A few months back, the team here at Wikimotive began a new video series called SEO Climb with Dave Estey. Series 1 is officially coming to an end, so we figured we would give you a full recap of everything discussed over the past few weeks. Let’s get started:
Defining SEO: The What, Why & How
In the beginning episodes of the series, Dave went over the basics: What is SEO, why does it matter, and how can you rank well on Google? SEO, while complex, is quite easy to understand from a wider scope; it’s a compilation of actions to take on your website to make it perform better on the search engine results page (SERP). This includes both content marketing, i.e., providing your directed audience with answers to questions they are asking, and technical SEO, like link building and fixing page errors, which helps search engines to best understand and navigate your site.
These pieces come together to help you rank above your competitors while simultaneously best serving your [potential] customers. This is valuable because it will increase your traffic, conversion rates, and even in-store visits. All in all, taking charge of your content marketing and technical and local SEO efforts, whether in-house or outsourced, will help you rank better on the SERP and simply perform better as a business.
Taking Over the SERP with Featured Snippets & GBP
As the series continued on, it only made sense to tackle some more complex SEO topics, starting with featured snippets. Featured snippets are excerpts pulled from a website and displayed above all results on the SERP. These are important because, well, they are an additional spot for your content to be displayed to your audience, which you can earn by simply answering their query in a quality and authoritative manner.
Speaking of spots on the SERP, in another segment, Dave talked all about Google Business Profiles (GBPs). GBPs offer specialized opportunities for car dealerships, as you can create separate profiles for your Sales, Service, and Parts departments. And by optimizing each profile for the department’s specific offerings, you will be able to rank for a variety of terms. If someone searches for a “Ford service center,” your Service GBP should show up with the correct hours and contact information; if someone searches “Ford vehicles for sale,” your Sales department should rank, and so on.
Between regular organic ranking, featured snippets, and Google Business Profiles, there are a lot of opportunities to show up on the SERP. If you aren’t making the most of these, well, you should.
A Look at Content: Topics, Optimization, & Blogs
One of the most essential pieces of a good SEO strategy is content marketing. Not only can quality content help build a trustworthy, long-term relationship with your audience, but it can help with ranking. The better your content, the more likely you are to earn backlinks, which are essentially thumbs-ups to your site, proving its authority and increasing its ability to rank higher. Google wants to provide searchers with the best answer to their query, so if you make that the foundation of your strategy, you will likely see great results.
Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as picking a topic you are interested in, writing a few passionate words, and slapping it on your blogroll. Identifying keywords and topics for your content should come from research. What are people asking about when they come to visit your dealership? What do you see people asking on the internet? On your Facebook feed? Tackle the frequently asked questions in a thoughtful and meaningful way, have your content optimized by an SEO professional before publishing it, and do NOT over-optimize. Yes, there is such a thing. No, you should not have a keyword stuffed into your content 50 times.
Once you have a solid piece of content that has been optimized by someone who is keeping up with the frequent changes to Google’s ranking algorithm, it can be published on your site. Oftentimes, this content would be best run as a blog post. Having tons of landing pages on your site will make it hard for your consumers to navigate the site. Creating a blogroll will help to build a natural navigational system for your content. Plus, blogs make for fantastic auto dealership social media posts.
Overall, content is an essential part of succeeding in the online automotive space. You can gain trust by tackling the topics your community wants to learn more about and rank above your competitors by answering each query better than them.
Seeing Results, Gut Checks, & Identifying Competitors
Dave rounded out the last month of Series 1 with some important topics that can help you manage your expectations for results, gut-check your SEO provider, and identify your actual online competition. A common misconception is that you will be able to see results from SEO work immediately. This, however, is not the case. In most scenarios, you won’t see a change in your traffic for the first 3-6 months. From there, however, it will continue to build, and you may begin to see successes faster. So if you don’t see results in month one, don’t give up – that’s normal!
What if it has been over six months since your SEO team has begun implementing a strategy, and you don’t think anything has changed? Do a gut check yourself! With tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can monitor traffic growth and clicks to get a good idea of whether or not the strategy is working. And if you have questions about it, a good partner will go over those pitfalls with you and explain what is what and why. If they won’t––maybe it’s time for a deeper audit.
Another way to monitor changes is via ranking. Are you outranking your competitors that were previously performing better than you? Wait. How do you know who your competitors even are? In the final episode of SEO Climb with Dave Estey Series 1, Dave went over how to identify your online competitors. It’s simple, really. Just run a search for keywords and topics you want to rank for and see who is in the top few results. Those are your competitors. By understanding who your competitors are, you can better monitor your online success and gut-check your SEO provider in another way. When it comes to SEO, you don’t need to know all the ins and outs yourself, but you should be able to take charge when you aren’t seeing the results you expected.
That’s a Wrap on SEO Climb with Dave Estey Series 1
Within only 13 episodes, Dave was able to teach us all about automotive SEO. There is no denying the fact that each and every episode of Series 1 kept us all learning and wanting more. While it is coming to a close for the time being, this isn’t it for us. Get ready to see a new face out there teaching about all-new automotive marketing topics very soon.
Have any questions in the meantime? Contact us today, and we will get back to you as soon as possible to help you crush your competition!