As featured on the May 20th 7News program featuring Zack Katz of Katz Web Design, Google Profiles are a great way to be found online for your own name, even if you don’t have a website.If you set up an online profile with Google, a person looking for you online will be able to find you more easily.
Your profile will show up in search results
In the past, if you wanted to be listed in search results for your own name (it’s called a “vanity search”), you often needed your own website. Google is changing that, and giving users the power to show up in a search result with a picture and link to their profile.
The Google Profile box embedded in the search results for Zack Katz
In April, Google has started giving Profiles a prominent placement in search results. It is safe to presume that Google will be further incorporating the Profiles in the future, and assigning them more value. If you want to improve your findability online, setting up a profile is a great step to take. (more…)
Google’s algorithm likes text more than images. It likes headlines more than paragraphs. You can increase how much weight your headline has by only having one or two of them. Having the same headline across all pages reduces the value of it each time.
Instead of having your logo be an image, or H1 image replacement using CSS, it’s now best practice to use a H1 (heading 1) for your home page and a P (paragraph) for the rest of your pages. Then, you can use the headline for your page’s title instead, and get more bang for your buck.
This is nothing new, but it’s best practice, and I hope those who don’t know this technique or code may find this helpful. (more…)
4 Steps to optimize a website — a Denver solar case study
This is an inside look into my process for optimizing a pre-existing website. This will cover lots of the aspects of the SEO I’ve done, but not all of it…These steps are often my first round of optimization on a site. Once I do these four vital SEO steps, I move on to content SEO and more link-building. (more…)
Katz Web Design is an SEO company in Denver. This is our blog. Need help with your website’s search presence? Call 303-362-0451 for a free consultation.
It’s frustrating doing searches with SEO in mind, then having Google add SearchWiki, personalized results, and other localizations that mess up what you wanted: accurate results. Here’s the solution: The SEO It! Bookmarklet.
I do lots of searching as an SEO. I look for ranking, competition, additional keywords, etc. I use Google a LOT. And I use Apple’s Safari browser.
By default, I am logged in to my Google account, and have Google preferences set to showing 100 results at a time. The problem? Google shows different ranking and links based on the number of results you see.
I have Google Web History enabled, and Google provides me with “Personalized results based on my search history.” When doing SEO, I don’t want these results: I want what others will see.
I use SearchWiki to move up results of websites I have created. When trying to get accurate SEO ranking, this is frustrating.
I do SEO searches on my iPhone, too – where I need to manually strip out the annoying &client=safari to see a normal results page.
When I am working with a client that already has a website, one of the first questions I am asked is “How will redesigning my website affect my rank?“ Here’s what to expect when launching your new website:
Your website will take a hit in the SERPs for 20-30 days
After updating a website, you can expect ~25 days of your ranking going down. I call it the "white knuckle month," but I've noticed the website always ranks better once the period is over.
Without fail, I’ve found that when I launch a new website, move a website to a new domain, redesign or make significant structural changes to a site, the website will drop in rank for 3-4 weeks. (more…)
I'm writing this on my iPhone while waiting for Denver jury duty, so as a treat, I'll add a picture of my cat, Pica Katz.
It’s easy to know SEO concepts. It’s another thing to put them into good use and do the work involved in optimizing a site.
Yesterday, I was at a barnes and noble and saw the book SEO Bible. I flipped through the pages and I knew everything I saw. But if “Joe the SEO” reads the book, so will they. Knowing what everyone knows is not a competitive advantage.
A SEO must know more than what is printed in a year-old book. The book doesn’t talk about Google Search Wiki, or know about the new FriendConnect API, and even those technologies are yesterday’s news. Reading a book is just an introduction. SEO takes continuous training. (more…)
Recently, Google seems to have updated their algorithm for when they show the mapped results (or, “OneBox”). It used to be that the OneBox would show up when viewing 10 results at a time for many most local searches. Now, the OneBox only shows up when viewing locally relevant industries or when a certain number of results are displayed at once. (more…)
As a web designer and SEO, I place links in the footers of most of my designs. Clients don’t mind (I always request the link), and it’s a high-quality link. Most small web design and SEO companies do. Footer links have become very spammy, however, and sites try to stuff as many links there as possible.
Footer links may be devalued by search engines automatically
Check out the evidence – Yahoo! says they may devalue footer links, Bill Slawski uncovers patents suggesting the same and anecdotal evidence suggests Google might do this (or go further) as well. Needless to say, if you want to make sure your links are passing maximum value, it’s wise to avoid the footer (particularly the footer class itself).
The era of the PageRank-passing footer links are coming to an end. The search engines have a good reason for devaluing the links — but how can we get the juice back?
Let’s consider the following issues:
Footer links are being devalued by search engines
Footer links have a low click-through rate
Having the same link on every page makes the link less valuable
This holiday season has already been busy for SEOs like Katz Web Design, but it seems like it’s going to get even busier.
There’s a delicate balance between neglecting your business for your blog, and neglecting your blog because of your business. Right now, I’m too busy to strike that balance, because customers always must come before marketing.
I have lots of neat WordPress and SEO tricks to share, but it’ll have to be after a few projects are completed
In working on the content for my new web site, I was working on ways to display the SEO ranking statistics. I came up with this concept of scaling the text relative to the % of clicks they get.
The SEO statistics in this way are pretty dramatic:
The #1 Result: receives 42% of all clicks
#2 Result: 12% of all clicks
#3 Result: 8.5%
#4 Result: 6%
#5 Result: 5%
How do the numbers look?
I put together some really neat graphics that show how crazy important ranking well is. I went through some failed ideas, but landed on these two graphics: (more…)
While working on a recent website, I became frustrated by the lack of nofollow support in many WordPress functions. Make that, most WordPress functions.
As I’ve written before, Firefox SEO — not Safari — gets all the glory. One of the great things about Firefox is the Add-ons (plugins) that extend its functionality. For web developers and SEOs, it’s vital to easily see what rank your website has when doing searches. There are tons of Firefox SEO Add-ons, but I use the following Firefox SEO addons:
SEO for Firefox - The best. Gives you all sorts of info about each listing. Invaluable.
Google Preview - Get a Snaps.com-like screenshot of websites inline with your search
These add-ons make browsing much easier when you’re doing some SEO research. There are no cool Safari SEO Plugins (ask Google, it’s true), but I wasn’t satisfied…so I made my own (kinda).
I am pleased to announce the best Safari SEO plugin alternative. (more…)
I am pleased to introduce DenverSEO.info, a web page that goes over the basics of search engine optimization: what is SEO, how can you do SEO yourself, and Denver-specific SEO. Many of Katz Web Design’s clients are unclear as to what search engine optimization is, so I hope this page gets them started with their own optimization.
The web page was constructed using Google Pages, which was very simple to set up, but unfortunately, they don’t allow you to point your domain there properly, so I’ve hosted it on the KWD server.
Because this domain is a .info, it’s very informative (with little self-promotion), and I hope that users will find it to be helpful. Leave feedback below!
One of Katz Web Design’s Denver web design clients wanted an option for performance-based SEO (Search Engine Optimization), rather than a monthly set price, so I created a package.
Here’s the gist of our SEO package:
Pay only $5.00 an hour for optimization
Targeted keywords are given a value based mainly on the competition’s SEO strength (content optimization, inbound links, age of site, etc.)
Monthly payment per keyword are based on SEO click-through statistics (eg: the #1 result gets 42% of all clicks) and SEO difficulty
Minimum 3 month contract, or by the month with a 15% premium
Zack lives with his wife and rascal of a cat in Lakewood, Colorado. He spends his spare time writing in the third person and scouring the web for Mac news.
Katz Web Design, is a 
Nofollow SEO for your WordPress Functions
November 7, 2008 · 19 Comments
Pretty crude idea of nofollow, isn't it?
While working on a recent website, I became frustrated by the lack of nofollow support in many WordPress functions. Make that, most WordPress functions.
There are a few WP functions that I wanted to add nofollow to, so here’s a list and a download link: (more…)
Categories: Code · SEO · WordPress
Tagged: comments_popup_link, Functions, Functions.php, get_the_category, get_the_category_list, next_image_link, next_posts_link, Nofollow, post_comments_feed_link, previous_image_link, previous_posts_link, SEO, the_category, WordPress, WordPress SEO