SEO Tips & Advice

Free SEO Tips and Advice for Your Website by FIZZ designs & SEO, a experienced SEO company since 2004.

Questions to ask an SEO

Free Beginners Guide to Hiring an SEO, What you need to know and ask!

Can you explain what is SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimisation. It is a key part of any website looking to attract traffic to their website. There are two common parts to SEO known as Local SEO and Organic SEO.

What is an SEO consultant?

An SEO consultant is someone who has experience and knowledge in the field of search engine optimisation. This can be organic SEO, local SEO and technical SEO.

This consultant can be hired by a company to devise a plan for a website that will help drive more internet search traffic towards the website using a wide selection of techniques, content and strategies.

SEO consultants are normally freelance (like me) and can be hired on a monthly contract.

What's the difference between Local SEO and Organic SEO?

Local SEO is based around a geographical location or areas which organic SEO does not necessarily have.

It is the practice of building signals of relevance, good ratings and relevant services around a specific location and business.

Organic SEO is a marketing practice that revolves, more or less, around a website and the structure and quality of content and within its pages.

Why local SEO is Important!

Local search engine optimisation is similar to SEO in that it is also a process affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results.

This process focuses on exposing your appearance to as many people within your local area. This is great for customers who wish to use, hire, buy from businesses within their local areas opposed to using nationwide companies.

We work hard to enhance your Google My Business profile, being well found on Google Maps is essential for any local business looking to get local custom. Being well-rated is also a factor in converting leads to completed sales.

Does my website need SEO?

Not all websites need local or organic SEO however if you want your website to have explosive growth in website traffic, more leads and increased sales from organic search, you will require Search Engine Optimisation aka SEO.

Websites that will push traffic from direct sources like social media or offline advertising don't necessarily need a lot of SEO. We would always advise the very basics so that your business or website is at least listed when someone searches for it by name.

How much does SEO cost?

One of the biggest questions we get asked is how much does SEO cost. This is a very difficult question as all websites will require a different level of work. Some more than others, some a total restructuring of the layout, pages, content and structure.

Once a plan is made for the sitewide changes and webpage optimisation work, you will receive the quote in writing.

Will SEO increases sales?

Indeed it can and we know this first hand. And of course, by working in SEO since 2004, I can sit here knowing that I have helped hundreds of business and companies during this time to drive more traffic to their websites.

The bottom line is that if you increase the traffic flow of people that are searching for your products or services to your website you will increase sales, that will naturally happen.

So yes! SEO will increase sales.

SEO for Wordpress?

My team and I have been working with Wordpress for well over a decade now. This experience gives us knowledge and understanding of how to get the most out of the Wordpress platform and help our clients develop their web site into a tool and advertising machine that will drive traffic via the search phrases that we rank on Google for them.

We build all our sites these days on Wordpress and use a number of tools and software to work with this great platform to better the SEO.

If you already have a Wordpress website we can work on it to develop the best SEO strategies and plan for moving forward.

SEO Advice for Companies and Small Businesses?

How can I increase traffic to my website?

This is one of the questions that answers and drives traffic to this website.

But is this a good question or a phrase to be found for?

The answer to that is simple… It focuses on the issue, and that is how the customer perceives the issue based on the knowledge they have of that subject!

They don’t complicate it too much, and they just type in the query in the Google search engine.

As a thumb rule, always focus on what people search for, not on what you think they will search for.

There’s a fundamental mistake that a lot of business owners make. Because they deeply understand their products and services, the business experts forget that the customer does not. Don’t get too technical. You want to associate your search terms with the customer’s experience.

Because of the above, the heading of this section is ‘how do I get more people to my website’? It can have a lot more options and phrases i.e. keywords to be useful or that could have been used.

Other search examples could be:

How to improve local and organic search traffic Google brings to my site?
Boost website traffic and views to my site?
How can I boost sales for my website?
What steps can I take to improve my website?
What can I do to rank my website on Google?
What steps do I need to take my website to number one on Google?

Most of these questions are too sophisticated or advanced and I worked on simplifying them. When I write search phrases for client websites, I break it down and try to think and put myself in the audience’s shoes.

By using common sense along with industry data for the clients’ services, products, as well as analyzing how clients search, I can devise the most relevant search phrases to optimize landing pages, e-commerce carts, and structure the site.

To get your pages to the top of Google, you need the right search phrases, solid content, an understanding of search data, and a well-structured system. Be sure to provide your SEO consultant with as much information as possible. Google does not rank thin content websites.

Think of Google and other search engines as giant “Question and Answer” machines. Google’s goal is to answer questions efficiently and serve the most relevant search results. Only those websites that have the most relevant content have the chance of ranking at the top.

What are SEO Backlinks?

A backlink is a link that is created when another website refers to yours. Backlinks are essential to a website's visibility and prominence in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

They are also helpful in improving a site's SEO ranking. Backlinks may have different values depending on the incoming link’s Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR). For instance, a backlink from a local small business website differs from backlinks from government websites or known directory sites, which carry more 'link juice'.

Imagine that you are a local flower shop. Now, imagine that you get a backlink from an article you wrote to a better flower shop website with good authority and thousands of views daily.

Now, that backlink is going to carry a lot of weight and will positively benefit your website. Some call these niche backlinks.

What is Link Juice?

Link juice refers to the value or power that is transferred through the backlinks to your website. Nevertheless, link juice is influenced by the website’s ranking. For example, backlinks from .gov and .edu sites carry significant weight.

What does SERP mean?

Serps is an abbreviation for Search Engine Results Pages, these pages are displayed for users upon searching for specific content in Google for instance.

Search Engine Results Pages are the pages shown by the various Search Engines to the users, basing on what information they have requested for.

It is important to note that some search engines like Google do display other paid for advertising on these pages.

The importance of SEO for small businesses

It makes sense that if a website is ranking on Page One of Google, it is likely receiving more traffic than those ranked on subsequent pages.

SEO helps in small business website optimisation by ensuring the site is mobile-ready, user friendly, and is a fast load website.

How we define Smart Content

An organic SEO specialist must be a practitioner and a thinker at the same time in order to be effective. That’s exactly what we do. We comply with the guidelines set forth by the search engines, and we also comply with all the regulations and the checklist given. If you comply with the strict rules set by the search engines, then you will have a higher chance to be listed at a better position in the search ranking.

However, it is now known that the amount and relevant content of each website page greatly determines the Google’s ranking of the site.

How many organic positions are there on each page of Google?

Each page of Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) contains a maximum of 10 organic listings.

These pages continue to be generated until all possible answers to a query have been exhausted.

ORGANIC SEARCH RESULTS vs. PAID SEARCH RESULTS?

This is a question that pops up if not weekly definitely monthly. What's the best, organic search results or PPC? And now that the internet has a lot more data to answer this question, it's my pleasure to answer it.

Adwords / Paid Advertising / PPC advertising

Can be done by the business owner or skilled industry expert (SEM)
Get your business advert and website displayed on search within a few hours
You have to pay each time someone clicks on your advert
You can set up the advert(s) yourself however you may cost your business more money this way
Best to hire a SEM, search engine marketer, this ranges between £350 to £1000 per month
This style of advertising tends to be a more short term strategy

Organic SEO / Search Engine Optimisation

To get good results it's best if you hire an expert SEO with good credentials and successful portfolio
Organic search optimisation can happen with a number of weeks but can take between 6-9 months to mature and reach its peak
A well-structured website with good SEO strategies will be ranking very well by the time it reaches 12 months
Organic search is a longer more stable strategy for businesses looking to still be in search 36 months down the line and sometimes more
The organic option seems to be more trusted than the paid advertising options across the internet
In the long run, organic SEO advertisers are found to be in business longer than businesses who opted for the quick fix, PPC ads.

We have clients and websites that have been advertised in organic search for more than a decade. These businesses are still going strong and very well trusted within their communities and industries. We will always opt for organic search.

Whilst Adwords and other sponsored paid for adverts are good for a short term period we would always advise our clients to go for the long term option (organic SEO) and make sure that they stand the chance of being in organic search results pages many years down the line.

WHY SEO IS BETTER THAN PPC

Organic search engine traffic can provide a better ROI over other digital marketing advertising with organic proving to provide better value for money against PPC advertising. While SEO is neither cheap nor easy, it will generally be more cost-effective than all other marketing tactics for delivering brand awareness and relevant traffic to your website with organic also providing longevity.

WHO IS THE MOST USED ONLINE SEARCH ENGINE?

Google is by far the worlds busiest search engine business.

When doing SEO we focus mainly on the Google search engine because it gets the most daily, monthly and annual searches. It's our aim to get you the most traffic, leads, sales and to do this it makes sense we focus on Google. We do however submit our websites to all the main search engines and many smaller ones too.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION & SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?

There is absolutely no difference between search engine optimisation and search engine optimization apart from the obvious spelling difference.

In the United Kingdom, we spell optimiSation with an S in the middle of the word and in the USA they spell optimiZation with a Z in the middle.

Whatever way you spell it you will be getting the same thing. One thing you should know encase you haven't figured it out yet but SEO is an abbreviation of search engine optimisation worldwide.