I recently set up a personal and a professional goal ofgetting ranked in Google's search for the following keywords:

Designs by Chris (18,100 global search queries, competition low)
web design in chicago (22,200 global search queries, competition high)
chicago web design (22,200 global search queries, competition high)
chicago design firm (5,400 global search queries, competion high)
web design company in chicago (1,900 global search queries, competition high)
chicago graphic design firm (1,000 global search queries, competition high)
web design companies in chicago (1,600 global search queries, competition high)

I've been using SEO tactics and guidelines and have accomplished rank 15, that's page 2 on Google's search results, for 'Designs by Chris' after about 2 weeks of work. I feel confident that I'll get page one with a couple more weeks of SEO'ing. I'm already ranked 1 for 'GKDN', 'Gwizsk', and for Chris Vile I have at least 3 results on page 1 of Google.

As far as the other keywords, I've put in about 4 hours of SEO'ing and have not seen any results. I don't search past page 10, so I do not if I am ranked past that, but that's not important because I doubt people even click past page 3.

What am I surprised about is the amount of backlinks I was able to obtain for my website, which is 40,000+. What I screwed up on was the ALT or name, I was using 'Chris' instead of my keyword.. Well, at least I will get traffic from those links, but I doubt I get any rankings. Or maybe that's why I was able to rank up for Designs by Chris so quick. I did save my URLs for backlinking, they will come in useful for other projects.

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