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View Full Version : Can small shop/ freelance web designers win SEO battles for their own sites?



AmyAllen
11-15-2010, 02:19 PM
I was just reading this article about how it's nearly impossible for small shop web designers to win high SEO placements against larger companies, and was wondering what you guys think about this?

How Shady Web Design Sites get High Search Engine Results/ (http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/how-shady-web-design-sites-get-high-search-engine-results/)

I'm just in the process of getting my own website up, and this article sort of echoed my own underlying feeling that I nothing short of an all-out, full-time war effort would get me a high SERP placement.

Is it even worth the effort for a freelancer? I know I don't have the hours it takes to be competitive, so I guess I'm wondering if I should bother with it at all?

What do you guys recommend? Should freelance web designers focus more on other marketing tactics instead of SEO, or just go after niche search terms?

Harold Mansfield
11-15-2010, 02:23 PM
Don't spend all of your time right away trying to rank for highly competitive keywords. Find ones that you can rank for first and secure your placement with those and work on the high competition words and phrases over time. You may even want to try localization.
You should always focus on more than just one marketing method anyway.

billbenson
11-15-2010, 03:47 PM
Amy, I would think its best to go for a small niche market at first and grow from there. You can get placement much more easily that way.

vangogh
11-15-2010, 06:08 PM
Amy I read the same article a few days ago. Two things to note about seo related articles coming from design blogs. Most designers don't know as much as they think they do in regards to seo. Much of the seo related info I come across on them is flat out wrong. However having said that. This one was a good article and I agreed with most everything in the post.

As far as you being able to compete you can. The thing to understand is you aren't going to be able to rank for a generic term like "web design" or even "web design services" overnight. That's not really different than any other industry with some competition. If it means anything I'm a single person web design shop and I get a pretty good amount of traffic from search engines. Some of my clients even found their way to me via one search or another.

SEO is a subset of marketing so yes you should be focused on marketing in general. If you do your marketing well a large part of your seo ends up taking care of itself. What I would recommend is learning seo basics. There are plenty of free and paid seo guides online and you can always ask questions here. As a web designer pay attention to those aspects of seo that deal with developing a site and naming files. If you develop a site to be search friendly then you've built a good foundation for the site.

Learn something about writing copy for seo. It's much easier than it seems. Mostly it's about writing a good page title and then writing naturally using any keywords you've identified for the page and words related to those keywords. More importantly is to write naturally for real people. If you keep a page focused on a single topic and write naturally you've probably optimized it well.

The big part of seo is generating links into your site. Some people go out and work at getting other sites to link at them. A better way in my opinion is to develop great content people would want to link to and then giving your content a push so it reaches some of the people who might link to it. This is pretty much just marketing with an understanding of how search engines work and who are the people likely to link back to you.

Yes you definitely can compete, but it won't happen overnight. However the more you learn now and the more you do now the better off you'll be later. SEO is not a one time thing that you do and then move on. It's marketing. It's never ending just like marketing. Much of what you would do to market yourself without thought of a search engine is the same thing you should do with thought of a search engine.

For example I presume one reason you might be here is to reach potential clients. You post and display your expertise as a web designer and some people will contact you. Why not add a signature to your forum profile that includes a link or two back to your site? I know you're currently redesigning it, but for the sake of this discussion let's say it's all done. The link.

1. makes it easier for real people to find your site
2. is a link that has some benefit in regards to search engines. Probably not a lot of benefit, but some

The only difference then between marketing and seo when you're doing something like posting on a forum is having a signature with a link. Where seo is concerned you probably want to use text that matches a keyword phrase you'd like to rank for. Without seo you might not be too concerned with that text. In both cases you want to write a signature that entices people to click the link.

A link in a forum signature alone is not going to help your pages rank for your chosen keywords, but they help you get one step closer. The difference between adding one and not adding one is minimal. The greater your understanding of seo the better you could probably write the text of the link and the words around the link as well as understand other places where you can easily generate a similar type of link.

n_touch
01-17-2011, 09:42 PM
Agreed, it seems like a daunting task but it can be done. I just recently left a local seo company and are starting out on my own, don't let it scare you. There are ways that you can get the rankings that you want, and that you need to maintain a thriving business. The other thing that you need to keep in mind is that a lot of the companies that you may see, are actually fly by night companies that are doing things that will eventually catch up with them and get them out of the rankings.

Good Luck with your new site.

jimr451
01-18-2011, 06:47 AM
I would not worry about SEO too much - do the basics so your site is SE friendly, but focus on exploiting your strengths.

For example, many small businesses would rather work with someone local, and small. So put your business on "google places", and run some adwords geographically focused ads. I've had some success this way getting local companies. Put the region / city you are near in your ads, AND on your website (for seo). For instance, I use something like "Philly programmer" or similar in my ads.

I think the key is to not rely on SEO for growing your business. Eventually it may contribute its part, but plan to market your business in other ways, where you have less competition.

-Jim

954SEO
01-18-2011, 07:53 AM
Hi Amy, funny you should mention that. There are a few things that come to mind:

1) Larger marketing firms have more money and can contribute to more personnel and article writing and domain purchasing and a myriad of things, so outranking them for general terms would be quite difficult. Do use long-tail and location-specific keywords and such as mentioned.
2) I have never ranked for anything related to web design or seo, but my clients through the years haven't had a problem ranking. Think about it, who knows about seo and web design? More than likely a web designer and not a small business owner. As long as you have examples and testimonials to show a would-be client, you're gold.
3) A client doesn't care how your page ranks, only how theirs will and how that helps their business. As long as your marketing approach doesn't center around picking up clients online (a lot of business owners don't even know about seo or the benefits of an effective website) or showing them how well your site ranks, you should be good.

SAD SIDE NOTE :(

I'm discouraged by the tactics of some of these larger marketing firms. Searching for "seo services" you should find the best of the best in organic searches. One of the top three companies that I found was doing a lot of spamming of homepages under domains that I'm sure they owned. For example, check out

btnhzone . info

I did a link search for some of the clients of these seo companies. All of their clients appear on pages similar to this one, where there is nothing but a lonnnng article with tons of links distributed randomly throughout. I'm sure that because its on the homepage of these sites its helping their cause generously. This site was one of more than about 20 that I cared to look at JUST for this seo company. Seems a bit unethical to me, but I couldn't find where it would be against any seo "guidelines."

Am I wrong? This is why I don't think small web design and seo can compete for "web design" and "seo" terms. There is just too much content writing, personnel, and resources going towards their cause, but this problem should only exist within the realm of web design/seo, so dont be discouraged. :o

vangogh
01-18-2011, 10:43 AM
I think a big part of it with phrases like web design and seo is simply there are so many site who've been at it longer than you or I have and in that time they've been able to create more content and build more links. Add in the phrases are highly competitive among web designers and SEOs. On the bright side neither is especially great for attracting leads and business. Someone searching "web design" is more likely not searching for someone to hire. Same with "seo" as the phrases are too generic.

Better to rank for more targeted phrases like "web design services" I'm actually around page 10 or 11 on Google and Bing for that phrase. Not exactly page 1, but certainly in the game should I want to compete more for it. When I search more around wordpress design and development services my site moves up a little more in the results. Any of those would be better than the generic web design though all are probably still a little generic.

I think you'd agree that seo is more than ranking for one or two choice phrases. A big part of it is discovering the words and phrases people use when looking to hire you or buy from you.

954SEO
01-18-2011, 01:29 PM
Exactly. There are so many tools available and tons of niches to take advantage of. Its a good idea to think like a searcher when creating a website, but whats even bigger is using the feedback to your advantage.

vangogh
01-19-2011, 12:38 AM
Yep. Too many people want to focus on one or two obvious phrases thinking that's where all the traffic is. They don't stop to think what the query indicates the person is looking for. And by putting too much focus on those phrases effort is diverted from the phrases you can more likely rank for and that will more likely lead to traffic looking for what you're offering.

jpohl
03-02-2011, 11:40 PM
The key when competing against the big boys is two things. First, get 3 to 5 long tail keywords. Long tail keywords will usually be 3 to 5 word keywords. Sometimes you may find a two word keyword you can rank for right away but not likely. So if you would like to rank for "wire Mesh", go to google keyword tool to see if terms like "aluminum wire mesh" or "silver wire mesh" has traffic worth going after. I personally want at least 1000 searches a month. In number one position you will get half of those and maybe about a quarter of that if you make it to number 3.

Optimize your SEO for those keywords. Once you got that done, spend LOTS of time getting proper backlinks. You want backlinks associated with your site. Spend the time to get 1 quality one over 10 cruddy ones. Make sure you use appropriate anchor text. It's important to do this work. It's the work that will seperate you from the wannabe's.

So even though you may not be big, you can be agile. Its not a matter of beating the big guns, its a matter of finding your piece of the pie and holding on to it. Good luck and feel free to ask me questions.

vangogh
03-03-2011, 10:37 AM
Good points Jeff. I like the finding and holding your piece of the pie analogy. I think a lot of people assume they have to target the most obvious keywords, because they assume those are the only ones that matter. I also see people brainstorming a few words and assuming those are the only words anyone else will ever use.

The truth is as you say it. Early on you won't have enough links pointing into your site to be competitive for most one and two word phrases. You need to go after lower competition phrases as a starting point. Once you capture some long-tail phrases you can begin expanding to other long-term phrases and begin moving toward more competitive phrases in the head of search.

jpohl
03-04-2011, 10:23 AM
Yes Vangogh we are on the same wave length. I also want to add that once you show google that you kick but with the long tail keywords, they are going to start looking at you more and more as a player for the shorter tail keywords.

I personally use Google Analytics for most of my sites. There are others but use something to monitor your site. There are a lot of other reasons but pertinent to this conversation is the the ability to see what keywords are being used to access your site. You get a crudload of one-off phrases but you will find ones that you hadn't thought of and hadn't even optimized for. You will when you see the trend :) So in a way, google even tells you what phrases can be good Through the analytics.

vangogh
03-04-2011, 04:51 PM
I think we are on the same wavelength. :)

One thing you can do with analytics is look to see what phrases are sending traffic and then use the information to create similar content, and then more content that helps you rank better for more generic searches. For example:

You're getting traffic for the phrase "red widget thingamabobs" which tells you can compete for 3 word phrases that use similar words so,

green widget thingamabobs
green widget whatchamacallits
red widget whatchamacallits
blue widget whatchamacallits
blue widget thingamabobs

are probably all phrases you can rank for doing what you've been doing. Once you start ranking for a few you can then compete for

green widget
red widget
blue widget

Your analytics will tell you what you can currently rank for, what you'll soon be able to rank for, and what's still a ways off.