Link building has long been the back bone of any SEO campaign but that may change in the future with the introduction of Google's proposal to rank sites based on the accuracy of information published. This approach may be the search engine's shift towards relying more on endogenous or on-page signals. This is not surprising considering the fact that Google executives have publicly stated that they don't recommend link building for the sole purpose of increasing rankings.

The proposed new system, which has not yet been released, will calculate the number of incorrect facts within a page and give it a score. Sites with a low number of false facts will be considered more trustworthy versus those with a high number of inaccuracies. The algorithm makes use of Google's Knowledge Vault; a huge database of 2.8 billion facts which Google will use to compare data. Sites with a large number of contradictory information may have their rankings bumped down.

What this means for auto dealer websites is that it may take more than inbound links and great content in order to rank well. Website content will also require accurate information in the form of “knowledge triplets” in order to be considered trustworthy. For example, in the case of Obama's nationality Google used the words “Barack Obama”, “nationality” and “USA” in order to formulate the triple. A knowledge triplet for your car dealer may consist of the words “Ford Dealer”, “serving” and “Los Angeles”.

Your SEO company will have to be extra vigilant in order to ensure the accurate and consistent display of triplets across your auto dealer website. This may also include emphasizing triplets in on-page text as well as meta content in order to ensure uniformity. Link building is quite alive and effective as of this moment but you may want to ask your SEO provider what they are doing in order to ensure that your auto dealer SEO will remain effective should Google decide to go this route.

Jacqueline Cao is a SEO Specialist at Jazel Auto