Denver Web Design & Denver SEO - The Katz Web Design Blog

I recently purchased some domains for SEO, and I wanted to do some research about best practices for using multiple domains on the same content.

The good news?  Google does not punish duplicate content; they just sort it out themselves. (more…)

Much search engine optimization revolves around guessing how users will search to find your site. When you’re optimizing for organic (non-paid) search results, you may be surprised to find out how much word order impacts the search ranking.

Optimize your website for organic search with varying keyword order

If you search the major search engines, you will find that the order of your keywords makes a huge difference on where your website ranks. (more…)

A picture [of my cat] is worth a thousand words.

I’ve been waiting for WordPress.com to update the administration panel so that I can have galleries.  That is the main feature that I’ve been waiting for.  Now it’s here, I can finally upload pictures of my cat (and my wife )  

This will also allow simpler embedding of video, audio, et al.  I’m glad it’s finally live.

EDIT: There seem to be a few kinks still with this feature — instead of having thumbnails, the site was loading the full images. This is obviously an issue. Until then, you get a thumbnail of my cat in the grass.

Auto-tagging is good too

2.5 also recommends what tags to use based on tags you’ve used in the past. Unfortunately, that part is less responsive than I would like.  It’s still neat to have available.

Much better text editor

The previous text editor for WordPress.com was so terrible, every time I tried to make a word bold, it added some round-about Safari-specific hack ( or something like that).  Now it uses the proper code (strong), and I’m quite grateful. Now, I can actually write posts online, instead of writing them in Dreamweaver and then pasting the code in to WordPress. Very much improved.

The text editor still does not create paragraphs when you view the HTML code; it displays paragraphs as line breaks.  This is frustrating, because in the past it often lost all formatting.  At least in this iteration, switching views between Visual and HTML keeps the formatting intact.

Very pleased with this update

The editor is a LOT more functional, the gallery is great, and well, what can I say?  It’s a great success.

Just wondering: who would want to use Blogger.com?

Before this update, WordPress was just VERY superior to Blogger.  Now it’s outright in a league of it’s own.  I used blogger when it came out because, well, it was the originator of simple blogging.  But man, it’s really outdated.

Blogger is owned by Google, so you think it would be cutting edge, but every time I try to work with it, I end up hitting myself over the head.  What advantages does Blogger have, if any?

I went to Google Maps today, and I found that Google has updated its Street View functionality to include almost ALL of Denver and the suburbs, including Boulder. This is a CRAZY amount of information.  It’s a truly boggling accomplishment.  I’m kind of shocked.Check out Street View yourself.

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When I think SEO, I think of Google. Why? Is it because Google’s PageRank system determines better websites? Is it because Google’s advertising options are superior? It’s as simple as this: Google gets better results than any other search engine.

The major search engines often don’t agree

Optimizing websites for search is frustrating sometimes. The biggest search engines are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The frustrating part of optimization is the variation between the search engines. The variations in ranking can be huge. I will use Katz Web Design’s ranking information to show some examples:

So you see, there’s a crazy variation between the search engines that can be frustrating. My statistics show, however, that even a bad ranking in Google is better than a good ranking on any other search engine.

92% of my organic keyword search traffic comes from Google

A vast majority of my traffic to my website comes from Google. What about my some of my clients?

These clients have similar ranking placement on Google, MSN, and Yahoo! for many of their keywords. You can see that even so, Google still sends an average of 69.4% more visitors to these websites. Optimizing for other search engines doesn’t have the same return on investment as optimizing for Google does. Google remains king.

What’s your experience with optimizing for various keywords across the search engines?

I am a Denver web designer, and lots of what I do is advise my clients on how to improve their ranking. I do what I can to optimize the code using tried and true SEO techniques. But in the end, it comes down to this: are you willing to work for search engine placement?

2 months later, a look at the results

On January 24 of this year, I set a goal to improve Katz Web Design’s ranking in Google, especially for the terms “Denver Web Design,” and “Denver Web Designers.” I had my blog for 2 days at the time. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

• Denver Web Designers - from 41 to 18
• Denver Web Designer - from 29 to 11
• Denver Web Design - from 30 to 11 10

These results have been achieved mostly by writing in this blog. The Katz Web Design site is currently a one-page placeholder with very little content on it. Imagine what will happen when I move this blog over to the KWD site soon.

Search Engine Optimization is not voodoo; it directly translates into how well your website performs.  The Ignite Matchmaking website was not performing well last September for their main keywords.  Katz Web Design redesigned their site, optimized the site for their keywords, and now, look at their ranking:

• Denver professional matchmaker: 1
• Denver match makers: 2 (up from under 1000)
• Denver matchmaking services: 2 
• Denver matchmakers: 2 (up from 284)
• Denver matchmaker: 3 (up from 50
• Matchmaking denver: 4 
• Denver matchmaking: 5 (up from 112)

Currently, I am working with my client Savory Cuisines Catering in Boulder, CO to improve their ranking.  

The process I will follow to improve their rank:

There are more than five steps to help place higher in search engines, but the five below are simple and straightforward steps that anyone can take to improve their rank. (more…)