From the category archives:

SEO

SEO It! Bookmarklet – Improves Search Results in iPhone & Safari

January 28, 2009

Clean up your Google search results!

Format your search results for SEO

Works great for SEO searches on the iPhone!

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.  Read more&hellip

  • 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.

Enter the SEO It! Bookmarklet

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SEO implications for updating your website

January 20, 2009

SEO Updates cause white knuckles!

Will a website redesign hurt my rank?

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

SEO results chart for a redesigned website

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.  Read more&hellip

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Doing the legwork — No SEO guts, no SEO glory

January 8, 2009

SEO and continuing education

I'm writing this on my iPhone while at jury duty, so as a treat, I'll add a picture of my cat, Pica Katz.

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.  Read more&hellip

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New Google search results — OneBox is upgraded

December 29, 2008

OneBox SEO

Google’s OneBox results getting smarter

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.  Read more&hellip

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SEO Randomizer: Save the Value of Your SEO'd Links

December 19, 2008

Search engines attribution link value is falling for SEOs and web designers.

Update: Now use the SEO WordSpinner plugin to implement this concept.
Use the get_seo_spin() PHP function in your theme’s footer.php file.

Footer links are dropping in SEO value

How to stay relevant while getting great links

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.

SEOmoz has an article about footer link optimization and claims that

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?  Read more&hellip

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
  • Google doesn’t like spam
Read the full article →

Busy, busy, busy…

December 4, 2008

Time flies when you're too busy to blog! 
Thanks to hbrinkman for the photo

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 ;-)  

Until then, here’s a poll:

[polldaddy poll=1165563]

Read the full article →

My SEO Statistics are 42% Better than Yours

November 13, 2008

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:

  1. The #1 Result: receives 42% of all clicks
  2. #2 Result: 12% of all clicks
  3. #3 Result: 8.5%
  4. #4 Result: 6%
  5. #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:  Read more&hellip

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Nofollow SEO for your WordPress Functions

November 7, 2008
Link Condom

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:  Read more&hellip

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Introducing: the SEO Stylesheet for Safari, Firefox, Opera, and IE

September 30, 2008

Safari, Opera, IE and Firefox User Stylesheet is like a compass for SEOs

Firefox gets all the cool toys

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
  • GoogleEnhancer – Adds item numbers and favicons to Google search results

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.  Read more&hellip

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Denver SEO informative website launched: DenverSEO.info

June 25, 2008

Denver SEO Website, denverseo.info, Screenshot
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.  Read more&hellip

Read the full article →