[neil0wen]

What are the chances of someone learning web design and in the same year getting their site in the top 100 (in the UK) for this term in Google:

'website design'

How difficult is this?

[mrchristoph]

Difficulty factor 573

[Faevilangel]

Think lottery odds....

[websitedesign]

Good luck with that, lol

[S3 Web Design]

Congratulations, you have achieved it haven't you!! Well done.

[neil0wen]

Put it this way, I think I should start playing the lottery.

What does difficulty factor 573 mean?

[Alliance Studio]

This is definately possible depending on the amount that you have learnt and the amount of time you are putting into getting it there.

The challenging task is keeping it there or getting any higher. Being on the 10th page for website design isn't really that useful.

[neil0wen]

Your totally right, I get virtually no hits from 'website design' yet. It was never my target, I've got number one spots for 'sussex website design' and about 25 similar terms. However it was a nice suprise to get there, and gives me hope that maybe in another year or two that I could get into a position where it does count.

[Tim Tavender]

Congratulations.

There are some interesting figures concerning ranking position and traffic share. Position ten gets rough 14 times less traffic than position one! I don't know the stats for pages two onwards, I'm guessing not much.

Keep up the good work and hopefully you will see improved traffic. I would still urge you to target more descriptive keywords that describe your services, such as CMS Website Design or Ecommerce Website Design as these are closer to the buying end of the sales funnel.

[S3 Web Design]

Neil when I checked for my last post you were on 7th page not the 10th

[neil0wen]

It seems to move around by a page or two. I have actually given up on the term 'website design' for a while. The reason being is that it does my SEO no good at page 10. I think that by aimming for an easier term may get me a higher rank somewhere else and help me in the long run. Then once my site is a bit more established I can have another go at 'website design'!

[S3 Web Design]

I think the best approach is to work out what your potential customers would put into google, a short phrase - and then optimise for that.

A few months ago for fun I decided to use the phrase "website appear higher in searches" whenever I could. Obviously that is quite a long phrase and not all that much help but i have positions 1 to 4 in the serps for that phrase. It was interesting to watch how quickly different articles etc appeared in the results.

[neil0wen]

The phrase I have decided to aim for is 'professional website design'. The reason being is that it will attract the right kind of potential clients for my members. Its still a hard term and i'm only on page 5, but I feel that its worth pursuing.

If you are a web design company, what kind of search would you you feel that would bring in the best sort of visitors?

[S3 Web Design]

I suppose I favour just 2 word terms but you are in a different position being a directory. Do you think it might help if you try and get the pages other than home indexed/ranked that will give you more chances. Have you got a PR3 page where I can have a link .
When I went on your blog, dimbo that i am could not work out how to get back to the site without using the back button, second time I saw where the link was but maybe a slightly more obvious button or link would help.

If you want any stuff for the seo pages do ask.

[neil0wen]

I have managed to get to finish on page 6 for the year for 'website design' (not that I was specifically targeting that). I would just like to thank members of this forum for their help and advice and would not have been able to achieve this without you.

The main objective of the directory is to direct quality traffic to web designers (whilst making some money from Google ads). However I do understand that designers want links from high PR pages as well. Apart from quality content on these pages is there anyway I can increase the PR on deep link pages, or will that increase when I get a significant increase of traffic going on to these pages?

[neil0wen]

I would also like to thank my web design members would have ALL linked from their home pages. Most of them have been with me for sometime, so I must be doing something right:

http://www.sussexweb...web-design.html

[Navi379]

I would say you are a one genius for doing that on the same year your learned it.
let see? theirs always a first time for everything you know.
IF THAT HAPPENS

[gentlefoot]

Nothing is impossible but if something was then this would be it.

"low cost web design" is achievable. I got my site to No1 on Google for "low cost it support" in about 6 months.