Everyone wants to be ranked in Google – and who doesn’t. As the #1 search engine, people go there before the other search engines over 50% of the time. This means that a lot of Search Engine people will focus on trying to get their customers on Google. This can be relatively easy for niche-markets, but harder for more general terms.
For example, I have a customer who ranks in the top ten for about 11 search terms on Google. It varies depending upon what shows on the Google report. He sells portable jewelry display cases, so since there isn’t a lot of competition, it is easy for him to rank.
I was looking through my sites today, and saw something that made me both happy and sad. I currently rank #2 for Web Development on Google. This may change slightly day to day, and based upon geographic preferences. This is a general term, so it is harder to rank for it. So why am I sad. Because Web Design is a much more common search term – and I’m not ranking for that. Because more people search for it, more people try to optimize for the term – therefore it is harder to rank for this term.
Some people will recite stats on how they got a ranking for a key word or key phrase, but they use only obscure phrases, or niche market phrases, so it doesn’t have as much effect. Your search engine efforts need to focus on how your market searches, not what you can rank for.
So what am I going to do?
- Work on reducing Web Development mentions, and increase Web Design on the site
- Add more pages showcasing this type of work
- Improve link structure on internal and external sites to showcase what I do better
I’d love to come back in a few months with being #2 in web design on Google. We’ll see…
About Walter Wimberly
There is an error i think.
You rank for “web devolvement” and not “web development “, right?
It was correct. I actively tried to remove ranking for web development, and instead start ranking for web design – where there is more competition, but where more people search for web firms.