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Evergreen content on your site

Ben_Adler12

Hanging Paper
Feb 28, 2017
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Ben
Evergreen content (content that does not expire) is important for SEO. VDPs expire and either result in a 404 page or redirect.

Evergreen content can be in the form of service pages, staff pages, or having a blog.

How important do you think evergreen pages are for your dealership?

Do you have someone writing content for your site?
 
For our clients, we've had a lot of success in creating blog or news content that references and links to our permanent pages. It seems to up its relevancy. Your evergreen content will benefit from consistent optimizations, too. People like up-do-date content. One useful tip is to apply schema to your evergreen content (or your entire site) and modify the dateModified property on a consistent basis when you make reviews.
 
It's highly advisable to use an automotive web platform that allows for a blog injection (preferably native, see Dealer Inspire and the rest of the Wordpress-based automotive platforms). Outside of the fact that those using WP needn't support their core (being done by Wordpress themselves) or pay for it (free), Googlebot and the rest of the search engine bots know exactly where to find the content and in the right format.

Evergreen content can be anything that sticks but keep it local. There is no shiny, red button to click for evergreen content. Know what works for your demographic and have it produced. In the past, I developed 3,000+ blog posts for dealers, with the intent for that content to be evergreen. Some stuck; some not. There are plenty of tools out there that will enable you as a writer or strategist to understand what your demographic wants and why.

Yes, internal links from blog pages to inventory pages (SRPs) and showrooms is a smart move. It shows bots your intent to discuss makes and models (both new and used) and on a localized level.
 
@AWNick

Please don't feel that I'm trying to call you out on the schema comment, I'm just making an observation since I was very interested in schema when it came out;

We implemented schema site wide and it has made 0 difference on how the pages are crawled or indexed. A lot more add on work has to be done with schema in order to affect this.

https://www.boostability.com/do-schema-org-markups-affect-rankings
 
@AWNick

Please don't feel that I'm trying to call you out on the schema comment, I'm just making an observation since I was very interested in schema when it came out;

We implemented schema site wide and it has made 0 difference on how the pages are crawled or indexed. A lot more add on work has to be done with schema in order to affect this.

https://www.boostability.com/do-schema-org-markups-affect-rankings
Schema is just a mechanism to enable robots to learn more about your website. The automotive platforms being used by dealerships should already account for schema(s). If you're a dealer and don't see it on your paid web platform, back up and find another vendor.
 
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A slightly different perspective here as I'm not a dealer, but very familiar with the topic. I really don't think a dealership (or I guess any business really) could truly claim to have a proper/comprehensive SEO strategy without regularly creating unique and relevant evergreen content. That could be through a blog or landing pages on the website depending on the content and where it fits most naturally.

If you are going to write content, make sure your CMS provider allows you to use a subdirectory, not a subdomain.

Ex:

blog.dealership.com = no
dealership.com/blog = yes

Further, to expand on Alex above, there are certainly key characteristics that will allow you to get more out of whatever context you write. Interlinking/deep linking is one of those characteristics. Keyword selection/density, H1/H2, meta descriptions, image file names, and I'm sure there are other factors, all matter. Mapping out a content strategy, with a detailed keyword plan and specific purpose of each piece of content will go a long way into making the time invested more worthwhile.
 
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A slightly different perspective here as I'm not a dealer, but very familiar with the topic. I really don't think a dealership (or I guess any business really) could truly claim to have a proper/comprehensive SEO strategy without regularly creating unique and relevant evergreen content. That could be through a blog or landing pages on the website depending on the content and where it fits most naturally.

If you are going to write content, make sure your CMS provider allows you to use a subdirectory, not a subdomain.

Ex:

blog.dealership.com = no
dealership.com/blog = yes

Further, to expand on Alex above, there are certainly key characteristics that will allow you to get more out of whatever context you write. Interlinking/deep linking is one of those characteristics. Keyword selection/density, H1/H2, meta descriptions, image file names, and I'm sure there are other factors, all matter. Mapping out a content strategy, with a detailed keyword plan and specific purpose of each piece of content will go a long way into making the time invested more worthwhile.
Right and good point, I didn't go into SEO tactics. There are a ton of variables starting with a strategy. Has been talked about a load of times in these waters.

I will slightly disagree with you on subdomains. Although Google tends to prefer (or did) a subfolder (this is true), I've produced and witnessed plenty of blog pages that convert for goals, leads and ultimately sales across plenty of sites that utilize subdomains. Example: http://shop.raybrandttoyota.com. The issue usually lies where the platform providers will either not grant blog access (they want to control the content publishing as part of their sell) or they've failed to produce an internal blogging system. Subdomains are a legitimate hack.

:)
 
@AWNick

Please don't feel that I'm trying to call you out on the schema comment, I'm just making an observation since I was very interested in schema when it came out;

We implemented schema site wide and it has made 0 difference on how the pages are crawled or indexed. A lot more add on work has to be done with schema in order to affect this.

https://www.boostability.com/do-schema-org-markups-affect-rankings

Schema has allowed us to increase our click-through-rates from Google. As far as ranking, it probably hasn't made a difference.
 
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Schema is just a mechanism to enable robots to learn more about your website. The automotive platforms being used by dealerships should already account for schema(s). If you're a dealer and don't see it on your paid web platform, back up and find another vendor.


Regardless of what Schema is supposed to do it has done nothing significant for indexing, search results, or the ability of a website to perform better.

You can find schema based results on a few SERP like this one: AutoTrader Schema Results

Schema was recommended by Google, a for profit business, as a "best practice" because in some cases they benefited from it. That benefit hasn't rippled down into the dealerships yet.

All my dealers at DealerEProcess.com have had schema implemented from the time Google recommended it, however I would never recommend a dealer using one of my competitor's website systems to leave their platform because they don't have schema in the system. They better find a better reason to leave their current vendor and come do business with us. Otherwise I will be ill advising them.
 
Regardless of what Schem
a is supposed to do it has done nothing significant for indexing, search results, or the ability of a website to perform better.

You can find schema based results on a few SERP like this one: AutoTrader Schema Results

Schema was recommended by Google, a for profit business, as a "best practice" because in some cases they benefited from it. That benefit hasn't rippled down into the dealerships yet.

All my dealers at DealerEProcess.com have had schema implemented from the time Google recommended it, however I would never recommend a dealer using one of my competitor's website systems to leave their platform because they don't have schema in the system. They better find a better reason to leave their current vendor and come do business with us. Otherwise I will be ill advising them.
I agree with your first two paragraphs (assessments), but not the last paragraph.

I disagree, Google makes the rules whether we like it or not and they literally are asking you to install rich / structured data / schema in order to improve the likelihood of their bots' understanding of your website. Unfortunately, digital marketing pretty much lives and dies according to their good graces. The application of schema and structured data makes it much easier for robots to process your website data. Google Search works hard to understand the content of a page. However, you can provide explicit clues about the meaning of a page to Google by including structured data on the page. Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. Now, whether schema and structured data equate to higher rankings or visibility, it can be argued.

It can only help, not hinder. If an automotive platform fails to apply schema, I'd look elsewhere if I were a dealer (because it shows you the platform provider isn't paying attention to the basics, so wonder what else they are missing???). I hold no allegiance to any automotive web platform vendor, completely indifferent here, but let's be honest about it. We all can decipher those platforms that perform poorly, well and super. Pasch, Wikimotive and the like grade those.

Apply your client websites to this tool and see how they look...
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/

You can enhance your AMP content for Google Search by creating a basic AMP page, adding structured data, monitoring your pages, and practicing with codelabs.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/enhance-amp

Will AMP Give Businesses a Mobile Edge?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amp-give-businesses-mobile-edge-brian-pasch
In mobile marketing, fast page load times (speed) is critical to increase conversion outcomes. In 2015, a consortium of companies, which included Google and Twitter, created an open specification for creating Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). You can learn more about the project by visiting: https://www.ampproject.org/. Google AMP pages load in under one second on most devices.

In the automotive industry Lotlinx and TECOBI have demonstrated the power of using AMP landing pages instead of existing dealership website pages, in mobile advertising campaigns.

More importantly, if you're running a Wordpress-based site, there are plenty of free AMP plugins to be had. Dealer Inspire, etc. probably install those by default. Maximize your blog reach, going back to the original theme of this thead and evergreen content.
 
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