I am trying to target my site via SEO to reach my target audience, people looking for someone to create their website. Now I would prefer from my point of view to describe myself as a web developer rather than a web designer, however it seems that most potential clients search for web design in google rather than web development. In reality most of them would need the whole package and so I am thinking of targeting ‘web design [my country]’ as a term rather than ‘web development [my country]’. Does that make sense?
Wed design is what most people are searching, especially those who are just starting to learn web development so I suggest you target both keywords. Web design for newbies and web development for both newbies and experts.
These are both tough keywords though. Make use of all your resources. Good luck 
Do you just need to use one? It seems you’d get more if you perform SEO for both keywords. Actually, if you use both… wouldn’t that mean double the exposure and traffic for you?
I think people will be looking for web designers more
Yes I have already checked the keyword tools and web design is clearly more popular as a search term. Maybe my current mistake is that I am targeting both together as I am optimising for the term ‘web design and development [mycountry]’. I will try to split these and make a page on each.
There’s no reason you can’t target both on your site, but I see what you’re trying to achieve (in targeting your main phrase).
There are a number of tools that will give you insights into the amount of search volume and competition for the phrases you are targeting - so I would start there:
- https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- http://www.google.com/insights/search/
- http://www.google.com/sktool/
…just for starters…