SEO vs SEM and which one to use.

[mrchow19910319]

I am about to do some freelance work just to test water.
And one of my potential client is a owner of a barber shop.

I can write him a website alright, but what happens after that I have no clue.
The thing I am worried about is that after I wrote him some site and host it online, whenever I search that particular site it does not come up in the search engine page. (or more like does not come up in the 1st few result)

I heard that a website needs some time before it can be seen on the search engine, because the search engine needs to index it.

If whatever site I put out does not come up into the 1st few search result, then it is hard to use it to promote your business isn’t it?
Also I will advise my client against SEM because it might cost him a lot of money, and also we are a local business, there is no point that everyone in china is gonna see his barber shop since most of people do not live in our city.
What do you guys think about SEM and does any one of your clients/former clients used it before?

I did some research on China’s SEM models. And all of them points out that as long as you keep paying the company(baidu) you will see they add in your site to the top of the search result and add a “ad” tag on it. So you will get more “clicks” but as soon as you stopped paying, your view counts decreases dramatically. It’s just a “pay to win” system.

How do I implement SEO into the site myself ? By including meaningful meta tags? Also baidu has a design/styling guide on their site (in chinese) as well as an article about SEO, if I just follow those guide line I should be fine right?

[geo3]

IMO that is not your job. The owner (or what ever marketing people they've hired) should be responsible for generating traffic. Your only concern should be making a functional site.

[mrchow19910319]

2 minutes ago, geo3 said:

IMO that is not your job. The owner (or what ever marketing people they've hired) should be responsible for generating traffic. Your only concern should be making a functional site.

i see. 

 

another question though.. if i did make the site, and hosted it on a local server, it will appear into baidu's search engine right?? 

[geo3]

I really have no Idea how that search engine works. If it were Google and your site has a valid public registered DNS then you should be indexed after a short time.

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, geo3 said:

I really have no Idea how that search engine works. If it were Google and your site has a valid public registered DNS then you should be indexed after a short time.

i see. this is gonna be my 1st freelancing job. I will see how it goes. Tomorrow I will go to the shop and talk to the owner. 

 

I am pretty confident that I can make a site that satisfy his needs. 

[2FA]

Their web crawlers are automated but if you want to speed it up, you can submit the URL to the search engine. In the case of Baidu, you need to create a Baidu webmaster tools account. For the record, I found all of this information with about 40 seconds of searching.

[duncannah]

Google has a page where you can request websites to be crawled: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812

[jdfthetech]

On 9/8/2018 at 7:35 AM, mrchow19910319 said:

How do I implement SEO into the site myself ? By including meaningful meta tags? Also baidu has a design/styling guide on their site (in chinese) as well as an article about SEO, if I just follow those guide line I should be fine right?

Implementing SEO is implementing proper page tags,(titles, pages named properly etc), meta (which isn't read as much these days) and making sure your content has all meaningful content laid out.  One aspect that is often overlooked is accessibility tags for the blind and making sure content is available for screen readers.  Don't obfuscate important content behind many layers of generating content (ie flask, php etc) and make sure all image tags are accurate.

In regards to SEM, this is Pay Per Click advertising generally.  It is an ongoing expense that requires data analysis and PPC campaign management.  It can be quite overwhelming and the costs can skyrocket depending on the system.  I generally refer folks away from SEM unless we are dealing with a budget in the 10K a month range.

[mrchow19910319]

4 hours ago, jdfthetech said:

Implementing SEO is implementing proper page tags,(titles, pages named properly etc), meta (which isn't read as much these days) and making sure your content has all meaningful content laid out.  One aspect that is often overlooked is accessibility tags for the blind and making sure content is available for screen readers.  Don't obfuscate important content behind many layers of generating content (ie flask, php etc) and make sure all image tags are accurate.

In regards to SEM, this is Pay Per Click advertising generally.  It is an ongoing expense that requires data analysis and PPC campaign management.  It can be quite overwhelming and the costs can skyrocket depending on the system.  I generally refer folks away from SEM unless we are dealing with a budget in the 10K a month range.

thanks for replying with detialed info. much appreciated.