SERPs of users in your service area, not outside of it.

An optimized Google My Business listing is key to showing up in local search results. These local results appear between the PPC ads and the organic search results:

What’s the difference between local results and organic search results? The user’s intent. When a user searches using phrases like “in Phoenix”, Google makes sure to deliver them local businesses.

Hopefully, yours.

We’ve helped home services companies market their services for more than 14 years. If you need help getting started with SEO or PPC advertising, give us a call at (800) 339-7305 or drop us a line.