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

Entries tagged as ‘ranking’

3 Simple Steps to keyword order SEO – Are your words SEO friendly?

May 20, 2008 · 1 Comment

Out of Order
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…)

Categories: SEO · Tutorial
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Warning: SEO companies charge too much and take too long

April 18, 2008 · 3 Comments

A man called yesterday wanting to have his Denver IT Services website optimized.  He had called multiple search engine optimization specialists in Denver, and each one had given him the same proposal: spend thousands of dollars per month, and take a long time.

Check out what the SEO companies said

He had been told the following by multiple companies:

In order to get your website ranked well, it will take 6 months to a year, and will cost $1,000.00 per month.

- Random Denver SEO companies

That means he will have paid $6,000 to $12,000 to have his site ranked well in search engines. I was taken aback; spending that much money each month on SEO is ridiculous for many reasons, but here are a few: (more…)

Categories: SEO
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Optimizing a website for search: Google vs. Yahoo! and MSN

March 31, 2008 · No Comments

Google remains the Search Engine King (Pie Chart)

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:

  Google Yahoo! MSN Difference
Denver Web Designer 11 4 4 7
Lakewood Website Design 26 7 298 292
Web Design Denver 27 52 103 66
Denver Web Page Design 20 519 > 1000 Over 980!

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?

  Google % Yahoo % MSN % Google % Difference
Client A 83.1 6.6 7 76.1
Client B 85.9 6.73 5.74 79.17
Client C 70.4 20.37 0 50.03
Client D 80.4 8.1 8.0 72.3

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?

Categories: SEO
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Achieving the goal – a slow trek toward good search engine ranking

March 28, 2008 · 1 Comment

Climb search ranking with persistence!

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.

Categories: SEO
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How to get better search results with 5 simple steps

February 13, 2008 · No Comments

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 8)
  • 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…)

Categories: SEO · Tutorial
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How blogging helps your search ranking

January 24, 2008 · 1 Comment

 Ignite Matchmaking SEO Ranking Chart

Why blogging helps your rank 

  1. The more you write about relevant content that is interesting, informative, and helpful, the more people will link to your blog.
  2. Consistently updating your website shows search engines that your site is active.
  3. Using keywords in your posts on a regular basis adds rich content to your site that a static page would not have.

Setting SEO goals you want to achieve 

When you are doing search engine optimization, it helps to have a goal.  For instance: my goal is to get to the #1 spot for “Denver Web Designers”,  ”Denver Web Design.”, and “Colorado Web Design”

Analyze your competition 

The top two or three sites for my preferred key phrases have been ranked there for years.  One way to catch up is to analyze why they’re ranked well.  Today, I will look at external links.A simple way to see how many external links your site has is by searching Google for link:www.example.com 

  • External links – Right now, KWD has only 13 external links counted by Google.
    • Greenchair.net has 93 external links  
    • Lighthousewd.com has 53 external links
    • Fusionbox.com has 75 external links

It’s important to note that I have nothing against these companies, and you should never take things personal online.  They’re at the top because they’ve worked hard to get there.  I look forward to meeting the people behind these companies. There is plenty of web business to be had out there, especially in Denver, so although we are competitors in the search engines, I see all web designers as colleagues.  

Categories: KWD
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