SEO for car parts business

[FrazerPart]

Hello fellow Actinic users,
we specialise in selling new and used parts for Porsche cars.

Our fastest moving products are brake pads, clutches and service kits. We have them listed on our website, http://www.frazerpart.com/acatalog/S...s___Parts.html

but, how do we go about getting them featured in the Google listings? We know we are very competitive on price, but if people can't find us when they do a google search on "Porsche 911 clutch" for example, we're missing out on a huge opportunity. We like to see if we can get some results manually before exploring the Adwords route.

Can somebody take a look at our site and please offer some suggestions as to how we could direct more traffic to those products. What are we doing wrong? Is there anything blatently obvious? Are page names, meta descriptions and keywords as influential as they used to be? Is there a quick fix that we can implement that will increase traffic immediately?

Secondly, and this may or may not be related, but how can we make sure that when google does list us in it's results page (for a search on "911 clutch" for example), the link that google provides, does indeed take the browsers directly to the product page (e.g. 911 clutch) and not the homepage where the user still has to browse for it?

Hope somebody can help
Max

[grantglendinnin]

You're in for a hell of a lot of reading, learning and patience - you'll need to employ SEO tactics.

Entering the SEO world means you also enter the world of cold calling - the higher you rank the more cold callers you'll get trying to sell their services to "guarantee you number 1 position in Google". Obviously think out of the box - they never can, and never will be able to guarantee this unless of course they're Google themselves

One of the best resources on the net for learning about SEO, what it is, the practise, and how it works, etc - Seo Book.

As you can see, this is why you are not ranking for those terms - see here.

[leehack]

If "Porsche 911 Clutch" is a keyword phrase you'd like to rank high on, can you show us the page or pages where you have targeted and marketed towards this phrase? We can then better see where you might be going wrong.

[FrazerPart]

Grant, thanks for the links. I've taken a look at them and have a couple of questions. With the free registration that is available to SEOBook, am I going to get enough info out of it to benefit from it? I'm always sceptical of sites that are asking for payments, particularly when I have no experience of the subject matter they are trying to sell me. I hate being taken for a ride and $100 per month sounds like a lot of money to me....... I'm assuming you are recommending the site because you have had good expereinces with the info they share/sell. Is everything that the site suggests relevant to Actinic or do I need to do SEO differently when using the Actinic product?
Secondly, what does the Yahoo Site Explorer link tell me? I'm beginner in the world of SEO!

Lee, I can't answer your question because I don;t really know where to start with SEO! I have good source for clutches and I want to push them through the website. How would you do this? What data would you enter into the various Actinic product fields? There must be some science to this and I'd like to learn it .........

[pinbrook]

Assuming you have a product called "Porsche 911 Clutch" start by having this phrase as the page title <TITLE>Porsche 911 Clutch</TITLE>, and the only phrase in meta keyword. have a sentence to describe the product using the phrase as your meta description

in the product page (again assuming one product per page,) have H1 or h2 tags around the product name.

when describing the product again use the phrase once.

and maybe call the product image "Porsche-911-Clutch.jpg"

see how you go with that lot....

but read more

[leehack]

You have a lot of reading ahead of you I feel, there's some great advice in this forum alone, pull up a seat, get yourself a flask of coffee and start the 20-hour read you will probably need to do, to become comfortable in this area.

If you think $100 a month is expensive, then you have no choice but to put in many hours yourself learning, once you've learnt what you need to know, you'll realise that if that $100 a month advice is good, it will undoubtedly be the greatest ever advice you have ever received at an unconceivably cheap price. Correct SEO is worth thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds.

There will be some great SEO forums you could join also which would help. Read all of the advice you can get, even the conflicting stuff and then come up with your own blueprint and try things out. Don't take any one article as gospel, get a good balanced view on things.

There's nothing more satisfying that cracking something like this yourself from just reading the free info around, I think it will be your only option if spending is not an option.

[FrazerPart]

Jo,
Please have a look at the attachement. Is this what you are suggesting as a starting point?

If so, what exactly are these <TITLE></TITLE> & <H1> </H1> tags doing?
Have I been nieve and assumed that Actinic Busuness v9 would do this for me automatically?

Max

[leehack]

Have a read of this before you go any further - http://www.websitedesigned.co.uk/actinic-sections.htm - you are in grave danger of completely screwing your site up. You don't need to add the tag ie the <title> part, actinic does that for you, you do need to add the text to go in between them though.

[Rich Brady]

Do as Lee says, read the sire revies already posted. A lot of the things mentioned will apply to you.

A lot of people, myself included, will suggest that you build your site for visitors first. A lot of SEO will come naturally if you navigation and titles are clear and concise.

I did a search for "Porshe Service Kits" yesterday and it's a fellow Actinic user that has the number on spot, so you might want to see what they are doing right.

It concerns me that you thought it necessary to put <title></tile> tags in the text field, like Lee said you are risking messing up completely. So read, read and read some more.

Personally I would move your "shop" navigation above the fold and go to SPP with choices for the model, rather than having 3 identical products with a different engine size or year.

[pinbrook]

Please have a look at the attachement. Is this what you are suggesting as a starting point?

If so, what exactly are these <TITLE></TITLE> & <H1> </H1> tags doing?
Have I been nieve and assumed that Actinic Busuness v9 would do this for me automatically?

you misread what i was saying.. the screen image you provided is where you put the keyphrase, but just put Porsche 911 Clutch in there, actinic will wrap the title tags around it.

The H tags i refer to will mean editting the product layout. Although you should only do this if you have one product per page otherwise it will be spamming.

Do as Lee says read his tutorial as you can do more damage but not doing this correctly.

Actinic does not do SEO automatically as SEO changes from day to day, thus actinic could do more damage if it tried to incorporate.

SEO is not easy, it is time consuming but spend time now and then you only have to keep topping up your knowledge as times goes on. Try a few SEO forums to get the gist, only use this forum for actinic specific SEO Qs - titles, tags, body text etc are all general SEO.

[FrazerPart]

Richard, I'm assuming it is PorscheShop that you are reffering to as the competitor site. Yes they do appear at the top of google with more or less every google search.
I'm not an expert in this field but I've just had a quick look at the source code and seen references to Actinic.
This inspires me. If they can get the search engine results that they are, then is there any reason, given time, why we can't?

[Rich Brady]

This should definitely inspire you. I hadn't specifically look for another Actinic shop, it was just coincidence.

SEO wise, actinic is very good "out of the box" reading the user manual will help you understand what Actinic is doing and where.

His page title is "porsche_911_service_items" and this is replicated in the section name.

I would use "Porsche Service Kits" as your section name and "Porsche-Service-Kits" as the page name. Google prefers "-" to "_", so for any new pages use the hyphen. It may give you a slight edge.

Then have text like "This Porsche Service Kit Includes:" and then list the parts their specifications and how they are likely to effect performance. "feel less guilty next time you drive it hard from cold!" comments like this aren't that good IMO.

Get some numbers from your supplier and say "Our Porsche Service Kits increase a 10 year old engine by .... miles" or something a long those lines.

Larger and multiple images is what I's want from a customer perspective. Perhaps you could make a video/image record of a Garage installing one of these kits and put a recommended install time along with average labour rates. If you can do it yourself, show a step by step "Heynes Manual" type film strip.

There's a Brochure page for you right there, link the brochure page you your Service kit sections.

[grantglendinnin]

Here literally is a 100% free SEO book - again, a very worthwhile read. IBP Seo Book

[FrazerPart]

Richard, have www.porscheshop.co.uk built their site using a single product per page format? It doesnlt look like they have.
If so, what have they done to get their Actinic site to the top of the Google searches so successfully and thoroughly.
Everybody that I seem to speak to seems to recommend single product page format to get the best results in Actinic.........

[grantglendinnin]

Richard, have www.porscheshop.co.uk built their site using a single product per page format? It doesnlt look like they have.
If so, what have they done to get their Actinic site to the top of the Google searches so successfully and thoroughly.
Everybody that I seem to speak to seems to recommend single product page format to get the best results in Actinic.........

This isn't limited to Actinic - Single Product Pages are recommended for all ecommerce sites.

Why? It's just like a shop. Walk up an aisle looking for a 500ml bottle of Coca Cola. You don't find it immediately, nor will you see it immediately, because all the other items are on the same shelf.

Fill an entire shelf with Coca Cola 500ml - and what will you find? Only 500ml Coca Cola bottles.

Search engines tend to favour the latter - they like it when a page is all about one subject - aim one page at one market.

Simple as that, think of the logic in there (yes, there is logic in SEO!) - and it'll help convince yourself this is without a doubt the way to go.

Porscheshop.co.uk are where they are where they are because they've done a bit of on-site work (ie. factors you can change - on your site, like optimising the code) and some off-site work - link building.

You also inadvertently gave your competitor another (very slight, if at all, tbh) boost by linking to their site from here.

Read the guide I posted earlier, it'll save you hours of time wondering why you're not ranking, as well as thousands of pounds if you can absorb the info and put the info into practise.