If you visit google, and search any key term, like, commercial photography florida for example. What you will see, other than the fact that samjohnston.com is there, is that there are links called "sponsored links". These are links that people have paid Google to put up on the first page of any given search term. These links have advantages and disadvantages, first, we'll talk about the advantages:

Advantages
The links are on the first page. That's it. That is honestly the only advantage to naturally achieving a search return on your website.

Disadvantages:
Cost. The ads are very expensive
Not always there. When you purchase a sponsored link's spot on Google, depending on the search term you choose, your link may or may not be rotated with others. With a naturally strong key phrase result, your link to your site will ALWAYS be there for people to see, and more importantly, click on.
They expire. When you purchase ad space from Google, the ads can expire if you have too many people click through to your site, meaning that if you paid $500 for a month, you'll not only not have everyone see it potentially, but if too many people click on it, Google will take the link down and put up some one else's!

When you hire an SEO professional, like Studio 4 Design, LLC, you get a result in the natural, also called relevance, search area. Here are the advantages and disadvantages to using an SEO Professional:

Advantages
Cost: These ads are almost always much less expensive than they would be for the same term if you went to Google and bought positioning from them.
Constant: The link is always there. The way that Google searches for and catalogues websites, they can lose strength, but do so very slowly, and more times than not the longer a website is positioned on the first page of Google the stronger it will become due to the increased numbers of clicks onto it.

Disadvantages
Its not free! The positioning isn't free!
Takes some time: It can take some time for your search results to come in on Google.