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Top 10 Freelance Graphic Designers: A (small) Milestone

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Today for the first time, by following all the rules and working hard, and also by having a bit of luck owning an old domain  (9 years) that has always been about freelance graphic design, we cracked the Google top 10 for the following searches simultaneously:
  • “freelance graphic design”
  • “freelance graphic designer”
  • “freelance graphic designers”
  • “freelance graphic design portfolio”
…and a few more, as well as a dozen or so font and typeface related searches. We did this in 3 weeks. If you want to know, in detail, how this came about, I would encourage you to subscribe to our RSS. I’m not holding anything back, but the details will come over months, not weeks. Some of our path over the last 3 weeks is documented already. Dig, you must, and read, you must. And then after that, apply you must and work you must. Did I mention work? Of course, I don’t expect this to last. The top 10 rating could be done in a matter of days or hours, but the fact that we did it at all is due to following good instructions, writing a lot, working hard, using WordPress, and following the advice and example of other bloggers. Our site has been in top 20, 30, and 40 for the above searches and related terms for a long time (years) with a site that was essentially one page at times (as high as #17). Now it’s time to focus on finishing my basic content like About Us, getting a usable contact and prospect screening form in place, and doing something about the Portfolio! Hat’s off to Jacob Cass, David Airey, and Rob Cubbon! Their dedication to blogging and designing, as well as being open about their processes, and of course their kindly comments here on BonFX and on their own respective sites, are much appreciated. Now, I just hope that the top 10 ranking we got lasts long enough for you to get here and read about it while it’s still news :). EXPERIMENT: If you are so inclined and interested to take a look, where does BonFX come up in Google if you search any of the above terms? For what it’s worth, we don’t show up at all in Bing. What’s up with that?

About Douglas Bonneville

Douglas has been a graphic designer since 1992, in addition to software developer and author. He is a member of Smashing Magazine's "Panel of Experts" and has contributed to over 100 articles. He is the author of "The Big Book of Font Combinations", loves cats, and plays guitar.

Comments

  2. Douglas Bonneville says

    Hi David: Your site and success in the design world really are the benchmark and high-water mark, as far as freelancers (which may or may not be the right term) go. I have found the archives on your site to contain the most interesting storyline. It’s bit like watching “Rocky”. Do you ever go back and read it and relive it and think “Wow, that WAS a lot of work”? And the future? “David Airey 9.0″… 🙂

  3. David Airey says

    Haha. It’s been a fun journey so far, Doug. Plenty of ups and downs as I found my feet in the online world. Things change so fast, though, so I try not to take anything for granted.

    Speaking of movies, here’s hoping I don’t reach the dizzy lows of “Rocky Balboa.”

    And a little off-topic, thanks for the inspiration for my latest post. Much obliged.

  5. Rob Cubbon says

    Congratulations, Doug, I’m delighted to see you there. And, you’re recent improvement in ranking is almost totally down to the installation and expert use of a WordPress blog.

    Thanks for the mention. Jacob Cass and David Airey are heavyweights in the blogging game. I’m more of a super welterweight!

    Actually, that post of David’s is a good case in point. It didn’t take him long to write but it’s got people talking which is great for a blog and will raise it’s profile higher still.

  6. Douglas Bonneville says

    Well it seems you have to have built up quite a bit of good will first, through hard work, before garnering the kind of communication and comments that take place on both of David’s blogs and both of Jacob’s blogs. Who wants to comment into a black hole? I love the interaction on David’s last post about ‘logo fossil fuel‘ but I think it would have ended up dead if I tried that here anytime soon.

    This brings up a good point…I wonder if there is a type of content one must focus on posting before going for the more fun, sensational posts – the kind that become the highlight of your day. Now that I think about it, you need to write stuff that gains trust before, I think, you can entertain the idea of hosting a conversation, which in a sense is an “easier” post to put together. However you slice, nothing will work except hard work, and it seems nothing can derail honest hard work. Here’s to hard work!

  7. Douglas Bonneville says

    Just for the record, I’m a relative newb to WordPress. If my use of WordPress with the SEO basics could be deemed “expert”, I would have to defer to 1) the good folks and WordPress for making it so easy and 2) Jason Tadlock who authors the Theme Hybrid theme framework. Most of what you need for SEO is amazingly baked right into the Post page. If you have a min, you can install Hybrid through the WP theme repository and see how cool it is…

    I’m not a newb to SEO basics, nor to valid HTML / CSS. Nor to CMS’s in general. I spent 3 years in hard labor with Joomla (pre 1.5) and most recently with Expression Engine. EE is great, but it’s *so* custom you can’t get anywhere with SEO very easily. I hear that will change in 2.0 – good news then for EE!

    When I realized what it was really going to take, if a blog was going to be an effective tool for promoting my business, EE wasn’t going to work and Joomla, for me, was just too wonky. I love that word. Sorry Joomla (you are supa-cool in other ways, OK?). WordPress is really astonishing, and the support community is wonderful. The price of entry is simply to give back what you learn. That sounds like a good “recursive loop” to run!

    I did get Jacob Cass to Google “recursion”, right after I got him to Google “chirdlike”.

    http://justcreativedesign.com/2009/09/21/funny-odd-emails-recieved/

  8. Rob Cubbon says

    I’m not sure but I think you’ve put your finger on it with “hard work”. Even though I spent a while on my blog and writing blog posts I really don’t think I spend the same amount of time as Jacob and David do. I think they’ve really put in the hours nurturing their communities through forums and other sites and created relationships in greater number and greater depth. Once they’ve done this they can have very general design discussions where other people will join in to a huge extent.

    Whereas if I attempted the same it would die after a few comments. So I concentrate on posts explaining “how to…”, design techniques, technical info, etc. and hope that people find it useful.

    So I’ve no idea what type of content to focus on!

  9. Rob Cubbon says

    I’m not really aware of the SEO benefits of the Hybrid theme. I simply get WordPress out of the box and do the umpteen little things to improve SEO on site which I’ve explained in my blog recently. I’ll check it out. One thing I love is how you can reply to individual comments. I must add that to my theme.

    One thing I’d say about your site, Doug, is you’re missing a favicon.

    Misspellings aren’t always a bad thing. I had a comment once where someone wrote “desinger” and I got a lot of traffic from people who’d searched from “desinger”. See if you get any now!

  10. Jacob Cass says

    Douglas,
    When you mention in your comments about finding the ‘type of content’ – I think finding the balance between each of the articles is the way to go, though the balance is going to change throughout the various stages of your blogs life. eg. At the start you will want more linchpin resourceful posts and then later you could get into more conversational posts such as David’s logo fossil fuel post.

    And in my opinion you are very much on the right track. Congrats on the SEO work you’ve done. I’ve also just noticed I’ve cracked onto the front page for the term ‘logo designer’ for Logo Designer Blog and the second page for Just Creative Design though I am in no way a professional ‘SEOer’ – just the basics. I also have a lot of appreciation for WordPress and the All In One SEO plugin.

    I am still yet to decide if I like the reply to individual comments – sometimes they can go on forever in which it gets rather unsightly.

  11. Douglas Bonneville says

    FAVICON…I can’t believe I forgot that. Coming right up today…thanks for the reminder…

    The individual reply feature is under Discussion Settings > Other Comment Settings, and doesn’t look to me like it’s part of the theme. I’d have to change themes or get another install of WP to confirm though…

  12. Douglas Bonneville says

    Jacob: I can see the natural progression from linchpin posts to topical posts. It’s like you need to shout “Get your hot dog here!” and get a crowd, then discuss the finer points Grey Poupon vs Yellow Mustard, grilling or not grilling the bun, etc.

    I said this about David’s blog, that I love digging into the archives and reading articles in reverse order. I’ve done the same at your blog and love the archive plugin you use there, BTW. I can see the same progression at your site.

    I’m around position 100 or so for “logo designer” so I have a lot of work to do there. I need a different spin on the topic other than what you and David have done. I haven’t touched it yet (it’s only been 3 weeks!) as I have a deep love for typefaces which I poured a lot of time into. I still have some unique posts in that category I need to eek out.

    I could do threaded or not threaded or both, but I can see your point already, and like the approach where you have one reply to a bunch of different commenters. Very readable and more important very doable.