Web Design Company - Should I even try?

[WoWzers]

I started up a web design company with a few of my friends, just under a month ago.

We have had a few clients, from various non search engine techniques.

I'm wondering if we should even try to get ranked in search engines. doing a search for any of the keywords related to web design comes up with hundreds of thousands of results.

Should we bother with link exchanges, SEO, etc? Should this valuable time be spent on other marketing techniques, and for marketing the other sites we design?

Thanks for any help!

[flood6]

Web design, SEO, web marketing, and related fields are very competative markets. As you noticed, this competition results in SE keywords that are hard to crack.

Try to go after "less" competitive phrases. Instead of "website design", go after "inexpensive web design" or "cheap web development" (I haven't really researched these terms, but I imagine the competition for them is more reasonable).

Also, go after local phrases "YourCity website design", "YourCity web design", "YourCity web development", "YourCity SEO", "NearbySmallTown website", etc. Depending on the size of your city, you might be able to slam-dunk one or more of these phrases. These key phrases will also convert better because you are local.

You should be able to find a few less-competitive phrases that will make SEO attempts worthwhile.

That said, don't neglect the other marketing techniques you mentioned. Offline, sensible, local marketing can often beat your SEO attempts all to hell when it comes to finding new clients.

[WoWzers]

Thanks for the advice. So go locally with search engine, but keep up mostly with outside SE marketing.

I also imagine linking to mycity related websites would work too.

Any other advice? Any web designers get to the top of SE?

[cbp]

I'm wondering if we should even try to get ranked in search engines

In my opinion, I would not even try - I would just do the basic SEO, so that you come up for your companies name then rely on off-line (yellow pages; trade mags; etc) for clients (as flood6 said). Web design is so competitive to rank well on, so much effort may be needed to do so, that you are better off working on clients sites and looking for business elsewhere.

At least if you come up for your company name any brand awareness created by offline promotion will work if people search for you.

CBP

[jestep]

Really good ones to target are a local search for a web design. Use what ever city or area that you live in example "Austin Web Design". Search for which searches recieve the most traffic, and go for those terms. Its not only 'not' feasable to rank for "web design" etc, but its not really necessary. These searches recieve thousands if not millions of visitors per month. Honestly, with three people you really can't cater to 10000 people per week effectively, so usually if you can generate a constant stream from local areas it can run your business and very littel work is needed to rank highly compared to the big searches.

good luck to you.

[bhartzer]

I would definitely go after the local business. Pick a major city near you and go after that term. Then do all of your other marketing through offline means to get local businesses. Local businesses want someone to call or go see in person.

[cbp]

Local businesses want someone to call or go see in person.

I just put together a site for a friend...he is a local business, so rather than go for a search engine placement, the approach I took was to encourage him to put the URL in the yellow pages, in print adverts, etc, so the web site was somewhere for the potential customer could go to "check him out" before visiting the business - sort of a credibility thing (eg photo's and bios of staff important for that; a map of how to find the office; etc). So everything that went on to the site was aimed at that visitor who had seen the off line advert and wanted to know more. The only SEO I worried about was coming up for the company name.

CBP

[WoWzers]

Thanks for the advice guys. I will focus on outside of search engine marketing and SEO for client's websites.

I will also try and use Conyers Web Design keywords and such.

[flood6]

Originally Posted by WoWzers

Conyers

Georgia?

[janeth]

We rank in the top ten for key words like

custom site design
custom website design
and a lot of other key words that bring in a couple visitors a day.

We where in the top 20 for website design we rank #42 as of this week for website design but still rank #10 on MSN for website design.

My point is this I would not even waste my time getting ranked for Georgia website design, it does not even get enough traffic to spend the time on.

At the very lest go for custom website design.

[ferret77]

Janeth

I have to disagee

I get more quality referals form "new york web design"

then I do off of "website design" or "web design"

and sometimes I get good ones of off "albany ny web design"

In my experience the more local the search is the more the people are will to pay

I would say for someone in the states grab the easy local terms they are definelty worth it

[janeth]

HI ferret77,
Where do you rank for website design or web design?

[janeth]

Here are some of the searches

website design = 221987

web design = 749741

albany ny web design = 0

new york web design = 3658

There is no way if your ranked #1 for those key words you would get more from new york web design then from website design.

Now if your not ranked at all for website design then the whole think would be crazy to even talk about.

Georgia website design gets 532 searches done on it

Custom website design gets 6556

My point is custom website design would be better to get ranked for.

Custom website design I rank #5 for

website design I rank #42 for.

Here are a couple of my stats for the key words where talking about.

website design 386
custom web design 229
web site design 96
custom web site 95
custom web sites 89
building a web site 85
custom web site design 64
web marketing 63
website designs 53
website designing 49
custom website design 47
building web sites 44
custom websites 34

Georgia would be less then all these.

[bhartzer]

The key here is more quality referals. You may get more traffic for website design, but you'll end up making more money and get better conversions from the more specific terms.

I never thought I'd say this, but I have to agree with Ferret77 on this one.

[janeth]

Are you saying it would be easer to make money if you only have on person coming to your website a day verses 1,000 ?

[bhartzer]

No, I'm not saying that at all, Janeth. What I'm saying is: quality leads versus quantity.

[ferret77]

janeth

I get many less inquires from the local searches but the ones that are local are more likley to pay more and more likely to pay at all

If you can sell website for cheap the big terms are the move but in my experience people who type the genreral terms are looking for a cheap deal

[bhartzer]

Well put, ferret77.

If you get one quality referral that brings in $10,000 in business, that can be better than 10 people paying $200 for website design.

[WoWzers]

well i did think i had an understanding on this, but now I'm even more confused.

[ferret77]

what happend janeth you used to ranked pretty high for "website design" janeth

[cbp]

Janeth - how much work do you have to put into your site to get the good "general rankings"?

I think the point I was trying to make, is that I assume to rank well for the different permutations of "web design" is a lot of hard work (you are competing with a lot of sites who knoe how to rank well) and not worth the effort --- so use other off line methods to promote the company name/brand - just SEO the site for the company name/brand.

CBP

[ferret77]

I was just asking janeth becasue i disapperaed fro "website design" for like a month I went from top 10 to nowwhere

[janeth]

Hi Everyone,
No I was not saying to go for website design. We spend about 20 hours a week on our site making changes of some sort testing things out. We have spent as many has 80 hours a week when we first started.

My point was some of the key words you where talking about do not get enough traffic to take the time to get ranked for. custom website design is suppose to be a good one but we get very little from it. I agree with CBP about doing other things to get traffic.

We dropped from the top 20 to # 41 in the last couple weeks for website design but we are hoping to be in the top 20 by the end of the month again. It is a full time job trying to keep the site ranked, I hope that changes soon.

[pimil]

My advice would be to go after the search term "Web Development". It's searched 43,105 times per month. You could get within the top eight or so for that term. We got a client's site within the top four in Google with a search term that is searched 41,476 times per month, so it can be done. I'd recommend staying away from the term "Web Design" because it's searched 749,741 times per month and would be extremely difficult to achieve a great ranking for that keyphrase. Just my two cents. Good Luck.