Automotive Seo Tips

The benefits that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can bring to your website have the potential to be exceptional for driving revenue and brand awareness. 68% of online experiences start with search engines, and yet marketers across the automotive sector are ignoring the potential of SEO in their digital strategy.

On average, 54% of all website traffic comes from organic search. Considering this when creating your automotive digital marketing strategy, and specifically, your content marketing plan can turbo boost your organisation’s digital performance ahead of the competition.

Big names in the automotive sector are falling behind and still heavily relying on brand terms. Smaller and more digitally savvy direct and indirect competitors are attracting more relevant and targeted audiences.

SEO is a long-term marketing strategy and having a regular production of content that covers high search volume keywords and phrases is ideal for digital longevity. The ROI of automotive SEO is hard to match when implemented effectively. Getting your organisation to this point is where many fail.

10 Automotive SEO Tips For Marketers

1. CREATE ORIGINAL, EDUCATIONAL, ENGAGING AND SHARE-WORTHY CONTENT

Content marketing strategies should be both ambitious and achievable. Working around a well-thought-out and smartly planned long-term content calendar can help manage workload and keep employees at a high productivity level.

Publishing content regularly is often an overlooked factor for content marketing. Yet, it’s equally important as the quality and optimisation of each article, FAQ, service or product page. Failing to post content frequently can harm your organisation’s automotive SEO performance. Automotive companies that ignore the potential of this strategy risk falling behind savvy marketers in competing organisations.

Google dominates the search engine space with an 86% market share which is why digital marketers adhere to the recommendations that Google sets for automotive SEO. Automotive marketers that implement a content plan with achievable and consistent output levels can be more likely to benefit from higher-ranking positions in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS), Bing and other search engines. With an unrealistic content plan, automotive marketers risk lowering the quality of the content and the level of optimisation.

2. DISCOVER WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE IS LOOKING FOR

The most successful automotive SEO strategies start with meticulous research into keywords and phrases. Not creating a solid foundation for your organisation’s digital marketing team to build on could be the difference between success and failure.

Taking time to research the best keywords that are relevant and searched by your target audience is a major piece of the SEO puzzle. Wasting time producing content that isn’t optimised for key terms your audience is already searching for or optimising for keywords that receive little to no search volume can stagnate organic traffic and stop visibility growth.

3. OPTIMISE CONTENT FROM MULTIPLE STAGES

Optimisation can be incorporated at several different points of the content’s lifecycle. The most ambitious companies use the knowledge and experience of other departments, followed up with a marketer’s fine tweak to optimise the content. This is done coinciding with a content team producing articles from start to finish as well

This creates a metaphorical content marketing machine to release regular and informative content. This form of brand journalism not only ranks on search engines but also is received positively by readers. With a range of accredited authors in different topic areas, your organisation’s website becomes a knowledge hub for the industry.

4. MAKE GOOGLE’S JOB EASIER TO BOOST YOUR RESULTS

Best practice schema markup is Google’s best friend. Making search engines’ jobs easier by showcasing what content is included in your site map (e.g. reviews, videos, people, location, jobs and more). Structuring and marking up your site’s content properly, makes it more likely for Google to display it to search engine users. Potentially increasing visibility and organic traffic because people perceive your business as a reputable source the closer it is to the number one spot.

Schema is something that many developers look past or ignore when constructing a website to save time or due to not knowing its purpose. Not using schema correctly can prevent your organisation from achieving Google snippets and knowledge panels and in turn miss out on website visitors and reaching important audiences.

All automotive part suppliers should be including the basics for schema markup alongside sector-specific product markup to help search engines and users find their items more efficiently.

5. SHARE YOUR CONTENT ACROSS ALL CHANNELS

Strategically promote content across different channels that all lead back to the same page. Use social media and other mediums to promote messages in unison, bringing target audiences to one centre point (your website).

Many companies in the automotive sector have either dormant or non-existence social media accounts. Those that are ‘active’ across the channels are promoting mixed and disjointed messages. Alongside this, little to none of their posts are direct traffic to their site.

Big-name automotive companies should prioritise building relationships with relevant sources such as trade press and news. Getting mentioned by these brands and companies makes people and importantly, Google, view your automotive website as a credible source of information. Increasing the likelihood of users consuming content and purchasing products.

6. INCREASE CREDIBILITY WITH LINK BUILDING

To reach the potential heights of the best SEO strategies, link building needs to be a top priority during and after content creation. It is also worthwhile to regularly maintain and update legacy content to be more relevant and include links to new articles.

The easiest place to start link building is within your organisation’s site, weaving and connecting pages by relevant keywords. Not only does this help with keyword rankings, but it can also keep users on your business’s site for longer by finding further relevant content.

Despite being one of the most valuable parts of the strategy, many organisations still get it wrong. One of the easiest ways to improve the number and quality of the links you are getting is by reaching out to an automotive digital agency. Speaking to an expert in the sector can help both the marketing and PR departments refine their link-building operations.

Using the same relationship built to improve credibility can be utilised to also gain third-party links to your site. Bringing in new traffic and contributing to increasing your website’s domain ranking.

7. DEDICATE AN AREA FOR REGULAR CONTENT PUBLICATION

A dedicated area for regular content publication, like a blog section, is crucial for positive organic search performance. By sharing various types of optimised content, companies can increase user engagement, time on site, and overall visibility.

Our research team has been monitoring automotive digital transformation for some time now. Specifically looking into the top global 50 automotive part suppliers and their brands. An astonishing 77.2% of the top 50 suppliers and their brands do not have an obvious blog section on their websites. We found that there is a clear connection between not having a blog area and poor organic search performance.

Companies are missing out on having an area to publish a variety of content that can be optimised and used to increase users’ time and value on site. Digital leaders across the sectors are regularly sharing:

Blogs
News
Thought Leadership
Images
Videos
Infographics

8. USERS PREFER TO WATCH THAN READ

YouTube is owned by Google and has over 2.6 billion users, making it one of the most visited platforms in the world and signalling the appetite for video content. The modern-day internet user is more likely to consume a video over an article. Getting your video content to rank highly for keywords and phrases makes users more likely to click your video over competing articles. Similar to blog content, videos can be optimised using leading platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. These can then be found when searching on Google and the platforms.

Deploying these platforms also allows for the easy embedding of video content on your website. The key to getting boosted in the video-sharing platform’s algorithms is engagement and watch time.

Important areas for optimisation when publishing videos are:

File Name
Video Title
Video Description
Video Tags
Transcript

9. WEBSITE EFFICIENCY IS KEY TO SEARCH ENGINES AND USER EXPERIENCES

Page Speed

SEO can be massively affected by poor website speed. Having a site that takes over three seconds to load will hinder your SEO performance. Google recommends all websites load in three seconds or under. Failing to do this will increase the challenge of driving your site’s visibility.

Mobile Accessibility

As the number of mobile users on the internet has overtaken desktops, assuring your organisation’s site is responsive to all devices is vital. Not having a mobile-friendly site hinders user experience and causes Google to mark your SEO score down.

Website Platform

Relying on a slow and ageing DXP like Sitecore or an unsuitable platform such as WordPress can drag down digital performance. Over 9000 ambitious organisations have considered the Optimizely Gartner Magic Quadrant review and are shifting to the future-proof market-leading platform.

10. TRACK PERFORMANCE & COMPARE TO COMPETITORS

As SEO and visibility levels can always change it is vital to keep an eye on how your competition is performing. Search Engine and content marketing strategies need to have a level of agility to them.

Companies are waking up to the potential of rigorous digital marketing and are kickstarting their strategy. Receiving regular updates on your competitor’s activity and trends allows you to scale your marketing plan to stay more digitally mature and visible.

Another important aspect to consider is, search engines regularly update their algorithm and change what they are looking for from content (e.g. content length, the quality of links and more). Keeping up with this alongside executing your original plan is a lot of work for just an in-house team to manage. Gaining support from a team of savvy digital marketers can help prepare your strategy for these changes in advance to minimise the effect they can have.