No Google Ranking..yet

[Bvrettski]

I have een working on my site for soem time. Trying to take the right steps to achieve good ranking in the long run and present the information we need to showcase to prospective clients. After several months I still see no ranking at all and I'm wondering if its becasue the front page is using a design similar to a one page website design?

If anyone can provide some insight I would appreciate it. Even the smallest nudge i nthe right direction.

We are also developing some new content for a blog and expanded written content for our services page.

http://thatworksdesign.com

[justin-brock]

These are all great tips. At this early point in the game, your focus on old-school networking and on-page optimization will have a disproportionate impact.

I would add that your site looks like so many other design portfolio sites in that:

• "Request a Proposal" is a high-commitment call-to-action
• For people who aren't ready for a proposal, there's no clear funnel for leads to move down
• Other than UTAH, there's nothing that identifies your ideal audience

You need to look at your design company as if it were a product. How would you package that product? What are the buying stages? How do you move people down the funnel?

Most design firms have the same issue. They put their portfolio online and expect that to make them stand out. But your really could benefit from product-izing your business.

I think some flagship content could really help with this. The idea is to create a single piece of content - video, info-graphic, long-form blog post, etc. - that is relatively hard to duplicate by competition. Something really useful or informative. Make it free, then focus marketing and link building efforts around it. Bruce Clay, Inc. did this a number of years ago with their SEO Code of Ethics. Moz does it with their Beginner's Guide to SEO. Search Engine Land does it with their Periodic Table of SEO.

You want to gather leads higher up in the funnel and build links along the way.

With well-developed, useful, and focused content like this, it will be more likely for folks to share your site on social media and easier to establish yourself as an authority in something. That will result in easier link building.

If you do it right, it'll also entice qualified prospects. For example, you could create a blog post+video/infographic about 10 Ways Small Businesses in Utah Can Stand Out Online. With a title like that, you will have identified your audience - small businesses in Utah - and their pain - how to stand out online.

You would then have a pretty good hunch that folks downloading that offer are your audience.

I know none of this is technical SEO help for you. But content has the biggest impact on SEO ... plus, I've seen great content beat technical SEO before.

[MichaelC-15022]

Be sure to check in Webmaster Tools to make sure you don't have a manual penalty.  I was doing a test on a temporary site to try and spot when Penguin did a data update, and I just copied text from other places to make "filler" content, and I got a manual penalty in just a couple of days because of that :-).  So it doesn't have to be links that get you in trouble.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Brett!

It's good to hear you're working on more content for the site, including a blog, The main thing that's hitting me about the site, is that while it's visually very nice, the content is duplicated between the home page and the various internal pages. I would recommend that you create different content for each page - it will be more interesting to visit your site and will be a show of greater effort and care on the company's part. There's excellent room for improvement here.

In addition to this, due to the competitive nature of your industry, Local SEO must be considered - but only if you you make in-person contact with your clients. If you do, then seeking rankings for your city rather than your state or nationally will be one way to start trying to break into somewhat less dense local results vs organic results. Here's a good place to start reading about the basics of Local SEO: https://moz.com/learn/local.

But if you don't make in-person contact with your clients, then local is not the right match for you and this means sticking with pursuing organic visibility, in which case it's likely to take months or years to dislodge well-established competitors in this highly competitive market both on a state and national level. You may need to investigate investing in PPC while you are working on other efforts like content development, link earning, social outreach, video marketing, etc.

Competitive analysis will be really helpful at this stage, helping you assess the strengths of competitors to see if you can match and surpass their efforts over time.

Lots of work ahead - wishing your company luck at this exciting time!

[WeAreDigital_BE]

Hi Brett,

No, I think that's absolutely the way to go. It's difficult for me to propose you qualitative sources/links as I'm based in Belgium. Someone else will be in a better position to answer this question but I would search for:

• communities
• idea/discussion websites
• partners
• ...

I would focus on local sources.

I think the content on the blog will help you. Try to share it on social media for example. At the moment getting links will be difficult because there is no reason yet for people to link to your website (content).

[Bvrettski]

We are looking more at local rankings than national. Thus the over use of the work Utah as the keywords we wish to rank in are things like utah web design, utah website design, utah joomla, salt lake web design etc.

Is that too focused/ narrow?

We are adding content to the services page.

What are qualitative sources / links? Can you give me an example even if its in another business area?

[Bvrettski]

Thanks for the prompt response(s).

We do accept work outside of utah but I (our dedicated SEO partner is in Europe and unplugged for the next two months) am trying to focus our effort on the local market. My knowledge and experience are largely in design and Joomla/ Wordpress so I am flying a little blind here. Overwhelmed and trying to wear too many hats at the moment.

I'll have to dig even deeper apparently at local SEO, certifications and domain authority.

Thanks for the insights and feedback

[WeAreDigital_BE]

You are certainly active in a competitive market. Getting a decent ranking on these kind of keywords is difficult. Execute a keyword research and research the difficulty to rank on them. The keyword difficulty tool is very interesting.

On the other hand there are a few things where you should work on:

• provide more useful content where other influencers can link too. I'm referring to your services and portfolio. The blog you are working on is also a step in the right direction. It might be interesting to have separate pages about the different services with loads of useful information. Also try to link out to other qualitative sources (helping your visitors).
• work on a steady and qualitative link profile. You only have 1 root domain linking to you at the moment. You should try to increase your overall domain authority. There are many articles on the Moz blog talking about this.

Just my cup of tea
Sander

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would focus on your on-site SEO, primarily around your title tags and overoptimization of those, especially with the word "Utah" - it doesn't need to be in almost every title tag and everywhere onsite. I'd imagine you take work from outside of Utah, right?

Beyond that, I would look into your local SEO and citation building to see if there are any opportunities there. Are there any web development directories or relevant certifications you know of that you guys can apply for? BBB?

Also, if you're going to be doing footer links (which that appears to be all you have in your backlink profile), make sure those are branded - not exact match. Those are there to reference your work, not for SEO.

This is a matter of building your Domain Authority, so focus on providing value based on intent and user experience that can result in mentions or relevant linking opportunities. There's not a lot of content on the site really; there's a huge opportunity for you!

Hope this helps! Good luck!