Hey from a New guy to SEO

[timborrill]

Hi everybody!!!

Hope everybody is dandy.

Have spent a long time looking into SEOmoz and decided to just take the plunge and see what happens.

Im quite new to the world of SEO but I really want to get good at it. Hoping Moz and this community will aid with this!

Currently in the process of reading the SEO beginners guide and the SEOmoz user guide!

The two sites that I am currently working on are:

1. www.advanced-incar.co.uk

2. www.advanced-incarcamerasystems.com

The first site seems to have crawled well and have entered my competitors and am getting some info back (looks like I have a lot of work to do judging by the errors D'oh)

In the world of Google what is the best way to ensure you have authority on certain terms. For instance if I search advanced-incar we are top and we have all our sitelinks underneath etc etc, but when I search advanced incar we are second and as such we don't display sitelinks. Any ideas?

The second site was built using 1&1 and gives us a good little site for what we need. I have found out through research the most popular keywords are in car camera & in car cameras. Currently Im using Adwords to get us sponsored hits which is getting us some nice traffic but costing a bit. Those are the two main keywords i want this site to really hit home with. Any advice?

Also on this site, when I go to SEOmoz and select Link Analysis I get no info. It just shows 0 or 0.0 wheras my competitor sites all have values against them. Is something wrong with my site or what im doing? (Have added an example screenshot)

I appreciate its a long ended question but would really appreciate some help. Hoping that the guides will help me understand all this linkjuice stuff etc as well!

Thanks guys, really appreciative of any info you can provide.

Tim

CompetitiveDomainAnalysis-AdvancedInCarCameraSystems-SEOmozPRO.png

[timborrill]

Many thanks for the in-depth response Marcus!! Yes another UK body!

Along with my reading I shall definitely take this on board and hopefully reflect it in my work.

• In regards to the attachment showing the Link Analysis, any ideas why it seems to show nothing?

[activitysuper]

I'll add the extra thumbs up, great response.

[Marcus_Miller]

Cheers Robert, thumbs up right back at you! As it happens, I have seen some cracking answers from you recently!

[RobertFisher]

Marcus,

Excellent differentiation around site links and navigational query vs other.

Second, the advice around "backing into" more competitive terms. Damn, if only I had two thumbs to give!

You deserve an excellent answer on this one.

Best

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Tim, how's it going? You another UK bod?

**Right, the first question about site links. **

In my experience, site links are an indication of trust, relevance and primarily if Google is pretty certain that the query is navigational in nature - that is, Google believes that query is used by someone looking for your site so they can help the user dive deeper into the site.

So, when someone uses the hyphen, they believe that person is looking for you but when someone uses those two words without the hyphen then they are not certain enough that it is a navigational query to display the site links so they hedge their bets and display a standard set of results.

Let me give you an example. I recently worked on a new site for a client from conception so we helped them come up with a brand based around what they do and who they are AND that had an available .co.uk domain (no mean feat).

There was no one else with this brand name in the UK and there was only one site with this brand in the US but it was a brochure site without much in the way of links and no updates since it was built.

To begin with, a search for the brand name (one word we made up) resulted in the US with sitelinks and us somewhere below in like 3rd place after another site that seems to rank on a possible mispelling. Before long we were second below the sitelinks. Then, the US site lost it's sitelinks and we were second, then a week or so later, after really nothing more than some involvement on some relevant blogs in our niche we were above them and they just had the 2nd and 3rd results.

So, the word, lets say it was blablah - it did not mean anything so had to be navigational and pretty much had to be this other site so they got sitelinks. As time went on and people started searching blablah but not looking for them anymore google could not be sure the person definately wanted that result so showing them with sitelinks was a bad result for at least some users so they got removed.

That search query could be related to some kind of kit people are searching but it's pretty abstract so really, you need to just get the site more established, get more brand signals and over time you should win the sitelinks for that other navigational search as well.

You want links with your brand name and to feature on lots of relevant sites in your niche, whether that is no follow or not and just become a hub within your sector by building good content, getting linked to, promoting your content to get links and building branded links etc.

**Second question about ranking for those terms. **

Well, I have not checked them but first thing check them out on the keyword difficulty tool on seomoz to see what kind of level of competition they have. I suspect they will be pretty high so you may want to put them down as a long term goal and focus on some more achievable keywords to start with through content and content promotion to build links and social signals.

You almost want to work backwards so if we expand those terms (I am making this up but it serves as an example):

In Car Camera - 1000 uk searches a month

in car camera system - 170 uk searches a month

in car video camera system - 30 uk searches a month

Well, if you try to start with the first one, you will likely get nowhere so work around the edges. Start with the 30 search a month one and build content to support that phrase and feed people to whatever goal you have for the site. Identify lots of other longer tail and less competitive keywords and work on those and start to build some traffic and relevance.

Once you have dialled in all the long tail stuff then move up to the middle phrases. Your relevance built in stage 1 will help you here go after these more competitive terms. You may even find that you build content landing pages that reference the lower pages and they rank pretty well. Usual SEO rules apply so promote, try to get links, guest post etc.

Then, and only then, when you have good relevance for the long and mid supporting phrases, go after the bigger terms.

This is kind of a view from 50,000 feet but hopefully you get the picture. Make your site relevant, go after less competitive terms, gather traffic, links and likes and slowly go after the bigger ones. Use these terms to get sales, soft conversions for free guides to push people towards social platforms and email lists and slowly but surely go after the bigger fish.

Hope that helps!
Marcus