It’s A Big Part Of Growth! – Invest In SEO for Car Dealerships
28March 4, 2024
The best way for your auto dealer’s website to reach the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) is with SEO for car dealerships East Chattanooga, TN. However, some SEO tactics aren’t worth using because they’ll cause your ranking to tank instead. There’s a significant difference between mainstream auto dealership SEO tactics and the type that will cause your website to never see the light of a screen again. Here are some SEO for car dealerships dos and don’ts.
Expand your business’s online visibility with SEO for car dealerships done the right way.
What is SEO for Car Dealerships East Chattanooga, TN?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of what to do and what not to do, we should set a basis. So, what is SEO? Short for search engine optimization, SEO for car dealerships refers to the practice and collection of marketing methods that optimize a website to improve its visibility and rankings on the SERPs. Sound familiar?
You might already be using SEO for car dealerships to help your website climb up the ranking and be the #1 result for your local area. This includes a number of different tactics and techniques that help bring free traffic to the website, which increases the chances of getting people who want to buy a car. Some popular SEO strategies used by car lots are:
Keyword research and optimization: Find useful, high-intent keywords that people who want to buy a car might use when they’re looking for one, and make sure that website content is optimized for those keywords.
Creating content: Write blog posts, articles, and press releases that are interesting and useful for people who are looking to buy a car. This can help bring in customers and make the auto dealer known as a trustworthy source of information.
On-page optimization: Make changes to page titles, meta descriptions, URLs, headings, and other on-page elements to make them more search engine friendly and increase your chances of ranking higher in organic search results.
Local SEO: Make sure the dealership’s website is optimized for local searches by adding location-specific keywords, making and improving Google Business Profile listings, and getting customers to leave good reviews and ratings.
Mobile optimization: Make sure that the dealership’s website works well on phones and tablets since more and more people are using their phones to look for stores and do research.
Link building: Get high-quality backlinks from trustworthy automotive-related websites, like car review sites or local listings, to boost the strength and visibility of a website.
User experience optimization: Make a website faster, easier to navigate, and more enjoyable for all users to keep them there longer, lower the number of people who leave right away, and raise the chance that they will convert.
Tracking and analytics: Use tools like Google Analytics to keep an eye on how well your website is doing, keep track of keywords, traffic sources, and other metrics to see how well your SEO tactics are working, and make decisions based on data for even more optimization.
Whether you’re handling it yourself or you have a digital marketing team handling the SEO for car dealerships for you, you’ll want to make sure that you’re getting the best of the best. But how do you know if you’re getting the best SEO services available to you? Actual SEO Media, Inc. can tell you how to spot the difference between white and black SEO methods.
The White, The Black, and The Gray
The experts in the industry differentiate SEO tactics allowed by search engines as “white hat SEO.” Tactics blacklisted by the search engines are called “black hat SEO.” Of course, even some white hat SEO strategies shouldn’t be overused; otherwise, it enters a grey zone where it can debatably be either or. That’s why you want to ensure your SEO for car dealerships is handled the right way.
What happens if you use the “wrong” kind of SEO for car dealerships? The best-case scenario is you’ll lose a few ranks on the SERPs. The worst-case scenario is that your website will be de-indexed by search engines, making it impossible for any user to find you without going directly to your website. Of course, all hope isn’t lost because you can still make a comeback from either situation. With enough work, you can turn the situation around and bring back your car dealership’s website ranking.
However, it’ll be a tough journey to make it back onto the search engines’ good side. After all, once you break someone’s trust, it’ll be harder for them to trust you again. You’ll need to work twice as hard as before to optimize your website for search engines. That’s why you want to stick to white hat SEO tactics to ensure you’ll reap the benefits and rewards later down the line.
White SEO: How to Stay On the Search Engines’ Good Side
White hat SEO is the practice of using SEO strategies and methods that follow the rules and suggestions that search engines give out. It focuses on making content that is useful and important, giving users a good experience, and using ethical ways to improve a website’s search engine rankings. Some of the most important white-hat SEO rules and tactics are:
Quality content creation
On-page optimization
Keyword research and implementation
Link building
User experience optimization
Technical Optimization
White hat SEO uses ethical methods that are in line with search engine rules. SEO tries to create an online profile that will last for a long time. It focuses on giving people something of value and making their experience better, which will eventually lead to higher search engine rankings and more organic traffic.
Working with an experienced team of SEO consultants will ensure that your SEO for car dealerships stays on the right track.
As you can tell, these are the common SEO tactics. By adhering to these tactics, you’ll gradually climb up the SERPs and stay on the search engines’ good side. SEO is a long-term strategy, so you’ll have to remain patient to see the results you want for your SEO for car dealerships. Some SEO agencies and teams may suggest services that will supposedly allow you to rise up in a short period, but don’t be deceived.
Be careful of malicious SEO for Car Dealerships East Chattanooga, TN. It could send your website spiraling downwards.
Black SEO: The Easy Way to the Search Engines’ Bad Side
People sometimes use dishonest and dishonest methods to boost a website’s search engine results, which is known as “black hat SEO.” Often, these methods break search engine rules. The main goal of black hat SEO is to get better rankings quickly, no matter what the long-term effects or possible penalties are. Here are some popular “black hat” SEO tricks:
Keyword stuffing: Keyword stuffing is when you try to trick search engines by filling web pages with too many terms and keywords that don’t relate to them. This usually leads to a bad experience for users and is easy for search engines to spot.
Hidden text or links: Adding text or links that users can’t see but search engine bots can see is called “hidden text and links.” This is done by putting white text on a white background, hiding text behind pictures, or making the fonts very small.
Cloaking: Cloaking is when you give search engine crawlers and users different content on the same website in order to trick search engines and get high rankings for keywords that may not be related to the website’s real content.
Link schemes: Doing things like buying or selling links, being a part of link farms or networks, and linking back to other sites too much. The goal of these actions is to trick search engines into thinking that there are more backlinks than there really are.
Content scraping: Content scraping is when you copy and paste material from other websites without their permission or giving credit where credit is due. It’s simply plagiarism. This is done to make content fast and possibly rank higher in search results than the original source.
Spamming techniques: Using methods like comment spamming, forum and blog post spamming, and sending bulk emails that people haven’t asked for to promote a website or get backlinks is called spamming. These actions are annoying, and search engines may punish websites that do them.
Black hat SEO techniques are strongly advised against, and search engines actively punish those who do them. Websites that use these kinds of tricks could be de-indexed or highly penalized, which would mean they lose organic traffic and rankings. Focusing on legal white-hat SEO techniques that offer long-term benefits and durability is always the best thing to do.
Even if your SEO team doesn’t engage in black hat SEO, you’ll want to pay attention to other websites that try to become possible backlinks for your site. The practice of backlinking is like sharing contacts and making connections. Every backlink is a connection to another business’s website. The more authoritative the other website, the better the search engine will rank yours.
If you set yourself as an authoritative figure in your local area, you’ll become a prime target for other businesses to reach out to. Although this is usually a good thing, if a website using black hat tactics uses you as a backlink, its negative reputation with the search engines can come back to bite you. So, you’ll want to be careful when linking to other websites.
See how we can manage SEO for car dealerships for you. Let us show you how it’s done.
Can You Save Yourself If You Get On the Search Engines’ Bad Side?
Of course, there are some instances where you find your rank on the SERPs lowering. It might be because your website hasn’t caught up with the latest trends yet. It may also be because you didn’t realize you used a few black SEO tactics on some of your pages. That’s why you want to review your pages, new and old, constantly to ensure your entire website stays on top of the latest trends and search engine algorithm updates.
Luckily, you still have a chance. So long as you update your website, fix any penalties you’ve received from the search engines, and continue to maintain your persistence, the search engines will allow your website to climb back up the ranks. It might take a long time, but you won’t have to start your website all over again.
How To Come Back After You Get Penalized by the Search Engines
If search engines punish a website, it may be hard to get it back, but it is possible if you take the right steps. If a website gets banned by search engines, here are some things it can do to get it back:
Figure out the penalty: Figure out what kind of penalty your website has gotten. It could be either a manual penalty, which means that a person looked at your website and found problems, or an algorithmic penalty, which means that your website caused a search engine program to filter it out.
Look at the punishment: Know exactly why the punishment was given. This could include problems like backlinks that don’t look natural, content that is too short or duplicate, keyword stuffing, or other search engine rules that are broken.
Fix the problems: Do what you need to do to fix the problems that led to the penalty. Depending on the punishment, this could mean getting rid of or disavowing unnatural backlinks, making your content better and more relevant, fixing technical problems, or making other changes.
Send a request for reconsideration: If you got a manual punishment, you’ll need to send the search engine a request for reconsideration. Give specific details about what you’ve done to fix the problems, and make sure you’re following search engine rules. When you talk about the steps you’ve taken to make your website better, be open and honest.
Keep getting better: It’s important to keep improving your website and following best practices even if it gets better after the punishment. Keep an eye on your website’s performance, read through algorithm updates, and stay up to date on search engine guidelines to make sure you stay in line in the long run.
Make sure you have good backlinks and content: Focus on getting good backlinks by using legal link-building techniques. Make content that is interesting and useful for your audience and that will also get you natural backlinks. Over time, this will help your site’s authority and results.
Keep an eye on things: Keep an eye on your website’s success, rankings, and organic traffic all the time. You can use SEO software like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and others to look at data and make smart choices about how to improve your website.
It takes time, work, and following good SEO practices to get back on track after getting hit with a search engine penalty. You can slowly improve your website’s exposure and rankings in search engine results by fixing the problems, making the changes that are needed, and always following best practices.
Actual SEO Media, Inc. can help you stay on the good side of the search engines with white hat SEO for car dealerships.
Let Us Help You Stay on the Right Side of the Search Engines
The best way to clear out penalties is to simply not accrue them in the first place. Actual SEO Media, Inc. has a team of knowledgeable SEO experts who can manage your SEO for car dealerships for you. We’ll help you stick to the good guys’ side so that you can stay ahead of the competition and increase your leads and conversions.
Call our main office today to schedule a consultation. We might be located in the Houston area, but our services span the Internet to help local businesses like yours get the online exposure you need to succeed.