51 designs LLC :: web design blog

I’ve been working on getting 51 designs to the top, or close to the top, of search engines for the term “league city web design” (see what I did there?). Since we’re a new company, I want to start as local as possible, and if a business in League City is looking for a web site… I figure that might be what they’d type in.

Now, I’ve got a couple of hurdles to jump in this endeavor.  First, I don’t want to brand the home page as only for “League City”, since we’re hoping to expand fairly quickly. I know there are ways to add in more keywords (obscuring a few on the page, redirecting search bots, etc), but I don’t want to do this. We’re also at a disadvantage because while I live in League City, our business address is in Friendswood.  sidenote – We’re listed #5 for “”friendswood web design“.

So my second hurdle: I want to stay as organic as possible.  But without “League city web design” (sorry, I can’t resist myself) in the title or a blazing <h1> tag on the page… there need to be other ways.  There are keywords in the header <h1>, which are moved off to the side, but that’s about it.  So, I did register the domain leaguecitywebdesign.com, and I’m posting some relevant content with a link here or there back to 51 designs.  I’ve also got keyword anchored links on my personal site and a couple of social network profiles I have.  And, of course, if you google “league city web design”, you’ll see leaguecitywebdesign.com at the top of the list, and 51designs.com is at #33 (up from #37 last week).

Almost all of my search marketing so far has been geared towards Google, because they’re still THE place to search. But out of curiosity, I went to check out Microsoft’s Bing and search for “league city web design” there.  And other than the two top listings, there isn’t a single local web design company listed. The top few results are spammy, non-local web design companies – then there are a few paid directories (that ALSO don’t have local companies listed) – and then meetup.com. Even the top two “local” listings are for companies in Pearland and Friendswood.

This tells me one thing: if I were trying to find a web design company in League City, Bing would NOT be able to help. In fact, the first TRUE local company is the 12th listing… and THEIR site isn’t even available. The next semi-local listing is on page 5.  So Bing is broken. At least in this case.  But if they can’t get a fairly simple search term correct, how am I supposed to have faith in their other results?