I've been doing web development for about 18 months and things are going relatively well, I get business through approaching businesses and organisations directly and through word of mouth which has kept me busy, so much so that I haven't actually finished my own website yet and just have a holding page (www.digitalgroupmedia.com), hopefully I should be able to get my "full" site going in January.

 

What I'm wondering is if there is any point in pursuing an SEO strategy at all for my own business? My office is in Birmingham which has a tonne of long established web design agencies who have **** hot SEO, so is it going to be a battle I can't win?

 

Incidentally whilst my office remains in Brum, I have just moved to another town where I might be able to pursue some worthwhile SEO.

What about marketing your site for low competition towns / areas in Birmingham. I've seen some sites that market for individual areas and have a seperate landing page for each. Personally I don't like this as in my opinion it lessens the personal aspect of hiring someone locally.

There are a ton of keyword opportunities out there, you just have to look. Do some solid keyword research, look at local and national phrases and aim for them. If you're any good at SEO you'll be able to find them and exploit them. I know Birmingham has some awesome SEO guys, like Rice Media but that shouldn't put you off. Looking at the competition you have, it doesn't look overly difficult to get onto the first of Google for SEO Birmingham. The tenth placed website is definitely beatable

 

If you're not that responsive with SEO, then it will be a difficult battle. These guys will be plugged into the SERPS and any websites encroaching them will adapt and do the work needed to out rank you again.

 

Basically what I'm saying is, look at how good you are with SEO (mainly link building). If you don't think you can got onto the first page, look at various other keywords

or alternatively outsource your own seo requirements.

sound advice guys I really appreciate it. My on-site stuff is more or less on point but I haven't really made an attempt at any back-linking yet. As a service I've always erred away from offering it as it's hard to quantify and guarantee results, and I wouldn't want a poor SEO performance to over-shadow an otherwise successful website development so I've only ever offered to do on-site SEO. I'm going to pick a few of my willing client's and see what I can do with them 1st before I start to actively offer full SEO services.