We Got Better at Web Design and Worse at Ranking for It

I took my foot off of the gas and found myself in eighth place.

Back in 2018 (or so), I remember my cocky ass was so proud that I was dominating the local website rankings. Eric Hersey Web Design, a small one-man band, owning big agencies online and eating their cake. Sure, they had big offices and twenty employees, but I owned all of the web design keywords in Wheeling, Steubenville, and St. Clairsville. And here I am, bigger and better (as a company), and I’m not number one.

How did this happen?

Shifting Our Focus

You’ve heard it before. Niche down. Get really good at one thing and own that market.

Yes, that works. I was really good at websites. That’s primarily what I did. Sure, I also helped with SEO, but that’s just an element of making quality sites. I primarily focused on web design.

When I went to a chamber event, I talked about websites. If I attended a networking event, I would pitch my website plans. If someone asked me what I did, I would say, “I’m a web designer.” It was pretty clear that web design was my thing.

And because of that, I would blog about web design. Our web portfolios were all showcasing the amazing websites I developed over the years. My Google Business listing category was “web designer.”

There was no confusion.

Thus, when Google had to find out what type of company I was and provide valid results, it’s not a surprise I owned the web design category.

But when we rebranded, I changed that.

See, over the years, clients were asking for much more than just a pretty website. In fact, I realized that the website was just a foundation for what clients really needed. They wanted leads, more visibility, and often a marketing strategy. Over time, our services morphed into being more marketing than just a web design service.

Strong Minded Agency is listed as an advertising agency, not solely a web design company.

And that kind of hurt us for these niche search results.

Is Strong Minded Still the Best at Web Design?

Of course we are. We are actually better than we were in 2018, 2020, and 2022. We have more years of experience. We have more web designers on staff. We have better tools that allow us to pump out higher-quality sites. And since we also produce videos and take quality photos, we offer more than we did.

So why don’t we rank #1? There are a few reasons.

The Cobbler’s Kids’ Shoes

I tell this story all of the time, and it’s actually the main reason we get clients.

There’s an old fable that talks about a cobbler and his business. You would think his kids would have the best damn shoes, but often they all had holes and were beat up. Turns out the cobbler was really good at what he did and was always busy. Making money from paying customers. He didn’t have time to work on his kids’ shoes. And because of that, they were a mess.

We are proud of our work and super proud of how we deliver for clients. We’ve built up a business that stays busy year-round. With this being said, we have to really focus on putting extra time and effort into building our content. Sometimes, it takes a backseat so we can deliver for a client.

For the first year or so, blogs were not consistent. Pages on our website that needed to be beefed up or developed were pushed aside. The reports that came in maybe were overlooked. This is where we took our foot off of the gas.

And I’m not saying our competitors aren’t busy. Okay, maybe I am. Some of them all but said it on their social platforms.

But I remember being that startup. I could spend countless hours creating blogs, making videos, and focusing on the business because there were no client deliverables waiting for me. And that’s one thing I loved about SEO. You always have to be the actual best to win. You just need time and strategy. In 2018, I probably wasn’t the best. I just had the most time and knew how to work the system.

I see a few of these guys out there right now. Kudos to you.

Singular Focus

I mentioned this earlier. When you focus on one service, you do have a slight advantage. It’s important that Google knows who you are and what you do. No confusion. In that split second when they want to index your site and deliver results, if you confuse them, you lose them.

So is Strong Minded Agency a web design company or an advertising company?

The answer is both.

And since that’s not the easy, right answer, we get passed up. There is no time to explain.

Our homepage doesn’t talk enough about web design, so we get penalized for these terms.

It’s one of those things you have to strategize about. We decided we would rather show up for advertising agency than own web design. Right or wrong (in terms of how many clicks we get), it was the correct move.

We are an advertising agency that makes the best websites in Wheeling, Steubenville, St. Clairsville, Moundsville, and nearly everywhere in the Ohio Valley.

Who are we to say that?! Well, our growing portfolio is the true indicator.

What’s It Gonna Take to Make Strong Minded Agency the Best Web Design Company?

It’s slightly exhausting just thinking about it, but that doesn’t mean the competitive juice isn’t flowing.

There are a few things we just can’t fix. We don’t have a physical office, which will hurt our ability to rank on a map. Being remote is just a bigger benefit than dumping money into an office and forcing our websites to be more expensive. Our best bet is to make sure all of the others are playing by the same rules. This is called spam reporting.

We can’t make excuses, and we have to work just as hard to make sure we have relevant, helpful content on our site. If we want to win for web design, we need to talk about web design. We need better pages talking directly to our customers about why our services are the best. This is 100% on us. We control this.

We also have to be okay with letting go. We won’t win every search in every city. We probably don’t deserve to win in every city. I’m sure we aren’t the best option in Cleveland. We might be the best in a lot of other places, but some businesses truly need a local option or a specific firm to do specific things (we aren’t building custom apps or Squarespace sites).

Time to Step on the Gas Again

So, what happens next?

We get back to work.

Not because eighth place is some catastrophic failure. Strong Minded Agency is doing better than Eric Hersey Web Design did. We have more clients, more services, a stronger team, and a much better understanding of what businesses actually need.

But I’m competitive.

And if we believe we are one of the best web design companies in the Ohio Valley, our website should probably do a better job proving it.

That means better web design pages. More useful content. More examples of our work. More answers to the questions potential clients are actually searching for. And probably a lot more talking about websites than we have over the last few years.

The funny part is that there really isn’t a secret SEO trick here.

We know what needs to be done.

We just stopped doing enough of it.

So consider this blog the first push on the gas pedal.

Let’s see how long eighth place lasts.