• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

If Content is King Then Links Are The Soldiers

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Brian Pasch

Brian Pasch

8 Pounder Veteran
Apr 26, 2009
89
17
First Name
Brian
#1
I thought I would start a discussion on link building. Now that many automotive platforms have come to terms that Content is King and have added embedded blogs or "content pages on the fly" tools, dealers have the opportunity to add content to their websites. This is a positive trend.

However, the reality is that content alone does not demand respect by Google. Dealer websites need relevant links that point to new content pages. I was wondering what members of this forum have been doing to create new quality links to their blogs and content pages.

Anyone car to share?
 
#2
Great thread Brian... If a dealer would have asked me about starting a link building campaign a year ago I would have ducked and dodged. Link building or off page optimization has historically been one of the toughest areas to conquer for clients in general but especially for auto dealers due to the level of competition for customers. Link building requires a lot of man hours, persistence, and the ability to handle a lot of “NOs” which is why link baiting and sites like Digg became really big … people would write content and try to get dug etc. Unfortunately if a dealer website gets on Digg it typically isn’t because they are a great dealer with awesome deals . More often than not it’s because of something negative.

Now ask me that question today and you will see a rerun of Horse Shack raising his hand hoping Mr. Carter picks him and here is the reason why, Social Media Marketing (SMM). Sites like Twitter, FaceBook, Linkedin, and many others’ have given dealers to build quality links. More over if leveraged correctly it doesn’t just become an easier way to link build but can be great PR tool that can create tons of user generated content which is always a great thing. I am also part of the SEO community that believes search engines are going to use social media as a ranking factor in the future.
 
#3
Maybe we should start a list of free and easy places that dealers can put links to help with link building?

examples:
Their Youtube account
Employees LinkedIn accounts
This forum!
etc

In the office we have a long list of places we have found.
 
#4
mattwatson81 said:
Maybe we should start a list of free and easy places that dealers can put links to help with link building?

examples:
Their Youtube account
Employees LinkedIn accounts
This forum!
etc

In the office we have a long list of places we have found.
Click to expand...

Great topic Brian.

As simple as it seems I agree Matt. These are just no brainers these days as there is so much free stuff out there to assist in link building and drive more traffic.
It's just difficult to manage it all effectively which can become a big problem.
 
#5
WOW! Great job starting this thread Brian. Part of Googles algorithm is links. Google actually counts on us "searchers" and "site owners" to tell them what is good and what is bad. If you have two dealers in the same town and both optimize their sites for used cars.....One goes and gets links and the other site does not, Google will feel because someone else linked to one site it is more relevant than others. Remember, Googles business is delivering relevant searches.

Google will crawl a site and pick up links that look like "<a href="http://www.contactatonce.com/">Automotive Chat</a>". The Anchor text is "Automotive Chat" and that is what you see live, not the code. Anchor text is just as important as the link itself. If you link to a site and say "Click Here" you don't do them many favors.

Lets say Google crawls autotrader and finds a link to your site. Autotrader is an automotive site and Google will see that. Google will scan the page and notice a link that read "My Dealer Name" and say OK follow that link and scan your page. At this time they are checking for a few things.....1) paid link, 2) is the anchor text relevant to site, and it is believed that they may check to see if the sites are related (same server). I cannot confirm the third but have heard they do (Rumor). If your site is relevant to that link than you will get credit.

note: your goal would be to use your keywords you optimized your site for in your anchor text example: "used cars"

Page Rank - This is where it gets fun for car guys....the tech stuff. Your goal would be to get links from high page rank websites. For instance if autotrader put a link to your website from their home page you would get better results than say an inside page that doesn't get much traffic, links, etc....If you have a google toolbar you will see a little green bar "Page Rank". Autotrader's homepage has a 6 page rank. If you got a link from that page and so did 2 other dealers you would receive credit for "2" page rank. Some people explain it as "link juice". I saw Google explain this in a seminar once.

Free Links:
MerchantCircle.com | Find new customers.
San Francisco Restaurants, Dentists, Bars, Beauty Salons, Doctors
craigslist classifieds: jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, events, forums (Short term link) Not good but free link
New Cars, Used Cars For Sale, Car Prices & Reviews at Automotive.com
Do a search for "Automotive Directory"
Get creative....if you are a dealer group all stores should have links to each other.


NEVER PAY FOR LINKS....Google has specifically said this will hurt you and in Googles eyes you will be considered spam if you have too many.

Brian or anyone, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong here. I am willing to accept constructive criticism.

Sorry if too technical but I explain this a lot and many people get it when I say it this way.
 
#6
CAORYAN said:
"<a href="http://www.contactatonce.com/">Automotive Chat</a>"
Click to expand...

If you have the ability to give the exact link..some sites limit this just depending.. the only thing I would change Caoryan is adding the title="Automotive" so it would look like this
<a title="Automotive" href=New Cars, Used Cars For Sale, Car Prices & Reviews at Automotive.com>Automotive</a> .

This gets more into the semantic web but I think it's the way we are trending. Good post Caoryan.
 
#7
Awesome thread Brian.

I hope more people jump in. I think one of the biggest challenges I personally have is trying to figure out which sites give the most bang. There are so many different places where you can put information, it can make your head spin.
Here is 1 example: Do you all have a wordpress, blogspot, merchantcirlce, carspace, TypePad, AND fastcompany BLOGS? If so, that's a lot of time to manage. If not, how did you choose what you chose? Is it delivering the "BANG" you want SEO wise?

This is just one of many different examples.

Here is an idea…vAuto has a merchandising tool that can automatically create custom vehicle descriptions. What if there was a product that could “automatically†create dynamic BLOG posts in one control center that you could export to 10 or 15 different BLOGS. Now THAT I would have to look into!
 
#8
Alex Jefferson said:
Awesome thread Brian.

I hope more people jump in....

Here is an idea…vAuto has a merchandising tool that can automatically create custom vehicle descriptions. What if there was a product that could “automatically” create dynamic BLOG posts in one control center that you could export to 10 or 15 different BLOGS. Now THAT I would have to look into!
Click to expand...

Alex,

You've described self populating Blog, fed from automatic Comment Generator (CG). It's Coming! Stay tuned! When you look at vAuto's CG, you're seeing some of my work! While I was working with Dale's fantastic management group, I tried to push them down this road but it was too far outside their business model. :-/

We sell 500-600 used cars a month, For me, it' HAS TO BE totally automatic. Heck, I don't have time to update FB! The easiest place to create a CG is at the inventory source. Because of this, I have been pushing Homenet into this area (for about 3 years). I am deeply involved with HomeNet's CG in alpha.

Here's my personal test bed. Ford | UsedSUVKing It's a WordPress site, with a Thesis SEO mod (the best WordPress SEO mod known to man-kind), Pages are automatically built from a direct feed from HN.

I've ported in a video feed: 2006 Ford Expedition 4dr 4WD KT1092 | UsedSUVKing for the video walk around. All this data comes via HomeNet's feed, see the Mother page at: http://www.usedcarking.com/inventory/details2.asp?vehicle_id=kt1092#tippytop


We're almost there... But....It's far from done (is it EVER done? ;-).
The CG needs to be nested in there, page loading times are pathetic, call to actions need help, the Thesis skin is not auto-shopper friendly, Brian Pasch hasn't worked it over and given it it's blessing yet, I am STILL looking for a method to calculate it's warranty status automatically (another CG add-in). Landing pages need rich content that wont be CG'd. and on and on...

Dealers will be able to buy this turn key fully automatic SEO system very inexpensively. Brian P sells one. Hey! I may sell mine ;-)

Stay tuned!
 
Last edited:
#9
Joe, Just curious....why do you like thesis for seo so much? I have worked with thesis and haven't found it to be any different that any other that I can manually add everything myself. The only benefit I found was it is simple.

Would like your feed back.
 
#10
Last edited:
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Jump to latest Follow Reply
Menu