SEO Struggles

[Cincinnati_WebTec]

Hey everyone,

I am a web programmer and have been fooling around with SEO for about a year now and just started to get pretty serious about it so I signed up for SEOmoz.  We just launched our new site about 4 months ago (http://www.cincinnatiwebtec.com) and Google just started ranking us about a month ago.  I believe we have done everything right with H1 tags, H2 tags, Title tags, alt tags, inbound links, url structure, etc. but yet we still can't even seem to get to the 1st or 2nd page of Google for "Cincinnati Web Design".  I know it's going to be a competitive keyword because the people fighting for it are the SEO experts, but if you were to compare a person on page 2 or 3 to us, some of them have nothing to do with Cincinnati web design and I highly doubt they even bother with SEO, but yet they are ranked higher than us. i.e. http://www.hollandadvertising.com/ - the only place I see Cincinnati is the address at the bottom and they have only 30 inbound links according to yahoo.  On top of that, they are an advertising firm, not a web design firm!

I was wondering if you guys would take a look at our site above and offer some suggestions.  Do you think we are spreading the keywords too thin? I mean I just can't think of why a company like the Holland Advertising example above would rank higher than us.  We clearly have a more SEO optimized site, more inbound links, more quality links, 0 errors, 0 warnings, etc.  I am just at a loss.  Hope you guys can help.

Thanks guys,

Chris

[Cincinnati_WebTec]

Very good info, thank you! So basically I imagine the more content we write the more pages will be indexed and the better ranking we will get on our keywords right? Does it matter whether this content is in the form of a blog? Or should we just create new pages for this? I will definitely look into the business directory's. Thanks again, Chris

[PathMarketing]

Dan here from Path

First thought is it's just too soon to expect front page if your domain's less than a year old, your site only 4 months and just indexed a month ago.

Also I checked out Holland to see how you differ. Here's a quick rundown of why I think they're outranking you for now. (For inbound links I used SEOmoz's own Open Site Explorer)

They have around 374 pages indexed in google, your site has 30. Their site has been around since 2007. Yours less than a year.

You have more links but they have 3 times as many inbound domains. Your top inbound links appear to come mainly from client footers (quality sites but not relevant, link is the same on every page rather than being cited in the body content), while theirs come from business directories and pages that list web design firms in Cincinatti.

If I were you, my next moves would be:

1. Submit your business to a bunch of free (preferably Cincinatti-focused) business directories. Give the Whitespark Local Citation Finder a try to help you find relevant ones. A lot of people dislike free directories, and it's pretty old school but I think that local SEO is different in that regard. You see a lot of directories cited in Google Places. I bet between Whitespark and SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer you could get a list of plenty of these & you only have to do the run of them once, it's a rite of passage for local businesses IMO.

2. Get more relevant content up on your site... Case studies, relevant articles, start blogging. Just keep updating your website with relevant things. "7 Things Businesses in Cincinnati Need to Know About Web Design" and so forth. Take a bunch of tried and true principals and pitches and make them Cincinnati-focused.

I know it's pretty basic, nothing too exciting but I think there's a couple things that you could do right now and see return from.That and a little more time.