Need URGENT advice on CarsForSale website provider - Traffic LOSS since September.

[AlexVaviloff]

Hello. Im looking for any type emergency advice or guidance for my traffic loss in September. By now I realized my devastating keywords rank and real traffic loss is due to serious issues with my website, which is from CarsForSale.

Im in a new location, from October 2024 which sort of reset my SEO in a first place, and then Jan 2025 I hired an SEO "pro" from fiverr for my to BUY-HERE-PAY-HERE keywords, which I specifically told him not to use and shared my "good keywords," despite from January having bhph customers constantly calling/walking. In April I noticed increase in good traffic and sales. from april to august 2025 while still ranking in top 3!! for BHPH, that I cant convert, my "good' keywords were ranking stronger and stronger! July was peak and august was still good but started to slowdown. Then in September, It's like lights turned off.

At first I thought it was "seasonal" and Im a small dealer, just moved in to real lot, and before that for 8 years operating basically as online by appointment with no real display area and no exposure. So in July I sold 14, August 7, Sept 1. but the main thing is ALL traffic stopped - even bhph walk-ins, calls etc. I started to check SEMrush, google search console and basically saw correlation with aug 26-sept 22 Google spam update. All graphs perfectly align! GSC has a lot of errors non indexed pages 5xx, 404 etc. CarsForSale refuses to fix it.

I've sent them all data , few times, to their managers ,on jan3 they even asked me if they can add someone from engineer dep to my google search console to "look closely"- to this day nothing fixed. my VDP pages keep been non indexed, other errors google keeps checking only to see that its still broken.
I tried to optimize content in gbp, and website to distance form bhph and get back my used cars keywords. with no luck. I still rank for bhph strong.
at this point Im looking for best what I can afford website dealer platform all in one, I know it snot best. Please any help is appreciated very much.

Ive done all my research myself and spent months, SEO people I talked to ignore my research and want to start a paid service, which is not professional IMO.

 

[DjSec]

Hello. Im looking for any type emergency advice or guidance for my traffic loss in september. By now I realized my devastating keywords rank and real traffic loss is due to serious issues with my website ,which is from carsforsale. For 1,4 year Im in new location, from october 2024 which sort of reset my SEO in a first place, and then jan 2025 hired SEO "pro" from fiverr binded my to BUYHEREPAYHERE keywords, which I sepcifically told him not to use and shared my "good keywords". despite from january having bhph customers constantly calling/walkingin, in april ,I noticed increase in good traffic and sales. from april to august 2025 while still ranking in top 3!! for bhph,that I cant convert, my "good' keywords were ranking stronger and stronger! july was peak and august was still good but started to slowdown. then september -like lights turned off. T at first I thought it was "seasonal".and Im a small dealer, just moved in to real lot, and before that for 8 years operating basically as online by appointment with no real display area and no exposure. so in july i sold 14, august 7 ,sept1 cycle. but main thing is all traffic stopped- even bhph walkins, calls etc. I started to check semrush, google search console and basically saw correlation with aug 26-sept 22 google spam update. all graphs perfectly align! so gsc has a lot of errors nonindexed pages 5xx, 404 etc. CARSFORSALE refuses to fix it. Ive sent them all data , few times, to their managers ,on jan3 they even asked me if they can add someone from engineer dep to my google search console to "look closely"- to this day nothing fixed. my VDP pages keep been non indexed, other errros google keeps checking only to see that its still broken.
I tried to optimize content in gbp, and website to distance form bhph and get back my used cars keywords. with no luck. I still rank for bhph strong.
at this point Im looking for best what I can afford website dealer platform all in one, I know it snot best. PLease any help is appreciated very much. Ive done all my research myself. and spent months, SEO ppl I talked to ignore my research adn want to start regular service, which is not professional.

You didn’t lose traffic because of a Google update.

You loss traffic because of CarsForSale I was looking at one of their sites not long ago and they had blocked VDP's and your VDP's are not getting indexed, not saying they blocked them but ...

And it doesn't look like the site has any real content on it, do you have a link to the site?

To do list to recover:

1. You have to fix server errors first because Google can't crawl the broken site.

Pages could be timing out which is a page speed problem and if they can't fix it you need to move platforms ASAP.

2. Fix all the 404 Errors and make sure the new platform doesn't remove cars when they are sold, mark them as sold and keep them on the server or redirect old VDP to a similar car or to the inventory page.

Better is to keep page live with “Sold See similar cars” that way you keep the SEO juice.

3. Fix Canonical Issues duplicate VDP pages kill indexing. Same car on multiple URLs redirect www to non www.

4. Fix Redirect Errors. No redirect loops, No chains,

5. Get all your VDP's Indexed. If they aren’t indexed it will kill your SEO.

Each VDP must have:

Unique title, 300+ words description, VIN structured data, Local schema, and Internal links.

6. Kill Wrong Keyword Associations, Remove: “Buy Here Pay Here”, “Bad credit financing”, “No credit car loans” from titles, headings, Meta descriptions, content, and then build pages for real buyers “Used Hyundai Elantra city”, “Low mileage trucks city”, “Best used SUVs under $15k city”

Google must relearn who you are.

7. Build Real SEO Pages. Dealer sites fail because they rely only on inventory. You need content pages.

Examples:

“Best Used Cars Under $10k in City”

“2018 Hyundai Elantra Reliability Guide”

“Common Problems With Dodge Charger SXT”

“Used Truck Buying Checklist”

These rank even when inventory changes.

This is where you win.

8. Fix Local SEO Update NAP everywhere, Get 20+ local citations, Get 10 real Google reviews, Post weekly on GBP, Add photos of lot.

9. Improve Site Speed, Dealer platforms are slow. You must pass Core Web Vitals.

Use Google Lighthouse slow VDP pages don’t rank.

10. Build Backlinks

If CarsForSale refuses to fix server errors and indexing issues…