When companies decide to improve their digital reputation, there is widespread ignorance of the type of positioning and the options that exist. Although it may seem very basic, the most important thing is to know the difference between SEM positioning and SEO positioning:
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or paid traffic. It consists of hiring advertising campaigns through ads on search engines, social networks, YouTube ads, etc..
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or organic traffic. It is the traffic obtained by performing searches in different engines.
An increase in traffic can be achieved through a set of optimization actions on the website and the creation of quality content with the right keywords to drive positioning.
The big question is: Which is better? SEO positioning or SEM? The answer is not simple. Both are important, and the ideal is to complement them, but it is advised to work during the first phase on the SEO and then undertake SEM actions.
The problem with SEM is that it tends to be VERY direct (payment = better results), so it can represent a dependence on the investment. With this positioning, we obtain good results in the short term. In the case of being the first to enter the market it will be easy to win the position, but in a market as saturated as the current one it can become a double-edged sword. If many companies invest in the same campaigns, it is difficult to differentiate from the competition in order to sell the product, creating a direct relationship between investment and results. In this way, a problem can be generated and, no matter how much the investment is increased, the expected results are not achieved. This can be caused by the bidding of a competing company that invests more than we do or because the achievement of a sale ends up not being profitable.
On the other hand, SEO traffic achieves long-term results, but it has greater value due to its permanence, since it is like always having an asset if it is maintained correctly. It is based on quality content, when the user understands that you answer their questions and address their needs or provide valuable content. Without a doubt, it will stay in a better place for a longer period of time, which will achieve an increase in traffic, better positioning, and consequently will indirectly raise conversion and sales figures.
At PROA Comunicación we believe that SEM positioning can always be carried out, since at any time you can pay and receive it. But we believe that the real challenge is to establish a good SEO positioning and, for this, we have developed the ten tricks of SEO positioning
- Activate the SEO positioning. It seems logical, but we usually find that 30% of businesses have a website and have it closed for indexing in search engines. To solve this problem, you should deactivate the tab “Dissuade search engines to find my website” in WordPress and, in other CMS, check that the robots file or each page created has “Index”.
- Have a blog integrated with your website, with the aim of creating entries or posts on a daily basis. Pages are usually created at the beginning and therefore their creation date is outdated, losing weight in search engines. We must create up to date entries and win the position again.
- Optimize each entry for a keyword. The word we want to give focus to should be present in: title, URL, first paragraph of the entry, image name and description, target word and meta description.
- Friendly URLs. It is important that the name of the URL is legible and has to do with the keyword. It should be made up of words related to the title ignoring articles, prepositions and conjunctions, and separating them by hyphens. Example for this entry: /10-tricks-positioning-seo.
- Internal links are links between different entries so that the user can find everything he or she is looking for. Staying as long as possible on the website, looking for a conversion through the call to action.
- Link building, is about linking the page from other external sites such as forums, comments, blogs … The more external links, the higher the reputation of your entry, increasing its weight and score for positioning.
- Optimization of images. The less time it takes to load the page, the better the position and conversion. This is achieved by reducing the quality as much as possible without losing a good visualization of the images. Photoshop helps you to save the images in a reduced jpg or quality at least always 2 or 3 levels and adapting the size of the image for the web.
- Titles h1, h2, h3. In the contents of the entries mark the titles and their titles with the corresponding html tags. The page will be more readable for search engines, scoring in a very positive way.
- Length of your entries. Each entry or page should try to have at least 300 words. This will help to better index your content.
- Do not copy content. Search engines directly penalize duplicate content. It is better to publish less content, as long as it is your own.
Juan Gutiérrez
Specialist SEO and Digital Marketing Consultant
