I am unable to rank on any of my keywords

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Stephen Nutley: I wouldn`t bother trying, it such an overly saturated term, SEO for a business like this won`t work, too much competition
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  John Glenton: Your site doesnt even load. Edit working now. Will comment soon
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  John Bosworth: Sorry but your site is terrible. From a search engine POV and ux. Spelling mistakes all over it, overflow issues, lots of orphan pages. You should be glad it’s not indexed properly so you can fix it, then make it rank
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  Alan Bleiweiss: Stephen. Dude. Why did you post that comment? Are you serious in telling Craig to give up, and not to bother? Are you joking? "Don`t bother building that new car, mr. Tesla, there are too many cars on the roads already. Too many car makers. Don`t bother." "Don`t bother building Amazon, mr. Bezos - the business of selling products is already too saturated!"... "Don`t bother building your web site about SEO, mr. Bleiweiss - there are a million SEOs in the world already!"... Please. "Don`t bother creating the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook group, Jim. There`s already too many SEO help groups on the internet!"... How about this, Stephen? Don`t come to this group and post so much junk in your statements. Is it true that getting a site to rank in a very competitive market is difficult? Yes. Absolutely. Is it true that it takes a lot of effort, and involves finding out how to do the right kind of work for the most efficient process possible? Absolutely. Just don`t tell people to give up because it may be difficult.
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  Alan Bleiweiss: Craig, you need to learn critical concepts about SEO that you don`t yet know. For example, if you want to compete against other web development freelancers, you won`t likely succeed with just one page. You need an entire, multiple page web site. Seriously - how many professional freelancer or consultant web sites have you visited that were just one page? How many of those that show up in Google organic search results are just one page? How much research have you done into what a proper, complete web site for a professional consultant or contractor requires these days? Also, have you done any research on how to start with more viable keyword opportunities, and not expect to get to the first page of Google for your primary keyword phrases early on? While I do not believe you should give up, I do think you need to do a lot more research in order to be able to apply correct knowledge to your efforts if you ever do hope to achieve any success in being discovered through organic SEO.
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  Alan Bleiweiss: Craig, I searched for "I’m a freelance Web and App developer based in Sunny Scotland" which is exact text on your page, and your site does show up in Google. So without extensive auditing, I am going to assume it really is a matter of much more effort to get any decent visibility for phrases you care about. Just because other sites are old or poor quality doesn`t mean they haven`t earned trust over time from an SEO perspective.
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  Michael Martinez: I would simplify the title tag, too. You`re going after too many keywords and don`t even have your business name in it. Don`t think about SEO so much as about the Website you want people to search for. What do they need to know? Focus on branding the site first. Six months is not a very long time, especially for a site with so little SEO experience behind it.
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  John Bosworth: No, you ranked for that because he did a long tail keyword check as opposed to a short tail with high competition. Your site won’t rank without more work and that means content, pages, structure and a lot of work. I’ve got featured snippets for massive keywords in my industry because my whole site is shown as an authority on the subject matter and not just a fleeting comment here and there. It takes months to rank, even years sometimes
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  Neil Cheesman: For what it`s worth - and although this may be changing over time - relevant backlinks pointing to your website will help give it `trust` and is likely a must. There is no `one-answer` - but `building` trust takes time - having a high quality website both technically and with content is just part of the whole package - imho - What anyone can rank for is due to investment of the correct work and investment of both time and likely money. For me, reputation is key - offline and online, including social media - my own website gets a fair amount of traffic from Twitter and Facebook where a good reputation can also be built/added to. To start with, set your targets and make them attainable and then move on to the next target.
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  Ryan Logan: And...these stats do not add up. ;) You must be extremely efficient and please tell me your secrets!
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  Ryan Logan: Another idea where you could separate is to really build out your portfolio. Where are the 30 clients? If you have designed for someone in a niche industry, the client has a uniquely identifiable name, etc., you could use that to your advantage. Rather than just showing a single screenshot of the project, talk about how the project came about, what`s unique to the project, how you overcame obstacles, the client`s goals, solutions used, etc. etc. Other than just having a solid portfolio, you just never know what people are going to search for. Your portfolio is your resume...along with your own site of course. You must be on point with your spelling and grammar as well. Look into Grammarly. I use it all day, every day.
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  Ryan Logan: We are in the same industry (different countries) and I`m happy to talk shop with you. I`m still learning every day.