2021 The Best SEO Guide

Often customers ask what is the difference between SEO and SEM ? Under what circumstances SEO can be used, and under what circumstances SEM can be used, let's take a look today.

The display of SEO and SEM in search results is very different

When we search for a product in Google, the search results displayed by SEM will generally have an "advertisement" logo, and it will be at the top or bottom. SEO results are included in the natural search results under SEM.

Is there a connection between SEO and SEM?

Although SEO and SEM have different sections, they also have some connections. The traffic brought by SEM may improve our website rankings. Of course, this is not absolute.

The difference between SEO and SEM

The difference between the two is not only reflected in the performance of search results, including the choice of keywords, the ratio of input and output returns, and the ranking rules, there are not small differences.

About keywords

When doing SEO, most people basically use various tools to query the search volume of some keywords, and select keywords based on their performance results. And most people will choose some very popular keywords to optimize, but in fact, this increases the difficulty of our optimization, and it is difficult to modify it in the future. After all, if the keywords are modified, the previous efforts on them will be wasted. But SEM can change keywords, and it will not have any impact on our website.

About the website

SEO has very high requirements on the layout of the website, whether it is frequency, activity or details page, it must be carefully maintained, and the content of the website must be updated frequently to keep our ranking in a good position.

However, the focus of SEM is more on the loading speed of web pages, the user experience on PC and mobile terminals, and the content of landing pages. If the website loading speed is too slow, we will have many customers jump out, which is definitely something we don’t want to see. At the same time, the settings in our website are also closely related to customer experience. Some user-friendly settings will bring us unexpected gains.

About investment and return

Compared with SEM, SEO's return on investment is more uncertain. SEO is slow in the initial stage and requires investment of manpower. The return ratio does not have an accurate value, and the effect varies from person to person.

The return on investment ratio of SEM is more clear. After all, you have spent advertising costs, and exposure is definitely guaranteed. Naturally, our energy must be placed on advertising optimization. The better the advertising optimization, the better the effect.

Whether we are doing SEO or SEM, the ultimate goal is to find high-quality enquiries. SEM will bring faster and more efficient results. Good use can help us bring enough conversions and transactions. SEO is more in a stable situation. Next, do a traffic boost for us and use it as an aid.

Let’s compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two

SEM can choose the country, region, language, etc. according to our needs, which can greatly improve our accuracy. SEO optimization is generally for a specific domain name. If we change the domain name, the previous efforts will be wasted.

SEM is more diverse in setting keywords, and keywords can be changed and filtered at will. But SEO can only optimize fixed keywords, which is very restrictive.

The period for SEM to see the effect is shorter, while SEO takes a period of time to be effective, and the traffic cannot be guaranteed.

The above is not to say that if you do SEM, you don't need to do SEO. In fact, the best way is to combine the two.

SEM can identify the effect of some keywords for us. We can use the keywords with good effect in SEM to combine with website SEO. For example, when doing external site optimization, you can use these good keywords to make external links to the site. Combining SEO with SEM can make us appear more frequently in search results and attract more accurate traffic to our website. This is undoubtedly a good solution.

The current SEO highly relies on technical components to improve website ranking capabilities, and has many emerging technologies, new tools and indicators (such as core web page indicators). At the same time, the implementation of technical SEO usually requires cooperation with multiple teams, and joint efforts are required to ensure the support of technical components for SEO.

The core elements of 2021 will remain the same-every SEO must understand the basics of crawling and indexing, as well as the technical basics that must be met before a website can rank. Among them, there are 5 SEO techniques worth paying attention to:

1. Focus on the basics

“The most underrated technical SEO strategy has always been the fundamental best practices. Our focus on the “next best thing” means we're often not talking about the basic fundamentals.”

The most underestimated seo technology strategy has always been the most basic best practice. We always focus on "near perfect", which means we usually don't talk about the most basic things.

Because the most underrated technical SEO strategy is always the basic best practice. These basics include some hard skills, such as understanding how to identify and fix crawlability, indexing, accessibility, and site performance issues, and how to prioritize problems encountered.

2. Prepare for the core network life

"The page exprience update consists of core web vitals, mobile-friendliness, web app security, and removing interstitials. Progress will require an array of talents, meaning seo will have a more involved seat at the table."

Page experience updates include core web content, mobile friendliness, web application security, and removal of interstitial ads. To make progress, you need a lot of talent, which will bring more opportunities for SEO to participate, because these factors will affect our bottom line.

If you can only engage in one area of ​​technical SEO in 2021, please increase website speed! Improving website speed is a key priority! ! !

What are the optimization suggestions for speed improvement?

• Start using content delivery networks, such as cloudflare.com.

• Implement server-side caching for markup and design assets (such as CSS and JavaScript), and minimize the number of individual requests for each page by making CSS and JavaScript inline implementations.

• Optimize media files by converting to next-generation formats and compressing the size and use of data.

• Use tools such as BuiltWith, Wappalyzer, and Lighthouse to investigate which third-party scripts have been loaded on the page, and delete them when they are no longer needed, or move scripts compatible with tag management tools.

• Focus on image performance optimization.

• Work with analysts and other internal teams to establish processes and expectations for adding and removing tags.

• Set requirements and expectations around page speed early in the development process.

3. Use architecture and structured data strategically

In order to ensure that searchers can read the content of their website, index it and provide it to searchers, many SEOs rely on structured data and an architectural framework to organize all content. Structured data can provide search engines with more contextual information about the entities contained in the website. Some structured data has a significant impact on search results or how Google processes and understands the website, but website operators need to use it with a clear intent and purpose. Structured data to see the results.

4. Use automation to get the job done

"The technical SEO industry has been exploding with new ideas and innovations, particularly related to analyzing data and automating process, which moved programming, languages ​​like python into the spotlight."

In the past two years, new ideas and innovations have continuously emerged in the technical SEO industry, especially related to large-scale data and SEO process automation, which has led to programming languages ​​such as Python to become the focus of attention.

Why is automation important? Not only can it make your daily work easier and more streamlined, but it can also have a positive impact on your business.

Improving the time to complete tasks (performance optimization) is the core of every business, not only because of the upcoming May 2021 page experience update, but also because it affects all channels and directly affects the bottom line of the business (sales, number of users). Is of interest to key decision makers.

In 2021, explore ways that automation can help you achieve technical SEO and broader business goals more effectively.

5. Don't forget to analyze and report

"The truth is that technical SEO is often like washing dishes – no one gives you much credit for it, but they sure notice when you break something."

SEO success is gradual and gradual, and it usually takes months to years to finally determine how your work will be rewarded. But what if something goes wrong? The truth is that technical SEO is often like a dishwashing-no one praises it, but when you break something, they will definitely notice.

"Organic traffic can be impacted by a lot of external factors, or your other, non-technical seo campaigns. Tactics like seo split-testing or counterfactual forecasting can help to isolate these effects in many cases."

Natural flow will be affected by external factors or other non-technical SEO activities.

In many cases, strategies such as seo split testing or counterfactual prediction can help isolate these effects.

Summarize:

Although the core of technical SEO work will remain unchanged in 2021, there are still plenty of opportunities to build and improve basic skills, implement structured data and automation, clarify the way to analyze and report results, and improve core web indicators.

add:

The following core themes of technical SEO:

• Technical SEO basics

• Crawling ability

• Indexed

• Accessibility and website performance

Among these themes, the core points are:

• How to look at the crawl budget

• How to understand and correctly format the robots.txt file

• How to build a strong website structure (plus internal linking strategy!)

• How to write and submit a sitemap

• The ins and outs of standardization

• How to add and test structured data

• How to audit your website for accessibility

• Mobile performance and website security

• In-depth application of technical SEO principles and practices in SEO tools

Basic knowledge of technical SEO:

Can be combined with Moz Pro and Google Search Console to view the coverage of site technology seo.

Grabable design:

Understand the factors related to the ability of search engines to crawl websites. Combined with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Moz Pro, Screaming Frog and Splunk related accounts.

Create index:

Include site maps, normalized and structured data to build a website that is more likely to be correctly indexed by search engines. It can be tested in MozBar, Moz Pro, Screaming Frog, Google Search Console and Google’s free tagging assistant and rich results test.

Prioritize accessibility and site performance:

Including accessibility audits, performance and security. Site problem finding can be done in Moz Pro and Google’s Lighthouse, PageSpeed ​​Insights and mobile device friendly tests.