When starting off in automotive SEO, it can be so easy to get bogged down in the mechanics of trying to get all of the right components on your page that it is easy to forget the big picture.
When doing keyword research, you might be distracted by figuring out which metrics you need to pay attention to that you ultimately forget that the point of automotive SEO is to get the highest page rank possible.
If every aspect of your SEO is not actively chosen and designed with that goal in mind, if each factor is handled independently, your SEO campaign becomes a disjointed mess.
Here are nine automotive SEO tips that are designed to keep your campaign cohesive:
1. Pick a singular keyword.
One of the biggest mistakes that most people make with their automotive SEO is picking more than just a handful of keywords to optimize for.
Why is this such a huge mistake?
Because you will be spreading the real estate on your website too thin.
If you are trying to optimizing for more than just one keyword, you probably will not optimize well enough for any one of those keywords.
Two or three usually isn’t a problem, but some dealerships will try to optimize for ten keywords, which leaves their campaign splintered and ineffective.
2. See what your competition is doing.
Now that you know what search term or terms you are going to be looking for, you need to check out what the competition is doing.
Don’t think you have any direct competition?
You’re wrong.
Search the term that you are planning on using in your campaign and see what dealerships come up.
Those are the dealerships that you are going to be competing against for space in the search results, even if they are not your direct competition in the real world.
3. Write great content.
The real key to a successful automotive SEO campaign is great content.
The better the content is, the better your webpage is going to do.
But what exactly makes great content?
This is a complicated question that has a complicated answer, but at its most basic level, content that is good for automotive SEO and good for the readers of that content will be relevant, informative, and useful.
It will be well-written, clear, and keyword-rich, without being keyword stuffed.
4. Use your keyword in the title of the page.
The keyword that you’ve chosen to optimize for (your main keyword if you are using a few) should be in the title tag of your website.
The title should be highly relevant to the content of that website, which will be extremely easy if you have picked a keyword that is highly relevant to your dealership and it goals.
Not sure what the title tag is?
Even if you are using a template website, you should be able to look at the HTML and find the title tag, which looks like this: <title> Title here </title>.
5. Use your keyword in the header.
Below the title of your website is the header.
If you can use your main keyword in this location again without it reading awkwardly or feeling stuffed, use it again.
The header directly follows your title and this is a block of text that tells the reader what they can expect on the rest of the page.
It might be a large block, as it is in this post, or it might be just a sentence or two, which is usually more appropriate for websites.
6. If you use images, use your keywords in the captions and alt tags.
You are probably going to use a lot of pictures on your website. If you are just adding them and not considering the automotive SEO implications of those images, it’s time to start.
There are two places where you can add in a keyword that will help your page get ranked.
The first is in the name and caption of that picture and the second is in the alt tag.
Do not just use a random alt or random name—take the time to include keywords, since search engines look at this data as relevancy signals when compiling search results.
7. Use your keyword in URLs.
Especially when it comes to the specific pages on your website, try to use your keyword in the URL of those pages as often as possible.
Again, this comes back to relevancy.
If you have taken the time to put the keyword in the URL, your website is going to look much more relevant when site crawlers are assessing whether or not it should be included in search results.
Especially if the URLS for your individual pages right now are just numbers or random letters, take the time to customize them so that they include a keyword.
8. Link inside your website.
Search engines love links.
They want your website’s own pages to be interlaced by a web of links that make it extremely easy to get around.
While you will also want external links, linking from blog posts to pages on your website and from page to page are all going to make it much easier to get ranked.
9. Cultivate external links.
When there are links exterior to your website, back to that website, your website looks much more authoritative and trustworthy, and those are two of the biggest signals when it comes to search engine rankings.
If there are places where you can cultivate external links, back to pages of your website, take these opportunities and capitalize on them.
