Uncovered More Black Hat SEO....

[Marc Lavoie]

My advice to clients has never changed: NEVER BUY SEO FROM YOUR WEBSITE PROVIDER!!!

First, what did they tell you when they sold you your site? Was it something like "We provide the most search-friendly websites out of the box"??? Then, why are they now asking for $2,500 per month for their super-duper-premium SEO?

Second, you cannot serve multiple masters when it comes to real SEO. If your website provider is also providing SEO to 32 other sites in your market, how can they all be optimized for the important keywords?

Finally, the VAST MAJORITY of the premium "SEO" they do provide is absolute garbage (like the examples already provided on this string). Yes, MOST independent SEO companies also provide absolute garbage optimization, as well. The difference? I've still never seen good, honest, SEO from a website provider that was also cost-effective. I have seen this provided by a couple of independents.

Oh, and not every dealer even needs to pay for SEO. Google is pretty smart and most every dealer site built today is relatively search-friendly.

Queue the angry website companies to blast me here. (There's a reason they don't include me on their Christmas Gift Basket lists.) (BTW, I'm always happy to hop on a webinar with any website provider who wants to show me their premium SEO and why it's worth paying extra for.)

Respectfully, I don't agree with the Never Buy SEO from Website Provider part.

Some can do targeted content that can help. The best are those who are including best practices as a part of their package while not selling SEO services on top of it. I believe it's the right way to do it, even if you seem to be leaving money on the table.

On the other hand, we could also say Never Buy SEO from SEO only providers because to this day, I think it's really hard to show a lift as strong as changing website providers from a sub-par to a high-end solution.

(msg me if you need names!)

 

[craigh]

In 2020, I would argue that almost all of SEO is simply best practices.
Google has become so good that the best way to succeed is to just play it smart - make content your visitors actually want to read and put it on your site.
If you want to make vehicle pages, put real content and unique images on them.

Website providers shouldn't be the ones doing SEO, but that doesn't mean they can't. We used to offer SEO packages that were quite effective (back when I felt that there were techniques that could genuinely move the needle in 90 days), but now we just audit the sites and provide suggestions to the client without it being an "SEO package". Their success is ultimately our success, so it would make no sense to help one succeed over another.

In my experience working with Automotive SEO vendors, 100% of them were either keyword stuffing, making useless blog content or stuffing backlinks to our site. We tracked everything in https://www.gshiftlabs.com and had to call them out on their seedy forum spam and offsite garbage that they didn't even tell the dealer they were doing.

 

[Steve Stauning]

In 2020, I would argue that almost all of SEO is simply best practices.

Yep. Once the site has good architecture (which virtually all automotive website providers have), it's just the same simple formula it's always been: GOOD CONTENT + GOOD DISTRIBUTION = BETTER SEARCH VISIBILITY

 

[Mary-Grace Wilson]

Oh boy, so what we’re seeing here are known as "doorway pages" — and as many have already pointed out — they are a big no-no when it comes to SEO.

The unfortunate reality is that there are still SEO providers (in all verticals) who use these kind of tactics. Clearly they’re meant to try to trick Google’s algorithm as opposed to offer real value to real people.

Every so often we take on a new SEO client who had a previous provider implement doorway pages on their DI website. When we discover their existence, we do a few things — (aside from scream in frustration )

• We call the dealer to explain what we found, why it’s bad and why it’s important to remedy the situation before moving on to further SEO efforts.
• We perform an indexation and traffic audit of the doorway pages to see how much (if any) traffic they're bringing to the site and the value of that traffic.
• We provide customized recommendations about taking down the bloat pages, implementing redirects, and fully re-writing any of the pages that were bringing in decent traffic and that make sense for the dealer to be custom and actually useful to users.

I’m not going to lie, it's a MASSIVE undertaking, and even though it wasn’t our doing, we make it our responsibility to get it cleaned up for these clients so we can have a clean, solid foundation moving forward.

Believe it or not, there are SEO providers in this space who do work tirelessly to bring real value to their clients. That’s what we do at DI and I’d be happy to jump on a call with anyone — vendor, consultant or dealer — to explain what makes us different. Not to sell you something, but to give you hope that there is indeed at least one straight up partner in the automotive SEO realm.

Hope that helps I’m always down to talk SEO, so feel free to shoot me a message if you want to get nerdy with it. Thanks!

 

[Cody Teegerstrom]

Just did a quick search and found same, duplicate content on other sites.

View attachment 4520

 

[Cody Teegerstrom]

Just did a quick search and found same, duplicate content on other sites.

 

[Alexander Lau (blog)]

Once upon a time, not that long ago, I uncovered duplicate front page, about us, financial app, etc. content on about 500+ Automotive Digital Marketing Solutions | Dealer.com websites. No joke!

Here's your best friend: Copyscape Plagiarism Checker - Duplicate Content Detection Software (it's worth paying for their premium offering). Some SEO tools pull in their API.

In 2020, I would argue that almost all of SEO is simply best practices.
Google has become so good that the best way to succeed is to just play it smart - make content your visitors actually want to read and put it on your site.
If you want to make vehicle pages, put real content and unique images on them.

Website providers shouldn't be the ones doing SEO, but that doesn't mean they can't. We used to offer SEO packages that were quite effective (back when I felt that there were techniques that could genuinely move the needle in 90 days), but now we just audit the sites and provide suggestions to the client without it being an "SEO package". Their success is ultimately our success, so it would make no sense to help one succeed over another.

In my experience working with Automotive SEO vendors, 100% of them were either keyword stuffing, making useless blog content or stuffing backlinks to our site. We tracked everything in https://www.gshiftlabs.com and had to call them out on their seedy forum spam and offsite garbage that they didn't even tell the dealer they were doing.

You and I discussed gShift (Canadian group) in length, I do believe. I used them for close to 7 years, exposing similar results. It was easy to do and pathetic on the part of what groups were promising and providing via "SEO." I still don't think anyone does it as well as them. @craigh

 

[Alexander Lau]

Once upon a time, not that long ago, I uncovered duplicate front page, about us, financial app, etc. content on about 500+ https://www.dealer.com websites. No joke!

Here's your best friend: https://www.copyscape.com/ (it's worth paying for their premium offering). Some SEO tools pull in their API.

In 2020, I would argue that almost all of SEO is simply best practices.
Google has become so good that the best way to succeed is to just play it smart - make content your visitors actually want to read and put it on your site.
If you want to make vehicle pages, put real content and unique images on them.

Website providers shouldn't be the ones doing SEO, but that doesn't mean they can't. We used to offer SEO packages that were quite effective (back when I felt that there were techniques that could genuinely move the needle in 90 days), but now we just audit the sites and provide suggestions to the client without it being an "SEO package". Their success is ultimately our success, so it would make no sense to help one succeed over another.

In my experience working with Automotive SEO vendors, 100% of them were either keyword stuffing, making useless blog content or stuffing backlinks to our site. We tracked everything in https://www.gshiftlabs.com and had to call them out on their seedy forum spam and offsite garbage that they didn't even tell the dealer they were doing.

You and I discussed gShift (Canadian group) in length, I do believe. I used them for close to 7 years, exposing similar results. It was easy to do and pathetic on the part of what groups were promising and providing via "SEO." I still don't think anyone does it as well as them. @craigh