One of the biggest mistakes that most people who are new to automotive SEO make is believing that there is no such thing as overdoing it.
They believe that more is always better when it comes optimization.
You cannot have too many keywords, your content cannot be too keyword rich, you cannot have a backlink to your dealership’s website in too many places, when, in reality, the opposite is true.
It is very possible to overdo your automotive SEO.
Here’s what overdone SEO looks like:
Keyword-Stuffed Content
What is the difference between keyword-rich content and keyword-stuffed content?
Content that has been stuffed with keywords is created, first and foremost, with search engines in mind. Its goal is not to inform or provide value to the people who are reading it.
It is, instead, designed just to try to trick search engines into thinking it is the most relevant piece of content to that keywords.
The problem is that search engines have stopped using “number of times keyword is used” as a ranking metric.
They haven’t used it for years.
While it is still vitally important to use keywords, using a certain keyword fifteen times in a piece when you competitors only use it fourteen times is not going to get you a higher ranking than them, especially if your content is poorly written and is not very informative.
Keyword-rich content, on the other hand, is content that is created with the reader and his needs at the forefront.
Of course, this content will still contain keywords, but it contains keywords because those are the keywords that the reader is looking for when they got online to find information or a dealership in their local area where they could buy a car.
In keyword-rich content, that keywords serve the reader.
In keyword-stuffed content, the keywords appear to serve the search engine, but they do not really even do that anymore.
This is one of the most common ways that dealerships overdo their SEO.
They do not write content with the reader in mind, they write it only with the search engine in mind.
It’s easy to forget, with so much talk of those search engines and earning their favor in the world of automotive SEO, that if your content is not also informative and useful to the person who is going to be reading it, it is not going to work for the search engines, either.
These days, too much content is created without even once thinking of the visitors.
Entire websites might be built with the focus of ranking well, instead of on the visitors, which is a recipe for a website that never ranks well.
One of the biggest symptoms of this issue is lengthy or awkward keywords used frequently in the writing.
For example, you might want to create content that is optimized for a keyword like “car dealership New Jersey.”
Trying to use that exact phrase more than a few times in the content is going to become not just repetitive and annoying to read, but also clunky and awkward, especially because there are only a few ways to construct a grammatically correct sentence around this phrase. It will have to be used over and over, and is sure to start to scream “Look at me, I’m a keyword!” at your readers.
Today’s consumer puts a great deal of value on authenticity.
Any inkling that the content you have created is intended to trick them into using your website and you will have lost that potential customer.
A Slew of Low Quality Backlinks
All backlinks are not created equally.
Many who are new to automotive SEO will hear that they need links back to their website on other websites and will immediately start out to canvas the internet with their link, not realizing that this is exactly what search engines do not want them to do and which can actually earn them a penalty on their website.
Why are backlinks important?
A website that is full of informative content is naturally going to accrue backlinks from around the internet.
Other websites will see their value and think that the information there is useful for their own readers and will therefore put a link on their website.
When this process happens naturally, the link is usually high quality or, at the very least, does not look like spam when it is scrutinize by the algorithm.
However, accruing backlinks this way is tedious, difficult, and usually does not produce lasting results.
There is nothing wrong with actively working to build backlinks for your website.
An issue arises when you try to get as many backlinks as possible, through methods that do make those links look like spam.
For example, you might got a forum where people are asking questions about car maintenance.
You might just post a link back to your website in the thread.
While there might be great information available if someone were to follow that link, this looks like spam and is therefore classified as such.
Links like these will do little for improving your SEO.
What can you do instead?
A good way to make sure you are using only the best strategies is to make sure that you are working with an agency that uses only the best strategies.
Another way is to thoroughly research the strategy you are trying to implement and use only the methods that the majority of sources recommend and say are safe to use for your website.
