There are lots of false rumors out there about search engine optimization.
If you’re new to automotive SEO or you have only dipped your toes in the well, you might be led astray by these false rumors.
Here are nine of the worst lies you can believe about automotive SEO:
1. It doesn’t really work.
Despite great documentation for how it does actually work, there are still plenty of people claiming that automotive SEO is a scam and that you will be wasting your time and money if you try and use it to improve your website’s rankings.
Luckily, SEO is actually not a scam and it does really work. It is, in fact, the only way to get to the top of the search results, since all of your competition is probably already doing it. If you want your website to be successful, you are going to need an automotive SEO campaign.
2. Google is great at finding the most valuable content on their own.
Most people will put great content on their website and on their blog and just hope that without any optimization at all that Google will crawl the website and put them at the top of the search engines.
The only people this has ever worked for is likely huge businesses that have had functioning websites since the dawn of the internet.
Now, even big businesses need to use SEO to get people to come to their websites.
Google is not an all-knowing artificial intelligence that can magically figure out that your content is relevant, even if you have not optimized it.
3. SEO only needs to be done once.
You put those keywords in your content, you built a few outside links—you’re done, right? The truth is that nothing could be farther from the truth.
Old SEO is just about as good as non-existent SEO. If you optimized your website back when it was built for your dealership and have not touched your SEO since, it is simply not going to function properly.
If you’re not actively improving your campaign, you are automatically going to be losing ground.
4. You don’t need to build links.
Despite the fact that search engines have repeatedly stated how important it is to cultivate outside links, there are many people that still believe that link building is irrelevant.
There are others who actively try to tell people not to build links, because it could harm your automotive SEO.
It’s true that bad link building will harm your campaign. It’s true, however, that you don’t need to build links at all.
5. There is a magic keyword that will suddenly boost your website to the number one slot.
There is no magic bullet in SEO and anyone offering you a magic bullet is selling you snake oil.
SEO is an on-going, long-term strategy that slowly helps your website climb the ranks of relevant search results so it is more visible to the people who will find your website valuable.
Moreover, focusing on one magic keyword is putting too much emphasis on this keyword and not enough on the other keywords that could also bring you traffic.
6. Google is actually anti-SEO.
The only thing that Google actually doesn’t like is a SEO tactic that tries to circumvent their algorithm.
These are called “black hat” SEO strategies and they usually work very well in the short term (because they take advantage of a flaw in the algorithm), and then ultimate get your website banned altogether form the search results.
Google’s only desire is to bring the most relevant information to their searchers.
Sites that are properly optimized makes it much easier for them to do just that.
7. The Google Answer box has ruined SEO.
There are still people actively angry that Google implemented the Answer box.
If you phrase your search query in the form a question, Google will try to answer it, taking content from the topmost or second-to-the-top website and putting it in a box at the top of the search results.
While this means that searchers do not necessarily have to click into your website in order to get the content they seek, it does not mean that they won’t click on your website.
This is, in general, not something that most dealerships need to worry about.
8. SEO is a trick.
People will sometimes believe that any automotive SEO tactic that they implement is a way of tricking Google into ranking their website higher.
This just isn’t how SEO works.
The only tricks in SEO are the black hat tactics that will ultimately get you banned.
These are ways of tricking the algorithm into giving you a higher rank when you do not deserve it.
Real automotive SEO uses real tactics to get the algorithm to pay attention to you because you deserve it.
9. What you do outside of your website doesn’t affect your rank.
If what you do and say online isn’t actually connected to your website, does it affect your website?
Especially if you do and say things on social media, it can significantly affect your website and its ability to rank well.
Google looks a literally hundreds of different signals when determining where a website should rank, and social is a big signal. It has a lot to do with your influence, your reputation, and your authority on a subject.
What happens outside of your website but still within the scope of your dealership’s brand is important to your SEO campaign.
