Is it possible? Is it worth it?

[JKomp]

I was wondering whether this group of experts (non-expert opinions very welcome also) believe it is possible to get a new site to number one on google for an EXTREMELY competitive keyword like "web design". And if it is possible (of course it is possible) is all the effort it would take worth it? Would the time (and money?) be better spent on other efforts?

Has high ranking become a mountain that when climbed merely gives a good view of an even higher mountain? Should we simply work away at the bottom of the mountain and wait for it to come to us?

[JKomp]

sorry this should be in the search engine discussion forum not just google, as it applies to search engine ranking in general. Would a mod kindly move it for me?

[ctabuk]

Web Design, well I'll make you giggle, one of my keywords is 'PRC Homes' (Prefabricated Reinforced Concrete)I have been top on Google (and every where else)for over 2 years and it brings in a few good enquiries. Today I was checking my rankings and I'd dropped to 2nd, no big deal, but I'd been overtaken by a post I had made in Inside Housing Forum, which has about as much use as a dead rabbit, so post Web Design in that forum and you never know!Why Google loves a forum with hardly any members, hardly any posts is beyond me, but try it. What harm can it do?

Apart from that you could try my Initial trick, pm me and I'll go through it with you Cheers David

[JKomp]

You seem to be back up to number 1, with the forum ranking second (on my comp anyway)

[lorien1973]

What's your goal with the word - traffic or sales? I don't think it'll bring sales (too general), but just traffic.

I think that with almost any term, its possible to get #1 with, even for a new site, given enough time, content, etc.

I wouldn't focus on it though, sometimes rankings for those "wild blue yonder" words comes easiest when you don't try.

I'd focus on much smaller words.

Web design in (city)
cheap web design

Etc etc (I dont know the keywords for this topic, but those seem reasonable). Then I'd get a site together that not only ranks for those words, but converts for them as well.

[corporateface]

Ask them...
http://www.leveltendesign.com/
#4 in google for website design


It all depends on your goals.
Corporate Face's offering is Free Custom Website Design.

Put in Free Custom Website in google.
I'm #3 & #4. I get some traffic for that.

However, in the mind of the consumer,
1. You don't put Free & Custom together very often.

2. People searching for "Free" ... are looking for "Free". Most of those visitors aren't serious prospects. Most of my business comes from referrals and word of mouth. I am extremely busy.

3. My hunch would be that with a key phrase that gets
from overture ... hits in 01/2005
( 312663 web site design )
( 375239 web design )

My web portfolio is much fuller than most of the companies listed at the top.


Look up Free Website Design.
you'll get free-website-design.com (My guess is that he gets tons of visits, but his stuff isn't the best quality stuff). You have to have a good product a good call to action, etc...


If your website WORKS with the traffic you are getting then it should work when you apply the "Law of Large Numbers" to it.


IMHO.

Keith

[strum4life]

I would say that it's not possible without spending a ton of money on link text advertising. Google favors older sites over new sites, so even as you gain link popularity, you're fighting an uphill battle.

[enders]

We did this last year for our very competitive keyword, we were very agressive and got to number one within about 3 months. Here's a shortened timeline -

1. Spend huge amounts of money on PR and text links, running our own links campaigns etc.
2. repeat step 1
3. repeat step 1
4. repeat step 1
5. look vaguley ocnfused at not being no1. in Google yet
6. repeat step 1 again and again for 3 months.
7. rank first in google for a hugely competitive keyword for about a month
8. wonder why we bothered
9. watch our rank drop like a stone because we weren't repeating step 1 anymore

We may be unqiue (although I frankly doubt it) but everyone really needs to get past the idea of huge amounts of traffic. I can buy 20,000 hits a day for next to nothing but it costs me more in bandwidth and doesn't generate any sales.

Being 1st in Google is not a magic bullet. We rank 7th or 8th currently and our sales are higher than when we were number 1 - I also suspect our sales are higher than the companies above us because we have the product right and have invested in what we sell and our own site.

[noel_x99]

Originally Posted by corporateface

If your website WORKS with the traffic you are getting then it should work when you apply the "Law of Large Numbers" to it.

This seems to be the right idea to me. I don't make any efforts to get my portfolio to the top of the SERPS. I've had very few serious clients from search results or phone calls. They come from referrals. There is no better advertising than a satisifed customer!

[janeth]

It´s not really that hard, we ranked #1 on MSN, #10 on Yahoo and #14 on Google, we bounced around in there for website design, which is pretty close to the same.

We got a lot of business and still do. I think we are now number 7 on MSN and 17 on Yahoo and on Google we go from 20 to no where depending on the day.

[jestep]

I think it is possible, but you have to have a lot of time and patience, that you are willing to invest into it. A huge amount of money backing you never hurts either.

[MarcGrobman]

I think it is worth it as long as you don't take it too far -- get your links out there and don't obsess. And I agree that you should focus on your city or area of expertise. "Web design" is too large.

The competition in this field is brutal. If you look at our competition for 'los angeles web design' you can see that many people have given up on making their site look good and have just covered them with relevant text. By the time searchers get to our site they are probably releaved to see something that stands out a little.

I do have to say, good placement has really helped us when business was slow. And now that it is picking up we get more inquiries than we can handle. I do sometimes wonder if I could have spent my SEO time better on billable work while paying for Adwords.

[newhomeplans]

To jkomp:

I don't think you have to worry about being ranked in the top ten to get your business started. As "corporateface" so aptly stated, offer your potential customers something that would be hard for them to refuse; such as "free" preliminary design proposals, or "free" market evaluation". What can you offer that others do not?

We started our web based architectural design business by offering free preliminary drawings and were almost immediately swamped by requests from all over the world. Some people did buy our services, but most did not. We soon learned how to sort the buyers from the lookers.

I have no idea of where we rank on Google or other search engines, but we will soon have to expand our business again to keep up with the demand.

Good luck;
Allen Jones
Salmon Arm, British Columbia, Canada

http://newhomeplans.net

[dviney]

Here is an alternative, but hopefully useful, take on your question, drawn from some research I did for the SEO Guide I blogged recently (see http://viney.com/search-engine-optimization-expert).

One way to top ramkings is to look for related keywords which are today "underserved" (i.e. where demand is relatively high compared to the supply of relevant sites).

For the demand side, go to the Overture Keyword Selector - see http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/ - and put in your terms (eg. web design). From this, compile a list of, say, four 3-word combinations. Make a note of the "demand scores" that Overture gives you.

Next, the supply side; go to the Google Smackdown tool - at http://www.onfocus.com/googlesmack/down.asp - and enter the combinations one after another, in pairs. Write down their "supply scores" that the tool returns (for the number of sites serving that keyword combination on Google).

For each combination, divide the demand score by the supply score. The result - which you could call "underserved score" - measures the degree to which that keyword combination is (under)served by the market today. The combination with the highest underserved score is where the perhaps biggest opportunity lies to carve out a niche and achieve a high ranking.

Comments on this take welcome.

[mantawebsolutions]

Unlike "enders", you don't need to spend a cents worth to get placed in Google or any other SE for that matter. It requires good webdesign savvy, a good linking campaign and simple networking.

1. Design your site properly, make it attractive so that both SE's and viewers like it
2. use all the techniques to keep your page simple and clean, making use of CSS.
3. add lots of meaningful text on your pages.
4. provide good text links to navigate the site
5. link only to sites within your field of expertise

that should get you out of the starting blocks

[ctabuk]

Melt, you have come a long way! lol
Number 5 - No, linking to areas of your own expertise is not enough, you need to link to sites that your public will want to visit. I'm slowly getting into Local Holiday sites for my County and it is surprising how many 'thanks for that'messages we get.

[danielle v2.1b]

This is an interesting topic. What I would like to throw in is this:

What is the difference between a site that gets 1000 visitors a day and has 10% conversion rate and a site that gets 100,000 visitors a day and has a 0.1% conversion rate?

The difference in my mind would be long term success. Whilst both sites are netting the same level of conversion (be that a sale, a registration whatever) one site is acheiving a far higher rate. That will normally mean it has a better proposition, is more customer focussed or has some other quality to it that endears it to customers. When you win over customers you grow and that's what this is all about.

Yes, to some degree it is a numbers game but I really feel that provided you can drive reasonable traffic to your site, it is better to spend one's time working on conversion that promotion. There must be thousands of commercial sites out there that wouldn't stand the PPC test - invest $100 in clicks and see if you get it back with more. If the site can't do that most basic feature, don't worry about trying to get top ranks because the dissapointment will only break your heart. There's no point being in a business that makes $100k a year but costs you $110k, or $100k or even $90k. You'd still be better off working at Burger King. Your time might be free, but if the site isn't paying you and no-one else is that time is serious lost money. Don't waste your life chasing dreams, go for realistic and workable approaches.

Quality sites are like bubbles that rise to the top of the internet sea. Use your time to make money-generating infrastructure, not net noise. If I was advising I would say I think you should focus on making the site provide a high level of conversion with 80% of your time and put just 20% of your time into promotion.

Dani

[mantawebsolutions]

ctabuk, i have to agree with you. The more links back to my site does count, but in all fairness, it makes no sense for my site (in the scuba diving or travel industry) to link to sites in a industry like Engineering or even Adult toys ??

Uhm, don't SE's penalize you if this is the case ?

[danielle v2.1b]

Originally Posted by divesouthafrica

ctabuk, i have to agree with you. The more links back to my site does count, but in all fairness, it makes no sense for my site (in the scuba diving or travel industry) to link to sites in a industry like Engineering or even Adult toys ??

Uhm, don't SE's penalize you if this is the case ?

If I read ctabuk as meaning related info then it makes sense - for example diving could be related to swimming, surfing or other water sports (that's your shared keyword), it could also be related to fish, coral reefs, ocean life etc.

The best is where you share 80%+ keywords with a site, like when you are both diving sites. But where that is a competitive issue, look for sites with some shared keywords and it's still meaningful.

Obviously clam diving, warm wet bikini clad girls and dolphins could be something that you and adult toy content sites share in common, however if you're not an adult site it is a good idea to keep your links page pure and virgin...

[JKomp]

wow glad to see the topic was featured on Page One. My question was clearly a loaded one, for competitive keywords i believe it is better to work on the quality of your site with an aim to increase conversion rates than to try to climb the rankings mountain. I have witnessed webmasters add things that adversely effect the overall design and functionality of their site in an effort to please the SEs. This seems like madness to me.
In my experience high rankings occur as a happy coincidence of working on the quality of your site. Of course getting links is always a good idea too!

[ctabuk]

I was getting quite turned on by her thread, I think a couple of girls heard me laugh, yes, any content that brings people to your site even unrelated is fine, for a start you cannot stop it happenning, you reach a certain level of backlinks and other Directories find you and link to you.
Now this question on numbers and %'s - if you are getting 10,000 hits and only getting 1% click throughs, then your site is wrong, it ain't user friendly. We only get 30 hits per day, but we convert at least 50% into business, different markets, different expectations. More tommorow, it's wine time here in the UK - April Fools Day tomorrow, watch my posts/ David