Your dealership’s blog is going to be one of the biggest pieces of your website’s success in climbing the ranks of search engines.
A strong blog, with a long history of insightful, helpful, informative posts is one of the best ways to make sure that your website has the content that it needs to be considered a high value link on search engine results.
Here are some tips to help you make sure your blog is as automotive SEO friendly as possible:
1. Don’t put all of your eggs in the onsite basket.
There are basically two different types of automotive SEO.
The first is onsite, the second is offsite.
Most people focus primarily on the onsite side of automotive SEO, simply because it seems like it is easier to control.
The truth is, however, that offsite SEO can be just as important, and is especially important if you have not actually done any offsite optimization.
One of the biggest parts of offsite optimization is link building—getting other websites to include links to your website on their website.
A strong link profile will be as important as high quality content on your website.
2. Use keywords that have the right user intent.
User intent is something that is now just becoming important and popular in discussions about keywords.
For example, the intent of someone who is searching for the “best sedan” is probably different than the intent of someone who is searching for “Kia dealerships.”
Both might eventually buy a vehicle from you, but the first is still researching vehicles and the second is actually looking for dealerships to purchase from.
Using keywords that have the right user intent will ensure that your website reaches people that are ready to purchase vehicles right now.
3. Your URL should include the post title.
No matter what blogging platform you are using, you should have the option of modifying the post’s URL.
Sometimes, the platform will automatically generate a title that does not include the post title, which will make it less likely that someone is going to click on your link.
Making sure to change the URL of your post so that it accurately reflects the title of your post is very important for increasing the ratio of people willing to click on that link.
4. The title should be unique and content relevant.
If you write a title that is likely to encourage people to click, but ultimately does not accurately reflect what your post is about, that title is clickbait, and there is nothing that the average consumer hates more than a clickbait title.
Before posting your content, run a quick search to make sure that the title you are using is not exactly the same as a title that has already been used for a post about this topic.
If it is, this might be a sign to Google that you have copied the content, even if you have actually written it all yourself, without any plagiarism.
5. Use a plugin to measure the efficacy of your SEO.
If you are using WordPress, you can install a plugin on your blog that will actually tell you whether or not your blog is fully optimized.
While a good score on this plugin should not be the be-all, end-all when it comes to optimization, it is a good indication of whether or not your post is safe for automotive SEO and whether or not it is going to help you achieve your goals.
6. Visibility is more important than rankings.
It is important to remember that the rank of your site is going to vary from person to person.
The individual person, their search history, the exact search terms they use, etc. are all going to affect where you stand in their results.
This means that in many regards, visibility is a more important factor to consider than ranking.
Visibility is essentially how many eyes you get on your link. Remember that you could be on the second page of the search results for most relevant queries and still get plenty of visibility.
7. Don’t exchange links.
Here’s one of the most important things for you to remember as you build your automotive SEO campaign: do not exchange links.
Nothing, except maybe stealing someone else’s content, will get you red flagged and blacklisted faster than exchanging links.
Even if you do it in good faith, if the search engines even get a hint that you might have exchanged links with another website, you are going to have serious trouble.
Do not do it accidentally.
Do not do it purposefully.
These link exchanges often sound very promising for building a link profile to those who are new to SEO, and they wreck websites extremely quickly.
8. Do not keyword stuff.
While you definitely want your keyword to make its presence known in the content, it should not be used so often that it is the only phrase that your readers take away when they read your content.
Overusing keywords is very bad for readers, so it is very bad for search engines.
How often is too often?
Read through your blog post before publishing it.
If you are starting to hear it resound as you read it out loud to yourself, you are using the keyword too many times and it will start to annoy the people that are reading the post when it is published.
