If you’re automotive website is facing difficult in getting high rankings, or you’ve lost them after the Google updates, it’s time you re-strategize to get on the first page of Google. Bear in mind that SEO is something that require constant modification and altering. New algorithms and updates of Google may reduce the effectiveness of certain strategies that might have worked a week or month ago.
It’s important for car dealership websites to be aware of the latest changes being introduced by Google. While it may be tough for a rookie to understand the complexities of SEO, you can hire a professional agency to guide you through the process. By carefully studying and analyzing each factor on Google, you can boost the rankings of your automotive website.
So, without further ado, look at these five automotive SEO strategies below for ranking on the first page of Google:
1. Create a List of Targeted Keywords
Perform a thorough keyword analysis and create a list of the keywords you will be targeting. You can use any SEO tool to figure out the car-industry related keywords to target. Once you have signed up, don’t hesitate on checking out this article on keyword research. After you’ve understood the car-related keywords to target, you need to perform a competition research to figure out which one’s you can afford. You can consider using this valuable Free SEO Cost Calculator Tool.
This tool can help you in determining how many links you will need and how much it will cost for you to outrank the competition in the car market. The price difference of ranking on competitive keywords is always high. Try finding less competitive ones to outrank the competition. Bear in mind there’s no way you can improve SE rankings, without knowing the reason of low ranks.
2. Plan Your Link Building
If you want your automotive website to get a good amount of web traffic, you need to create a detailed link-building plan. Backlinks are crucial for ranking better on Google, especially if you use them in a smart way. You may need to find a good link-building software application that complies with Google’s ranking algorithm. Do your research and calculate the number of backlinks you need and the types of links you will need for matching your SEO expectations.
After creating a detailed plan, start building links steadily and gradually. There are many tools available online that can help in figuring out the speed at which backlinks should be added. As a general recommendation, you should avoid building more than 5 links per day for your automotive website. If you start adding more, Google may begin to think you are creating fake traffic. This definitely does not work well for your rankings.
3. Mere Links with Content
An important part of link building is to make it appear as natural as possible. This can be done by surrounding the links with some high quality, keyword-rich content. Google always pays attention to those websites that go the extra mile in their link building strategy. If you don’t surround your links with content, the aim of backlinks may look suspicious to Google. This increases the risk of penalties, which can negatively impact your SERP rankings.
On the other hand, if you include targeted keywords in your content, it will make your backlinks more worthwhile. It is advised that your anchor text backlink be surrounded with at least 500 characters of relevant, unique, and interesting content. Make sure to do this for any new page you tend to insert backlinks.
4. Every 5th Link Should Direct Users to Your Site’s Inner Pages
When it comes to boosting the effectiveness of your automotive SEO strategy, 20% of the links should point to the inner pages of your website, whereas, 80% of the links should point to the homepage. This legit rule of adding links is crucial for businesses of all sizes that have many web pages. Backlinks that point to all pages of your website including the inner pages will increase the chances of your automotive site-ranking better on Google.
5. Work on Your On-Page Optimization
Over the years, Google has changed significantly by introducing various new policies and guidelines for ranking on their top pages. This not only makes it crucial to work on your off-page optimization (i.e. backlinks), but requires you to implement proper on-page SEO. Bear in mind that it doesn’t matter what number of links you get, if the on-page SEO of your site sucks, you can forget about ranking well. So make sure to:
- Create Unique Content – If you want to rank on the first page of Google, you need to play by the search engine giant’s rules. At the same time, you need to beat your competition. This makes it crucial for you to create at least 50 pages of unique content. Each page should include at least 500 words and include the relevant, targeted keywords. The more informative your content, the better chances of people visiting your website (gaining a boost in web traffic).
- Update Content Frequently – An important part of SEO is to be relevant and updated. The same goes for your content. Always fill your website with only unique content and have it updated whenever you get the time. If you have any duplicated content on your website, make sure to delete it instantly or close it from indexing. After the Panda 3.6 update, there’s no way any site with duplicated content could enter the Google Top 10.
- Create a Sitemap – To help Google’s crawlers to understand your website and its entire layout, consider creating a sitemap for your website. You can find many sitemap generators for performing this task. Once done, upload the sitemap to Google.
So, if you want to rank on the first page of Google, make sure to follow the tips mentioned above.
