Doing it all myself: CommerceHelper.com

Hi All, I 've been hanging around for the last few weeks absorbing the HUGE ammount of great knowledge from Darrin, Gringo and the gang... I am a web designer and developer, but have never dabbled into the seo realm before.

I'm trying to get high rankings for the keyword combination "web designer" since that is searched a hell of a lot more than "san diego website designer", which is my current google triumph.

I have been working on reciprocal links, adding relevant content, and changing my title and meta tags.

I know that when the dance happens I will see how I did, but thought I'd post to the experts.

Also, I am willing to trade services!!

As there are loads of website designers and developers here you are asking a BIG ask, I only had 5 minutes but;

0. Use the keyphrase on your home page somewhere in the text and in the image alt text and where relevant the link titles ( web designer != web designers ) as some important search engines do not do lexical analysis.
1. Ditch the font tags and use an external style sheet.
2. Use your robots.txt file to exclude the external style sheet from the crawl.
3. Add title text to your navigation links.
4. Try for more backlinks to the site (look for free directories there are tons of them)
5. Move your company description as high up the page as you can.
6. Tidy up your source.
7. Some meta data for spiders that still use them may be an idea ( name and description in particular )
8. Spiders read text not flash or images - more content would go a long way, use header tags where relevant.
9. Read the older threads in this forum there is a lot of information that will help you

You touched on several things I was unaware of, like stripping font tags... Are you a pro seo? Looking for work? contact me through my website!!!

I'm am not a pro SEO but Darrin is If you are looking for someone to give you a hand and are willing to pay you might want to cantact him.

If you just want to learn more and do it yourself, keep visiting the forum.