Entrepreneur in Need of SEO Help

I am the owner of an emerging web design company located in Ohio. We have been slowly building the company over the past 3 years (as I and my associates also have "day jobs").

We have designed a professional web site that we are very happy with and are now ready for SEO. I have tried a few SEO techniques over the years, but given the abundance of Web Design companies available, I have had relatively no luck.

Searching Google for our company name will display us at number two (which is not very useful because our name does not describe our business). However, searching for "web design" provides no listing (at least not one high enough to be found). I've even tried narrowing the search to "web design ohio" with no luck.

Here are some of the strategies I've read about and tried:

1. I have included keywords in the titles of my pages, ALT tags, description, keyword, etc. I have key words in the text of my document and have tried to make links and headings out of key words.

2. I have written articles that are freely published on other web sites. This is done to increase inbound links to our site.

3. I have submitted our URL to every free listing/search engine I can find.

I have considered paying for clicks through Overture and Google, but as you can imagine, the cost of the key word "web design" is very high and we do not currently have the budget to compete.

Can the SEO/Google pros in this forum please provide me with some tips on what I should do to start increasing our ranking in Google?

I'm guessing that there is a lot I could do, but I'm asking for advice on what my preliminary "plan of attack" should be.

Also, I have about 6 web sites linking to my site and when I check Google (link:www) for inbound links, it says none were found. Any ideas why this is?

I appreciate any advice/input anyone has.

Thanks very much.

I am not a professional seo, but all my sites are in top 3 positions
for their key words - this is my initial thoughts:

1. read the active and archive topics on this forum, there is all the info you need to get a good serps for your website.

2. according to the google toolbar you have a pr of zero with no
backlinks. Therfore you must get some good quality links to your site.

3. submit to DMOZ, which is free, but can take a long time to get in, and to Yahoo, you will have to pay but it is worth it. Also paid submission to Inktomi is recommended.

4. you need to change the title of your page and put it in H1 tags.
Unless optic fusion is a key word, I would change it something like "Website Design Services Ohio".

5. you need to get your most important key word phrase as the
first words in the html title tag - don't start of with "optic fusion"!

6. you need more content on your home page featuring your key words.

7. as I am sure you are aware website design is a very competitive keyword, but if you follow the advice in this forum - in particular obtainining good quality links and coming up with good content your serps will improve.

8. no doubt other members will post other tips ans advice

good luck,

Stuart
Internet Trading UK

A Signature in all your postings would help. Whats the site URL?

Nick

The website address is: www.optic-fusion.com

For a quick fix while the SEO work takes hold...

'Web Design' is definitely an expensive keyword on overture, but what about 'Web Design Ohio' (and I'm sure you could come up with other suitable key phrases)... (personally, I would use Google Adwords rather than Overture, but it's up to you).

Even though (most) of those bidding on 'Web Design' will show up in the results for 'Web Design Ohio' - the person doing the search is obviously interested in ohio companies and your result will be the most relevant (so position is less of an issue). Just make sure the title of your ad has 'Ohio' in it somewhere to hammer this point home.

The secret to PPC is to use highly targeted keywords... if you want to concentrate on local work, then something general like 'Web Design' is absolutely useless to you - how many of the total searches on that work do you think are going to be people in Ohio?