SEO?

[Alexander Lau]

The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2018
https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year

You'll not find a better guide. Backlinko / Brian Dean crushes it.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Forgot about this little beauty, used to use this plenty in automotive blog production.

Merge words, fast and easy.
Use it for domain registrations, Google Adwords, whatever.
http://mergewords.com

 

[Alexander Lau]

I like this and yes local should matter to all dealerships.

How Do I Rank Higher in Google Local Search? Our Checklist for Local SEO
https://www.bruceclay.com/blog/local-seo-search-ranking-factors/

 

[Elizabeth Apps]

I have used so many SEO vendors over the years and I did find one I like, trust, produce results, and doesn't cost a lot of money. What I have learned is that you should be able to answer these questions:

1. How much actual content will they write?
2. Is the content original and not generated?
3. Create a baseline that is third party so you aren't just relying on their reports? I recommend Organic visits in Google Analytics.
4. Can they create a map of keywords to target each month?
5. Can you see the content or is it hidden? Hidden content is not as good. Plus many vendors say they update pages but you can't track it or it is hard to track.
6. Will the company do onsite and offsite linking?

There are more but this could help.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I'm thoroughly convinced that most dealerships and their agencies aren't using Twitter and Google My Business to their full capacity (consistency in the form of relevant and interesting content is a problem)

https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-with-twitter
https://searchengineland.com/google-posts-now-live-google-business-users-277710 (and this is 6 mo. old)

 

[Alexander Lau]

I have used so many SEO vendors over the years and I did find one I like, trust, produce results, and doesn't cost a lot of money. What I have learned is that you should be able to answer these questions:

1. How much actual content will they write?
2. Is the content original and not generated?
3. Create a baseline that is third party so you aren't just relying on their reports? I recommend Organic visits in Google Analytics.
4. Can they create a map of keywords to target each month?
5. Can you see the content or is it hidden? Hidden content is not as good. Plus many vendors say they update pages but you can't track it or it is hard to track.
6. Will the company do onsite and offsite linking?

There are more but this could help.

Now you're talking.... and you should take your SEO to task.

You've left out a bunch of things like on-site vs. off-site content, keywords densities, evergreen vs. non-evergreen, etc,.

Any SEO worth its weight will give you that information up front. There are benchmarks against tiers, etc. as well. When I was in charge of an SEO team, we had a number of tiers and did not (repeat did not) promise the world or first page ranking or call ourself "experts." Anyone that does, run in the opposite direction. You cannot be an expert with a system that changes their algorithm (every so often) in order to keep groups from dominating organic rankings. This is done by Google, Bing, etc. in order to promote their paid search efforts.

We did go after long-tail keywords as part of our strategy. Truth be told, most visitors are going to search for your brand / dealer name anyway.

Good SEO is about fundamentals that should get you to where you need to be, along with a quality web platform (automotive) / user experience.

gShift SEO
I used https://www.gshiftlabs.com/web-presence-analytics/software/seo for reporting. Includes, Not Provided and Secure Search Insights.

THE 50 TOOLS YOU DON'T NEED if you have SEO PowerSuite
I used https://www.link-assistant.com/news/50-tools.html for tracking.

I no longer work in SEO (kinda' sad actually), but I will say that Autofusion does a great job (I'd outsource what we couldn't handle to them).
https://www.autofusion.com/car-dealer-seo.html

 

[Alexander Lau]

5 local search tactics your competitors probably aren’t using
https://searchengineland.com/5-local-search-tactics-your-competitors-probably-arent-using-288028

Do Google Posts impact ranking? A case study
Columnist Joy Hawkins shares the results of a case study to see whether Google Posts can move the needle for local search rankings.
https://searchengineland.com/google-posts-impact-ranking-case-study-285668

 

[Alexander Lau]

Interesting stuff on C-Blocks.

Root Domains, C-Blocks, and 10 Other Advanced Link Metrics the Pros Use Daily
https://neilpatel.com/blog/advanced-link-building-metrics/

 

[Alexander Lau]

Not a bad list, some of it antiquated.

• Ping your new blog using Free Ping Submission Sites List to get it indexed quickly by search engines
• Submit your blog to high-quality Directory Submission Sites to get high-quality backlinks
• Add your new blog and backlinks to Social Bookmarking Sites to obtain more backlinks
• To get even more backlinks, submit fresh new articles to Article Submission Sites
• Submit videos using Video Submission Sites to create backlinks from high DA sites

 

[Ryan Everson]

I've had good luck using meetup to find groups that need space to meet and then offering them free use of our dealerships' community rooms. In exchange they usually link to our website for being the host. Backlinks are the #1 ranking factor still and despite not having high domain authority, local links like these are gold.