Hiya Guys I have been aiming to get to number for TOWN NAME web design, Ive got there, and its not bringing in too much work. Im thinking of shifting the keywords of the site over to 'cheap web design' or 'small buisness web design' This is going to be a bit of a long challenge, but imagine it will bring in much more work. The question.....with changing over title tags etc Im going to loose my current ranking - will google be annoyed at me for shifting the main keyword of the site? Many thanks
Of course it will. Title tag is the most important on-page seo factor. Every change made to this tag will caused fluctuated in website ranking for a period of time. However, since the change has been made to compete more competitive market then your current ranking may dropped, or even wiped out. Google may throw your websites out for many keywords you ranking for after evaluated and found your website had changed on its "topic / theme". I would recommend to thinking through and made change to title with caution. You should not change this tag too frequent as it will cause a high fluctuated all the times.
This is a typical mistake... People "think" they know what they should try to rank for and waste a bunch of time getting there only to find no one searches for the term. Keyword research is the MOST important first step you should take. You can do a lot of keyword analysis free online. Check out the <title>, meta keywords, meta description, h1, h2, etc. elements on your competitors sites. Use Google's external Adwords tool to do research. Basically you're looking for keyword phrases that get at least moderate traffic but don't have a lot of organic competition. Do NOT just base the phrase you pick on search volume. And look for phrases that you think your customers are looking for... phrases you think might result in a conversion (whatever that means for you... a sale, a lead, an email address, etc.)
In my own experiences, you might want to use a nice keyword tool like Google Adwords Keyword Tool and do a thorough keyword research for your targeted niche firstly before making changes to your main targeted keywords. Also, keyword elite is a nice paid tool for this purpose, IMO. Generally speaking, picking up some long tail or local relative keywords would be helpful at the very beginning, especially for competitive niches like web designing. All the best,