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google-update12.png

https://www.thehoth.com/google-update-history/
 
I am just getting started on SEO too. I did a lot of research on tools. Semrush is the least expensive at $79 month of the big players. Seo Powersuite is the least expensive at $8 month for the updates and 299 for the main software. I like this one because it resides on a workstation so it has no limits to crawls, keywords etc which all the online have limits. It is a large company with a high retention rate too. If you want to take a look at my site, it focuses on used cars Fresno carwide.com. I am trying to develop a local option for the car dealerships in Fresno, Modesto, Stockton, Merced and Visalia.


Hey Mkelly my name is Devin. I do Seo for a couple car dealerships in Fresno on Blackstone. I would love to reach out to you and discuss strategy. i saw your car wide website and it looks pretty good. shoot me an email - [email protected]
 
What Are Entities & Why They Matter for SEO
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/entity-seo/277231/

Entities matter for SEO because, at their core, they are the world.

We ourselves understand everything around us in the context of entities and their relationships. We just tend not to think of it that way.

A big part of the reason we’re just starting to talk about this now is that it takes machine learning to make use of the concept from a search level.

Without machine learning, Google couldn’t understand language well enough to interpret pages and entity relationships.

Without machine learning, and RankBrain specifically, Google couldn’t learn how to prioritize signals accurately and on-the-fly and adjust for unknowns and learn from them.

So now we’re starting to see this all come about and with it a massive change in how pages are ranked.

With entities come:
  • The ability to calculate the probability of meeting the user’s likely intent with far greater accuracy.
  • The ability to understand from language and tone, whether a result will be positive or negative.
  • A dramatically reduced reliance on links.
Links will remain as a signal I’m sure, but they will become simply one mechanism among many for establishing entity values.

To optimize in this new world, we need to change the way we think about our sites and how we market externally.

If we want to rank for “blue widgets” we need to consider that Google can now or will soon understand all the various entities related to them and in which order the searcher intent will most likely be met.

And you need to now consider which entities you need on your site and how they need to be connected to maximize the probability of Google understanding that you are more likely to meet the variety of possible intents than your competitor.
 
We've had good results with the combination of the following strategies / tactics:
  • Meta data optimization
  • Anchor tag within site nav optimization
  • Building-out content on existing pages ("Used Inventory")
  • Home page content optimization / re-writing for uniqueness
  • Configuring URL parameters within Search Console
  • Embedding "trust signals" on a customer's landing experience - like videos or reviews of the dealership
  • Creating long-tail content, optimized with structured data and breadcrumbs ("Used Jeeps For Sale | [city]" > "Used Jeep Grand Cherokees For Sale | [city]"). This lets us steal a little traffic from the aggregates
  • Citation maintenance
  • Local link building
  • Internal linking
  • Google My Business engagement
One thing I wish we could add and that's been mentioned in this thread is the addition of evergreen content for model comparisons, specific new vehicle features, etc.

A special mention goes out to marketing tag inventory, and removing those onsite no longer used. Page speed software have shown pretty impressive results from this.
 
We've had good results with the combination of the following strategies / tactics:
  • Meta data optimization
  • Anchor tag within site nav optimization
  • Building-out content on existing pages ("Used Inventory")
  • Home page content optimization / re-writing for uniqueness
  • Configuring URL parameters within Search Console
  • Embedding "trust signals" on a customer's landing experience - like videos or reviews of the dealership
  • Creating long-tail content, optimized with structured data and breadcrumbs ("Used Jeeps For Sale | [city]" > "Used Jeep Grand Cherokees For Sale | [city]"). This lets us steal a little traffic from the aggregates
  • Citation maintenance
  • Local link building
  • Internal linking
  • Google My Business engagement
One thing I wish we could add and that's been mentioned in this thread is the addition of evergreen content for model comparisons, specific new vehicle features, etc.

A special mention goes out to marketing tag inventory, and removing those onsite no longer used. Page speed software have shown pretty impressive results from this.
All good, but 90% of those tactics have been being deployed for quite a few years. Truth be told, the good auto web platforms create a bunch of those automatically or give the option for those, BUT you gotta' pay for it.
 
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Here's an interesting one, and potentially a quick optimization:

Old news, but a study conducted in November reiterated the inability to bypass Googlebot's "First Link Counts Rule", except with image links or JavaScript links. So, Googlebot will take into consideration the first anchor text of a hyperlink on your website (usually within the menu navigation), and ignore that of subsequent instances of the same hyperlink on an individual page (where you may have optimized the anchor text).

In practice, and for example, how do most dealership websites link to their new inventory? Or rather, what is the anchor text of the first instance of this link? Almost universally "New", or "New Inventory". Of course, consumers aren't searching "new ford inventory" into search engines when they're looking for a new truck or car:

new-vehicles-example.jpg

Same goes for used. Perhaps a better use of anchor text for these first links within the navigation could look like:

anchor-text-example.jpg

Unfortunately, do not have the data for this dealership to check for increases in organic traffic to these six pages. But, certainly easy to implement.