SEO for an automotive website is a big and extremely important topic. Therefore, we decided to devote a separate article to it. Given our experience in developing online car dealer agency, we expect that this article will be useful to many who are busy promoting their store.
SEO compares favorably with other methods of promotion in that financial and time investments in SEO work in the long term. This means that bringing your site to a state in which it will appear in the first place in search results will take some time and require significant effort, but then the time and money spent will work for months. All you have to do is maintain the site in this condition, and this is already much easier than preparing at the very beginning of the journey.
SEO for a car dealer agency: where to start
First of all, you need to bring the HTML code of all pages of your site into a logical hierarchical structure. Each page should have tags:
- Title
- Meta description tag
The main content of your pages should have a single H1 tag. Tags H2, H3 can also be on the page, but in a strictly defined sequence. Those. for example, H3 should not immediately follow H1 - there should be an H2 tag between them.
These are general recommendations for all sites. For an online auto parts store, they are no different from sites on other topics.
Having brought the structure of the HTML code of your site into the correct state, you can move on to the key section of this topic - the semantic core.
Semantic core for an online car dealer agency
All key phrases by which buyers can find your site in search results form the semantic core. Since the entire text of your site, one way or another, ends up in the search engine index, then we can say that the entire text of your site is the semantic core.
At the center of this core is the main keyword phrase. For an automotive website, the main keyword phrase could be: automobile company for foreign cars, online car dealers, etc.
The main keyword phrase is usually the keyword that, according to search engine statistics, is the most popular in a given topic.
Other possible key phrases that also relate to the same topic, but are less popular, are also part of the semantic core. Such key phrases, depending on their popularity, are usually divided into high-frequency, mid-frequency and low-frequency.
The more often a key phrase appears on websites according to search engine statistics, the more difficult it is to bring your website to the top using it, especially if you have just launched it. And, conversely, the less often a key phrase appears on different sites, the easier it is to bring your site to the top for it.
Therefore, for new online automotive company, it is better to immediately start working on low-frequency keywords and then gradually move on to more popular keywords.
For low-frequency queries, the site rises faster to the top of search results, but you need to keep in mind that a specific low-frequency query is extremely rarely requested by potential buyers. As a rule, the search engine receives one specific low-frequency query 1-2 times a month, no more often. This means that in order for your site to be found more often for low-frequency queries, many pages must be created on the site. Each page is for a separate low-frequency request. And thousands of such pages need to be created. Of course, doing this manually is difficult.
There are various automated tools for this, which will be discussed below.
Low-frequency queries for an online auto parts store
Why is it easier to promote a website using low-frequency queries? As mentioned above, a low-frequency query is a phrase that is rarely found among similar sites. Therefore, if your site contains a key phrase that is not present or almost absent on other sites, then if a user requests such a phrase through a search engine, your site will most likely appear at the top of the search result.
A thorough SEO for automotive company shows that low-frequency queries for it are phrases for specific industry.
An example of such queries: “BMW” or “TOYOTA Corolla IX 2007”. These queries will be even lower in frequency if you add phrases like “buy in Texas” (of course, you can specify a different city).
As mentioned earlier, for each such low-frequency request, a separate page should be created on your website, i.e. a page with a description of a specific product, its price and, preferably, a purchase function. The TITLE tags, description meta tag and H1 of such pages must be filled with the product name, including the manufacturer and spare part number.
Mid-frequency queries for a car dealer website
Typically, mid-frequency queries are those key phrases that relate to the topic of automotive company, but with less specificity in the words compared to the low-frequency queries described above.
For example, if you remove the name “TOYOTA” from the phrase from the previous example and add “Model year” instead, you will get the phrase “TOYOTA Corolla IX 2007”. It's hard to argue that such a phrase is found much more often among the content of many sites. Therefore, promoting a site using such a key phrase will be somewhat more difficult than using a low-frequency request, but still much easier than using a high-frequency request.
URL structure for an car dealer agency
Websites of online automotive company usually consist of many pages. In this case, pages can form a tree hierarchy. Those. Sections are located at the top level, subsections are located within sections, etc. Thus, a logically correct hierarchical structure of the site is obtained.
You should not create subsections below the third nesting level. Firstly, the buyer is unlikely to go that far, and secondly, search engines usually do not give much importance to sections that are difficult to get to from the main page of the site. Therefore, when building a hierarchy of sections for your online car dealers, try not to nest too much.
Is it necessary to depend on the level of nesting of pages on the frequency of key phrases found on these pages?It should be said here that there is no such dependence in technical terms. Those. despite the fact that there are fewer mid-frequency key phrases than low-frequency ones, nevertheless, pages for mid-frequency and even high-frequency phrases can be created at the second and third nesting levels. And in turn, it would not be a mistake to create a page at the first nesting level - for a low-frequency phrase. But, nevertheless, it is better to adhere to a certain order, i.e. Pages for high-frequency phrases should be placed on the first level, pages for mid-frequency queries should be placed on the second, and, finally, pages for low-frequency phrases should be placed on the third nesting level. If you follow this principle, then it will be easier for you to administer your site - add new sections and edit old ones.
Building a URL for an online auto parts store
In this block we present some options for constructing a URL structure for online automotive company. At the same time, it is advisable to combine several construction options on one site - each in a separate section. Below you will see a graphic diagram of the logically and technically constructed structure of the pages of the online store.
Catalog of spare parts by their manufacturers
This section should contain pages for all products. Those. A separate page must be created for each product. The URL structure in this case will be built according to the following principle.
The first level should contain the root page of the section. This page should display a list of all auto parts manufacturers. By selecting one of them, the user moves to the second nesting level.
Manufacturer pages should be located on the second level. Each manufacturer has its own separate page. It is not difficult to guess that there should be an active link to the page of a specific manufacturer from the page of the root section from the first level. In this case, the search engine will be able to crawl the page of each manufacturer.
The page of one manufacturer should display a list of automotive website it produces. If the list is large, then it can be displayed page by page, specifying page numbers via the GET parameter.
By selecting any of the products, the user will move to the third nesting level.
The third level should contain product pages. There is a separate page for each product.
The product page should contain a text description, photographs, indication of applicability to cars, price and ordering function. The more information about the product there is, the better this page will look both for the buyer and for the search engine.
Thus, a buyer who searches for a specific product through a search engine will be able to find a link to its page created on your website. By going to this page, he will be able to immediately place an order.
Conclusion
SEO for car dealer agency is a complex and large process that requires investment and an individual approach to each project. But, if you approach it wisely and think through every detail, the end result will be a high-quality website that will be convenient, first of all, for the buyer, and will be promoted well in search engines.