Getting backlinks for a web design company website

[vforvinnie]

Have you set up Google Places?  Since you are a local business that serves local clients, that could be a good route to go.  You can always set it to "do not display address" if you work from home and not an office.  Once you do that, make an effort to hit even more local directories like Manta, US City and others.  It may be easier to rank your places in conjunction with your website.

You could also go the route of designing a widget or WP/Joomla theme, that may have a "designed by so and so" link in it somewhere.  I wouldn't force people to keep it in, but a lot will.

You could consider making a page for each town you want to rank for as well, and then you can optimize the homepage for the bigger, more lucrative phrases.

Vinnie

[Chris-308444]

Thanks for replying Vinnie, I have set up a places page and have done a lot of local directory submissions.

I have thought of the widget/theme idea but not done it yet, do you really think it gets good results?

Maybe i need to consider setting up seperate landing pages for towns and focus on the lucrative keywords on the homepage then.

[Chris-308444]

I am getting business from that search term so that is why I am being cautious.  I have been worried about having inner pages for seperate towns as I thought that this was not good for SEO anymore?

[Chris-308444]

Thanks for the reply I will have to get on and create some content!

[Devin_Anderson]

In addition to all the other suggestions;

Web design competitions & web design galleries.

Submit your work and if it's good then the links will follow!

[vforvinnie]

Widgets are definitely a gamble if it takes you a lot of time to do.  Maybe you could do badges that rate other people's web designs (silver, gold, platinum) and give them a badge they can put up.  You can make a page on your site for web design awards.  I realize it's not 100% on topic but it's not that far off.

The template idea usually does ok if you take the time to make a nice, customized WP theme,

I love the idea of separate landing pages.  I do this a lot for local clients.  I have one client that covers 3 counties.  I've optimized the homepage for the bigger counties, but do a unique page for each town that they want to do business in.  It goes back to the principle of one page for one topic.  These pages are usually easier to rank, and should convert better than any broad page.  The higher conversion rate will help compensate for the lower volume.

[danbocain]

Totally forgot about that. CSS galleries are a great way to get a link.

[irvingw]

I would optimized for state as well as county, not sure how much traffic town will get you unless it's a huge population. town and county should be a piece of cake with proper on page optimization, for state level you'll need some link building though.

If you're adding your link to clients websites make it a homepage only footer link, not a sitewide link to avoid looking spammy to google.

[activitysuper]

Would you aim for the hardest term which involves link building on the homepage with it linking off to inner pages targeting the easier terms?

So you think it would be possible to have first page rankings for town level terms purely using on-page SEO?

[irvingw]

yea. i would target the entire site for the hardest term and create an inner page(s) for the town term and county and optimize them well. it it's not a huge town you should have success, in the town page you can list surrounding towns and in the county page you can list surrounding counties. add a map and any other local related info you can think of that makes sense, the pages will need content.

highflightdesign.com/yourtown-state

highflightdesign.com/yourcounty-state