One thing I’ve noticed, is that while working on other companies web sites, the one web site which tends to get updated the least is…. my own. This apparently isn’t specific to me, as I’ve talked with many other web designers who have the same issue. I’ve even heard of web designers hiring other web designers to do their web site.

Since it has been a little while since I did a major update to my site (this past summer when I added the blog), I decided I should be performing some updates. Some are for aesthetics, others provide speed enhancements, and some improve search engine ranking and results.

• Simplified my right column on the blog. This has done several things.
  • It makes the site faster to download. Fewer widgets to process and download, result in faster page loads and less work for the server to perform.
  • It reduces “duplicate” content for the site. When the same content can be accessed from several different links, it makes it harder for search engines to determine which is the best one to display, so the results get spread thin, instead of showing a stronger single page more often.
• I’ve edited my pages to make them more efficient. By reducing the processing on the server, I’ve increased the responsiveness of the web server.
• Gearing my pages to be more about web design instead of web development. Why? Well in searches web design is searched for about 4 times as often as web development. So while I technically do more web development work, most of my customers will know it as web design, and I need to cater to them. This has included adding more and better meta tags, re-writing some of my menus, and adjusting my content.
• What you can’t see yet is adding more images to my site. After working and reading about how I’m optimizing my site to be faster, you might wonder why I’m adding images and flash content. Simple - it aligns with giving users what they want and expect. By giving them more of what they want, I expect to see higher conversion rates from my prospects.

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?

1. Work on reducing Web Development mentions, and increase Web Design on the site
2. Add more pages showcasing this type of work
3. 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…