Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Factors

Search engine optimization is both an art and a science. While there are factors that every professional in the industry agree contribute to the success of an SEO campaign, the differences come in how much weight is given to them.

Below, I’ve taken the factors that are agreed upon by many authorities in the automotive realm such as Paul Rushing, Brian Pasch, and Eric Miltsch, and combined them with opinions of many SEO professionals outside of the automotive industry. They are stack ranked in reverse order from least important to most, and while there’s always opinions to be considered, results are concrete.

If your websites are mastering these factors, you WILL rank well for your keywords.

#10 – The Basics

You need a sitemap. Robot.txt can help. Friendly (not dynamic) URL structures are strongly recommended. I call these and other smaller factors “The Basics” because just about everyone in the industry is doing them now. If not, it’s really not that huge of a deal as these factors are small in the scheme of things, but every little bit helps.

#9 – Domain Age and Commitment

This is the one factor where the dealer and website provider have less control. The older the domain, the better, and you can’t “roll back the miles” no matter what you do. What you do have control over is the commitment aspect. While it has never been confirmed, most agree that Google considers the length of time a domain is registered in their algorithm, especially if it’s new. Registering a domain for at least 2 years is strongly recommended.

#8 – Inbound Links: Diversity

This is the least important aspect of the most important factor in SEO: link-building. Diversity is when you’re getting inbound links from many different websites on different Class-C IP addresses. The more diverse, the better, but no matter what anyone tells you, an inbound “spam” link is still worthless even if it’s diverse. More on that later.

#7 – Unique HTML Content

Content is king. It always has been and always will be. The more unique, high-quality, fresh HTML content you have on your website, the more likely it will be to rank for keywords (especially long-tail keywords). In many industries, content is even more important. Until car dealers start putting more unique content on their sites regularly, the need is not as high as in other industries. Remember, you’re not competing against Google. You’re competing against your competitors. If you have quality content and they do not, you have the advantage.

#6 – Inbound Links: Relevance

Inbound links are, again, extremely important. Relevance of the links and the sources of the links contributes to how effective they are as “votes”. Getting a link from someone’s basket-weaving blog is nice, but a link from their automotive enthusiast blog is much better.

#5 – Internal Linking Structure

One thing that often gets lost in the build of a site is the internal linking structure. Look at well optimized content sites like Mashable.com and Techcrunch.com. You’ll notice that almost every story has links in the content that point to other pages within the site. This structure helps to keep Google visiting as many pages as possible while also giving strong anchor text (see below) and relevance to those pages. Linking isn’t a mass thing, though. Linking every page to every page is worthless. Make sure your content provider or website company is linking with a true strategy in mind.

#4 – Domain and URL

While it’s not as important of a factor is it once was, having a keyword-rich domain name is very important. Even if your domain name is the name of your dealership, you can still have a tremendous impact on ranking by naming the pages with keywords in mind. For example, your new inventory listings page should be at www.dealershipname.com/(city)-new-(make).

#3 – Keyword Rich Title Tags

As far as onsite optimization factors, nothing beats the title tag. It’s the most important factor for ranking, but it also serves a dual purpose. Because it’s the title of the link as displayed on search engine results pages, it’s important to keep click-through in mind when formulating your title tags. Every page should be unique, tell what the page is about, and not be stuffed. Title tags are weighted by percentages, so while it’s a good practice to put multiple keywords in your titles, keep in mind that the more you put, the less powerful each individual one is. Balance is the key to proper title tagging.

#2 – Inbound Links: Quality

Inbound links are like votes. The difference between traditional voting systems and search engine linking is that not all links are created equal. Getting a link from NYTimes.com is viewed with much, much more relevance and weight than one from myspamblog.blogspot.com. Any time you can get links from high quality, high Page Rank sites, go for it.

#1 – Inbound Links: Anchor Text

When Google sees a link with the anchor text “Shreveport Honda” they believe that the linking site believes the target site is the authority for the term “Shreveport Honda”. It sounds simple, but you would be surprised how many people and vendors just don’t get it. They continuously build links with the dealer’s name as the anchor. If you’re not ranked #1 for you own name, this is a good practice. Otherwise, go for more keywords. The goal is to get as much exposure and traffic as possible, and good anchor text on relevant, high-quality pages is the fastest and longest-lasting way to achieve this.

* * *

Linking is obviously an extreme important aspect of SEO, but remember one important thing. The search engines, especially Google, change all the time. By the time you (or your provider) have the algorithm figured out, it can change. Keep abreast of these changes or make sure your vendors do. Otherwise, your rankings that you worked so hard to achieve can slip away.

Read more about TK Carsites here or visit the site to learn more about Automotive SEO.

Article Originally Published in AutoDealerMonthly

Tagged as: autodealermonthly, seo