Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

Interest in automotive SEO content is likely at an all-time high thanks to increasing digital marketing budgets and the need to rank for high-value keywords that create a constant stream of leads.

Unfortunately, all of the wonderful benefits of SEO that you've heard from myself and other industry professionals come with risks if not properly executed. Here are a few of the ways SEO writing can backfire and hurt your website:

Thin Content Leaves You Vulnerable to Google Updates

Over the past few years, Google has been fighting to change content standards on the web for the better. One of the biggest ways they're doing this is through updates that target websites with "thin" content.

What is thin content? It's content that lacks substance. Think of it as a news report that leaves you asking questions instead of feeling informed. They left out crucial details, provided no sources, and simply seemed to rush through the whole process.

Typically, this is done for the purpose of quickly creating content based around valuable and relevant keywords. But when the content provides little context or answers for users, Google will punish the site through manual actions or algorithm updates that look for sites that lack valuable and original content.

Keyword Stuffing Makes You a Target for Penalties

Before it was able to more accurately judge content quality, Google often ranked pages based on keyword usage. This allowed sites to create "keyword stuffed" content that simply mentioned a specific keyword as often as possible throughout a page.

Because keywords were a primary relevancy signal, this made it possible for lower-quality sites to rank for high-value keywords. Here's an example of keyword stuffing:

"ABC Motors offers the absolute best selection of used cars for sale. The quality of our used cars for sale can't be matched by any other dealership in the area. Our incredible used cars for sale are priced at or below market value so you know you're getting the best deal on used cars for sale."

Serves No Purpose Outside of SEO

If you find yourself wondering about the quality of a piece of content, ask yourself: is this content valuable outside of SEO?

If a page is formatted and optimized for PPC as well, it serves a dual purpose. If it has elements that make it a resource, it's more than just a way to target keywords. And if it's fun and entertaining, it could be used for promotion on social media.

Unfortunately, a lot of the SEO content created today does not serve multiple purposes. And this is what Google is looking to squash in the coming years.

Duplicate/Generated Content Can Hurt Your Entire Site

When you duplicate content over tens or hundreds of pages (all marked to be indexed), changing only small bits (usually keywords), you're telling Google that your intent is to manipulate search engine results.

In the automotive industry, this practice is still common, especially among out-of-touch and out-of-date website providers. They'll often used the same 300 or 400-word copy on pages centered around model or local geo keywords, such as "Chevy Dealer Los Angeles," or "Chevy Cruze Los Angeles."

The content related to "Chevy Dealer" and "Chevy Cruze" is then used on pages targeted at geos near Los Angeles. This allows them to do the work that might normally take months to do correctly in a matter of hours.

But when the shortcut potentially leads to a dangerous end with manual penalties and algorithm updates that can remove your site from the index seemingly overnight, is it worth it?

Lack of Formatting Leads to Increased Bounce Rate and Low Time on Site

One issue most SEO content does not tackle is proper formatting. Users who land on pages written solely for SEO purposes are often faced with boring and large blocks of texts. Even if the content provided real answers, users are given no signs of how to read or follow along in order to find those answers.

Adding headings, bold and italic styling, bullet points, images, and other media is important because users that don't get answers bounce quickly back to the SERPs. This leads Google to assume that your content did not properly provide them with the information they were after. If this happens on a regular basis with a good majority of your content, your organic traffic could seriously be affected.

If that happens, you'll see less leads from search users, who convert at a much higher rate than any other type of leads.

You're simply handing your competitors the keys to the easiest sales on the market at that point. 

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

In today's ever-changing SEO landscape, lumping the entire practice into one term is often confusing and detrimental to the success of businesses in various industries.

In particular, the automotive industry is filled with confusion around what exactly SEO is, how much time it takes, costs, and the various strategies used to grow organic traffic.

To help shed light on some of the more advanced types of SEO, here's a look at a few key strategies your dealership is likely overlooking:

Local SEO

In this series, I've written extensively on the subject of local SEO. For 2015, it's one of the most important parts of a dealership's SEO strategy, yet one that most overlook. This has a lot to do with the industry's delayed adoption of current and advanced SEO strategies, mostly due to vendors that are content charging for a service with no value simply because someone is willing to pay for it.

But if you want to put your money into something that will actually benefit your site's SEO and drive more targeted local traffic, this is for you.

To get started, you'll need to audit your local presence on sites that host business information; sites like Yelp and YellowPages. The information on these sites must match what you've provided on your Google My Business page. This is because the search engine wants to list only the most reputable businesses when a user submits a related query, and the best way to determine this is the quality and number of listings your business has throughout the web.

Be sure this information is accurate and formatted the same on each and every listing site in order to get the best results possible.

Off-Site SEO

Considering SEO is all about how you optimize and build authority for your website, how does one work toward that goal without actually working on the website itself? Well, SEO comes down to more than just what Google and other search engines see on site, but how your site connects with others

By now, you've probably heard of linkbuilding, as it's one of the biggest parts of a solid off-site SEO strategy. But how do you build links? There's an easy answer, but it's followed by a lot of hard work.

Think of links as Google currency. Some are pennies, which pretty much just take up space, get tossed in with other spare change, and eventually exchanged for a small amount of real money. Others, however, are worth cold hard cash. If there was a legitimate exchange rate, the most valuable links would probably be worth upwards of $10,000.

You obviously want to acquire links worth more than less, but acquiring those is much more difficult. Before you start thinking about linkbuilding, you first need to create content worth linking to. Without this, your site won't be relevant or valuable enough to deserve a link from high-authority sites.

For dealerships, links from sites with automotive-related content are the most value due to relevancy. Install Moz's "Mozbar" and begin exploring sites with automotive content, such as blogs and resource sites. When running the Mozbar, you'll be able to see each site's Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA).

This will give you an idea of which sites are worth receiving links from and which sites are not. Any domain with a score below 25 is likely new or lacking substance. Once you find sites with DA 50 or higher, you're likely looking at older, established sites that are trusted throughout the web. These should be your prime targets.

Technical SEO

One of the most underrated types of SEO, technical SEO is all about how Google sees your website from a functional perspective.

Issues with your website's code, navigation, speed, or technical content could negatively affect rankings, leaving you wondering what's wrong with your website. One of the biggest issues most  businesses are unaware of is usability.

The more search users engage with your site and its content, the more Google realizes that your site is providing a good user experience. These metrics can and will backfire, however, if your site is providing a subpar experience or simply does not align with the searcher intent. Your site's design should focus on a clean, simple experience and your content should be targeted to provide intent-driven searches answers and resources.

Because of the nature of automotive websites run on vendor platforms, it's not possible to always correct issues with your website. If you're not satisfied with your current provider, or have been seeing a dip in organic search traffic over several months, there are plenty of new, advanced providers out there willing to put in the time and effort to help with technical SEO.

YouTube SEO

While a lot of dealerships upload videos to YouTube, few do so in a way that will get their videos in front of more local users. Here's a quick guide that will help bring in more customers with the power of video:

Step 1: Go In-Depth with Walkthroughs

Video walkthroughs tend to be short and edited for quick viewing, but if you really want to engage potential customers and sell them on a particular vehicle, you need to pull out all of the stops. Beforehand, research specs from competitor models and make references to these throughout the video. You don't have to oversell, either. Just show how genuinely amazing the vehicle is and present the viewer with a simple way to get in touch with your dealership.

Step 2: Optimize the Video Data

Your video should have a keyword-rich title, such as "2016 Chevy Cruze Walkthrough - Chevy Cruze Cincinnati, OH." In addition to this, provide a quick 75-word description and leave contact information, including a link to 2016 Cruze inventory on your dealership's site, phone number, link contact form, and even an email address.

Step 3: Promote the Video

For free promotion, post these videos to your Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels. You should also create content on your website related to the specific model featured in the video and embed that video on the page to supplement the written content.

But this will only do so much for views and engagement stats on your video, so you should consider paid promotion on YouTube or other social media sites to give it a boost. You can target users in your market only, ensuring the views you receive don't go to waste on non-local users.

What SEO strategies are you taking advantage of that others should know about? Which type of SEO is causing you the most trouble? Leave questions and comments below and let's get talking!

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

When most of you think of content, you're likely thinking about the written word that's related to the page title, right?

Don't worry, you're not wrong about that. But when it comes to automotive SEO, content tends to get a little more complicated. Google is looking at ton of factors when it's determining the quality of your site, and the written "main" content is just one piece of the puzzle.

In this post, I'll introduce you to another piece of that puzzle, supplementary content, let you know how it affects your dealership's SEO, and give examples of things you can add to your site to give it a quality boost:

What is Supplementary Content?

While main content is meant to host the information tied to the page's metadata (title and description), supplementary content is any information that adds to or assists in the user's experience on the site. This includes your header, navigation, sidebar, and even things like comment sections, forms, and contact info.

Google looks for supplementary content that adds to the user's experience and looks down upon useless and distracting content. For dealerships, this would probably include pop-up ads, chat windows, auto-play videos, and other forms of content that don't positively affect the user's experience but are there to help you sell more cars. (That's not a bad thing, but you'll be moving far less inventory if Google decides your site sucks.)

How it Can Affect on SEO

Supplementary content can go two ways: it can help your site or it can help your site. Here's an example of how it could negatively affect your SEO:

When users land on a specific page on your site, they came in with purpose. But when you bombard them with ads, pop-ups, and other distractions, you're not helping their experience. While those serve a purpose, it's more than likely not what they were after when they clicked on your site from Google.

This makes it extremely likely that a percentage of your visitors are clicking the back button once the experience begins to go south.

Think about it this way: what if you walked into a shopping mall with the intention of going to the toy shop to pick up a gift for your child, but as soon as you walked in you were being asked to chat with a sales rep, offered discounts, and heard loud ads over a PA system?  Would you stay? Probably not.

When a user quickly exits your site, Google takes notice. It affects your site's overall time on site and bounce rate, which may hurt your rankings if Google thinks your site isn't providing users with the best information and experience.

Now let's talk about how you can turn this all around…

Types of Supplementary Content to Add to Your Content Pages

Helpful, Embedded Tools

Before I even mention an example, I have to warn you: don't overuse embedded tools on your site's pages. Only embed them on pages that they'd be useful for the target audience.

For instance, a payment calculator is perfect on VDPs, content pages that focus on budgets, and loan application pages. But you don't want to start including that tool just because you think it will be helpful. A trade-in value tool is perfect for VDPs  as well, but added to your "About Our Dealership" page would a little out of place, don't you think?

Think of tools that would help create a better experience for your users and work with your website provider to get those integrated as soon as possible.

Related Content

Whether we're talking about your blog, or just a random page on the site, including links to internal content related to the current page is helpful for users looking for additional information. This is also a great way to increase pageviews, lower your bounce rate, and keep users on your site for longer than they normally would (which increases the likelihood of conversion).

Inventory Snippets

There are some great website providers out there that have begun embedding a preview inventory when a page's content is specifically related to one of the dealer's new models. This is a great example of supplementary content that could benefit the user who lands on that page in search of inventory while also contributing to your goal of selling more cars.

There are plenty of other great examples of supplementary content, so if you find one that you know is good, start experimenting! And be sure to share them with the community in the comments below. 

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

Every dealer wants to sell more cars each and every month. But in order to accomplish that, it's likely some other dealership in your area has to lose out. Just like you, they're looking to get a leg up on their competition, and there's no better place to do that than online.

Digital marketing isn't fair, though. Businesses that work hard and implement the right strategies see better results, while those that take short cuts continue to ask themselves why they're not succeeding online.

If you're looking for an unfair advantage with automotive SEO, here are five ways you can take action and outdo your competitors:

Get on a Modern Website Platform

If you follow my writing, you know that I have a bone to pick with most of the large, established automotive website vendors. They tend to be slow, outdated, impossible to customize, bad for conversions, and detrimental to any real SEO efforts. 

There are a select few, however, that really get it right. They develop beautiful, high-converting sites that use the latest code standards and comply with Google's Webmaster Guidelines right out of the box.

I recommend that this is the first thing you do above all else when having issues growing web traffic.

(I make it a point to never mention names in a public post, but if you want to discuss this topic in detail, feel free to PM here on DrivingSales or email me: tim [at] wikimotive.com)

Audit and Rewrite Old Content Using Semantic and Longtail Keyword

Whether you've had your website provider create content or paid a different vendor to produce content in the past, it needs to be audited if your site is losing or failing to grow organic traffic.

Some of this content could be considered thin and be hurting your site's SEO without any word from Google. This is why you absolutely need to do a thorough audit of your site. Any content that is unusually short (less than 400 words), keyword stuffed, or simply not receiving traffic should be put on a list to be rewritten or purged from your site altogether.

The rewrites should be longform (1000 or more words), and do more than target a single keyword. Use the Adwords Keyword Planner tool to search for keywords that are semantically similar to those previously targeted on the page and make an effort to use those naturally throughout the content of the page. 

You should also research longtail keywords related to your main keywords and attempt to integrate those topics as best as possible in order to provide the most in-depth information possible. 

(I suggest rewriting instead of purging, as it's the safest way to ensure you don't lose any more traffic.)

Create Valuable Content for Area Shoppers

On top of auditing and hopefully rewriting older content, you need to have a content strategy in place to ensure the production of new content. 

The easiest way to start this is to develop pages for each of the new models your dealership sells. These pages should be targeted at local buyers, informing them of how the specific vehicle is a great fit for life in the area.

For instance, if you're located up north you could promote your AWD/4WD SUVs for their practicality during harsh winter weather. Or if you're located in sunny California, a convertible is definitely something that could be enjoyed more than other parts of the nation.

While you're thinking about making location relevant to the vehicle, be sure to also think about the intent of the buyer and who they are. What type of person typically buys this car? What do they love about it?

Use the information you know about buyers and your inventory to craft unique selling points that engage users and separate your content from the pack.

Develop Relationships with Local Press for Mentions and Links

Having a great relationship with local press is a great way to get mentions on TV, print, and online, but it's also a great way to get links to your website.

Instead of just sending out press releases, however, find individual contacts at a variety of newspapers and TV stations in your area. These contacts should be focused on the web side of the news, as the tangible SEO value is in the mentions and links you're able to acquire online.

Introduce yourself and ask if there's an interest in automotive-related stories. You could be their source for everything automotive, or simply send in information about new vehicles, driving advice, seasonal car care tips, etc.

Be direct with your requests, as most reporters and writers don't have time to beat around the bush. If they like what you have to say, they'll respond. If not, don't give up (at least not immediately). You should consistently try to make a connection with each person you reach out to, but if you're not getting a response after five or more inquiries it's time to move on.

Overall, this is a great way to promote your dealership and provide a good benefit to your website's SEO. 

Optimize for Local Search

When's the last time you checked out your listings on sites like Yelp, Foursquare, YellowPages, and countless other business listing aggregators? If it was a month ago, I can forgive you. But if you've gone more than a year, there's likely tons of incorrect information about your dealership floating around.

The kicker? You could be hurting your SEO, and losing sales in the process. Do yourself a favor and audit these sites. 

You can search your exact dealership's address or phone number in order to create a list, or pull in listings attached to both new and old phone numbers with WhiteSpark's Local Citation Finder. This incredible tool will help you quickly determine which listings are correct and which ones need to be updated.

The reason these listings are so important is because Google uses this information to determine the legitimacy of your business, and may decide to exclude you from the coveted local map results if you don't have your ducks in a row.

Take these five suggestions to heart and stop ignoring the elephant in the room. SEO is here, and it's not going away. You can either do it right now, or suffer the pain of defeat when your competition has the unfair advantage on you!

​

While Twitter never grew to truly rival Facebook, it has affected our communication and our culture in the same way. People use Twitter for marketing, to connect with like-minded individuals, network professionally, broadcast news, and discuss anything and everything going on in the world.

The most powerful part of this is that everything is public. Meaning anyone has the potential to reach millions of people and grow an audience, if their content is worthy.

In this post, I'll give you the starter guide you need to use Twitter as a platform to grow in your industry through simply following and engaging with the right people.

Discover and Implement Industry Hashtags

One of the greatest things about Twitter is that, despite being a single giant community, it can be used as a way to connect with individuals with similar professional and personal interests.

The way this is achieved on a site with billions of public messages each day is through hashtags.

Hashtags are words (or an unspaced phrases) used to group or categorize messages on Twitter. (Other sites have since adopted the features. It was originally inspired by IRC networks, which used the hash symbol (#) to organize chats by topic.)

Let’s say you wanted to get involved in the SEO community on Twitter. The easiest way to do so would be to use the "#SEO" hashtag, but you might get lost in the noise, as it's a popular hashtag.

Using Twitter analysis tool, Hashtagify, we can find hashtags that are related to #SEO to stand out a bit more. A few examples might be #ContentMarketing, #Blogging, or #Content.

You can also explore these hashtags directly on Twitter to discover others that people are using. The more hashtags you integrate into your tweets, the more people you'll reach.

Once you've got a good list put together, start implementing them. If you tweet a post of blogging tips, be sure to add the hashtag #Blogging so the community can better discover your content. A user with zero followers can build from nothing by simply utilizing hashtags properly.

Start Following and Engaging with Related Users

Now that you've got an idea of how to get more involved in industry discussion on Twitter, it's time to start following influential and active users in your industry.

If you know a few of the most influential people in your industry, you obviously want to follow them first. But the next step is to see who they follow, and also who follows them. By doing this, you'll discover more influential people, and perhaps users who are looking to break into the scene.

Not every single person will follow back, but you can follow 1,000 people a day. The issue here is, if you don't have 2000 followers, Twitter won't let you follow more than 2000 people until you get to 2000 followers.

You have to follow the right people, engage, and get noticed.

Your goal should be to reach out to all types of users, not just the most influential. Those who get hundreds of messages each week aren't likely to notice you, but someone with only a few hundred or thousand followers will.

Make separate Twitter lists for influential and active industry users to ensure you're getting tweets from both sides. This also ensures their messages don't get lost in the noise of Twitter.

So go out and retweet their best links, reply to their questions, and generally make people notice you!

Take Time to Personalize, But Work on Automation

Twitter can suck up a lot of your spare time, if you let it. You could easily find yourself spending hours each day searching for great content to post and replying to other users.

Instead of spending a ton of time overthinking Twitter, work on automating as much of the process as possible. This means using a tool like HootSuite or Buffer to schedule tweets out in advance.

Whether that means articles you've read, tips, quotes, or questions, it saves you the time and effort of having to interrupt your daily routine to tweet.

Of course, you should set time aside to retweet, reply, and follow new users each day. This should take less than 15 minutes of your time, so you can accomplish it consistently during a mid-day break.

Final Thoughts

Anyone can build a follower base on Twitter. But numbers mean nothing without engagement behind it. Don't let follower counts distract you from your true mission: networking.

You can build a name for yourself and rub shoulders with people you would have otherwise never been able to meet in person. It's a powerful tool when used correctly, and can open up opportunities you didn't know existed!

This post originally appeared on Wikimotive's blog on March 2, 2015.

​

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

While ranking factors are a controversial topic in the SEO world, they're also something SEOs love to speculate about and test in order to learn more about Google.

Last year, Brian Dean of Backlinko created a list of 200 Google ranking factors that took the SEO world by storm. One half hated it because they thought it was presumptuous to assume the factors, and the other half loved it because it was a great piece of content that sparked interesting discussions.

Now, there are plenty of ranking factors we know to be true. There are also some that have been tested to death, but never officially confirmed. And finally, some are simply theory based on correlation.

Either way, it's fun to dig into the world of ranking factors.

So with that in mind, here are five of the lesser-known factors that could be affecting your website's rankings:

Domain History

Back in 2006, Matt Cutts made comments on public vs. private WhoIs domain information. He alluded that someone who uses private information to hide their identity might be up to something they don't want the public to know about.

And because it's thought that Google accesses and uses information from WhoIs records, a domain that has been sold or changed drastically over its history could have its authority "reset." This would take away any link authority the site achieved throughout its history.

This would prevent domain owners from selling a high-authority website, which could then be changed to something completely different, capitalizing on the built-up authority.

Media Elements

There's no one out there claiming that on-page media, such as images and video, increase rankings on their own. These elements do, however, provide users with a better overall experience, increase time on site, and can improve bounce rates.

There is a possibility that media elements are a small quality signal that Google's content raters look for when determining what makes a specific site higher quality when compared to another similar site.

Authoritative Sources of Information

If you're working on a content page for a model as part of your automotive SEO strategy, you might create a section that let's readers know what it's like to drive it. But is your opinion useful in this example? You work for the dealership, and likely don't have a record of reviewing vehicles on the web.

In this case, citing reviews from established sites like Car and Driver, Edmunds, or Motor Trend is going to provide your readers with a more accurate and authoritative review. And according to Google's Quality Guidelines, it wants its own site reviewers to look for expert sources when a site is covering specific topics.

Difference Between Useful and Quality

When I talk about content, there are three words I most often use: quality, useful, and valuable. All three have different meanings, but can be used together.

Quality means it's well written, researched, and formatted for users. Useful means it serves a purpose and answers questions. Valuable means people find the content entertaining and worth sharing.

When it comes to providing search users with the best results, however, Google knows that quality isn't always the best way to go. Because no matter how high quality a specific piece of content is, that doesn't mean it's what users are really looking for.

Google is focusing more and more on intent when serving results, and that should always be on your mind. So when you're creating content for a topic in which the intent is to provide answers or actionable information, try to focus solely on that. That doesn't mean ignore the principles of quality content, it just means the user should immediately understand that this content was created to help them.

Popups, Sliders, and Annoying Ads

Google's guidelines for its human site raters included a lot of information on how the company views certain site elements, such as popup windows and display ads.

The company has stated that both popups and ads seen as "distracting" are signs of a low-quality site. This may not affect you today or tomorrow, but as Google evolves and focuses more of its efforts on user experience-related algorithm updates, making appropriate changes could save you a lot of stress in the long run.

Another frowned-upon element that's prevalent on car dealer sites is homepage content sliders. While not called out directly, many SEOs believe sliders affect usability, which in turn will affect time on site and bounce rates.

For SEO companies, unlinked mentions can be extremely annoying, hindering SEO efforts in the process. But the fact is, whether completely intentional or editorial preference, many sites simply don’t link out a lot. It’s not that they have anything against you, they just don’t have your SEO in mind when mentioning your brand on a page, blog post, or news piece.

Also, most businesses that do PR generally don’t think about links while in that process, which leads to a lot of lost value and the need for dedicated linkbuilding.

In this quick tutorial, I’ll show you how anyone can check for unlinked brand mentions and how easy it is to turn them into links in less than 15 minutes.

Step 1: Checking for Unlinked Mentions

Checking for unlinked mentions is as easy as a Google search. Sifting through all of those results is for suckers, though. We need automation.

Note: If you subscribe to Moz Pro, Raven Tools, or any other SEO software, you may already have a tool at your disposal . Check to see if your chosen platform offers a similar tool.

Enter the RankTank Unlinked Mention Finder

RankTank’s Unlinked Mention Finder is a free tool that taps into Google and uses Google Docs to create a spreadsheet of results that show up for a specific query and allows you to check if that site links to your site or not.

To get started, open up the original document on Google Docs and immediately go to File > Make a Copy. Once opened under your control, edit rows 3 and 4 in column B to represent your site and the query you’d like to search. Here’s an example using Wikimotive:

Check Links to: wikimotive.com
Google query: “wikimotive” -site:wikimotive.com

By putting quotes around your brand name, you’re telling Google to only search for that specific word/words. And by adding “-site:wikimotive.com” to the end of the query, you’re telling Google that you don’t want results from Wikimotive’s website to show up in these results.

Once you’ve added your information in, the document will automatically start working to populate your spreadsheet. Depending on the size of the site, the results may take up a minute to display. At first, the “Link Back?” column will display all “No” (red) until it starts to discover links, which will then dispay “Yes” (green).

Step 2: Organize Your Targets and Gather Contact Information

Open up a separate tab with Moz’s Open Site Explorer and check any non-linking site that looks promising. (Alternatively, you can install the MozBar and simply open these links normally.)

You want to make sure you’re reaching out to quality sites for links, and checking domain authority is a big part of that. While any site with quality content is worth a link from, try to go after sites with a DA of 35 or higher at first.

To help keep track of our newly-acquired targets, we need to get organized.

Make a separate spreadsheet, add in the following columns:

• URL with Brand Mention
• Target Site Domain Authority
• Contact Name
• Contact Email
• Outreach Date
• Follow-Up Date
• Final Follow-Up Date

Once you’ve got your outreach spreadsheet organized, visit each site and try to get both a name and email address for someone who works on the target site. If it’s a news site, try reaching out to the writer who wrote the article you’re featured in or an editor. It’s important to try to find a real person, as unsolicited “Dear Editor” emails are often ignored by savvy, busy editors.

Add that contact information into your spreadsheet for each target and you’re ready to move on to the most important step: the outreach!

Step 3: Creating Your Outreach Template and Sending Them Off

The most important part of outreach is your pitch. It doesn’t matter how big or small your request is, it’s how you present it to your target that matters.

As a blogger who gets thousands of requests each year, I’ve learned from how others have successfully pitched me and how to apply that to the outreach we do on behalf of clients here at Wikimotive.

Do you want to know my biggest outreach secret? 

People love and respect honesty.

So when crafting your outreach template, be honest with your intentions. You’re reaching out because the link will help you, so be upfront and tell them that. Don’t try to make it seem like you’re doing them a favor in any way.

Here’s an example of an extremely simple, yet effective template I use:

That took me about a minute to initially write and 30 seconds to edit for each individual target. Yet I received a response from most of the sites I reached out to. They all weren’t receptive, but that’s linkbuilding.

There’s nothing special about this template, either. I didn’t think of any crazy reason they should link to me or try to trick them. I just asked for exactly what I wanted. Honest. Simple. Straight to the point.

I also made it very simple for them to complete this task for me. I let them know exactly what they’d need to know so that nothing got in their way. And that should be your goal for an outreach template.

Once you’ve sent out your first email, make sure you log that in your spreadsheet. Set the follow-up date for a week from that date and the final follow-up a week from that date. Stick to that schedule and don’t give up after the first set of emails.

Most of the time, a simple reminder is enough to get people’s attention. If you don’t hear back after the third email, it’s likely you never will. I’ve gotten upwards of 20 follow-up emails from people before, which leads them right into my spam folder. If you want to live to pitch another day, it’s best to learn when to give up and move on.

Conclusion

Outreach is really simple once you get over your fear of rejection. It’s a game, in which your losses will greatly outnumber your wins. But the wins are more than worth it. Happy Linkbuilding!

This post originally appeared on Wikimotive's blog on February 9, 2015 under the title "How to Turn Brand Mentions into Links in Less Than 15 Minutes." 

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

If I asked you what kept you up at night, I don't think many of you would be screaming "SEO!"

I don't hold that against you, especially if your job as a manager or business owner involves hundreds of tasks each month. Your site's SEO is just one of those, and the only thing you want to hear is whether things are going well or not, right? We've all been there.

Unfortunately, SEO deserves a bit more attention than that. And while my intention is not to really keep you up at night worrying about organic traffic, I do want you to think about some critical issues that could be affecting your business.

Your Organic Traffic is on a Downward Spiral

This is the big one.

The first thing you should know about SEO is that organic traffic is rarely consistent. Some months there's a spike in certain searches, while others there's a drop. This is the nature of non-paid traffic.

What should keep you up at night is if there's no up to your down. When your site starts to dip, but doesn't come up for air you know there's an issue.

The problem on top of your problem? Your downward spiral could be caused by a number of different issues!

It would be wise to check your site's Google Webmaster Tools account for any messages regarding a manual webspam penalty. If you can't find one, it is possible that you've been hit by an algorithmic penalty, which will not show up as a manual penalty.

To find where the lost traffic was originally landing, you'll have to dig into your analytics. If you notice large losses in organic traffic to your homepage or other main pages of your site, it's likely you've lost some very important rankings.

The best thing you can do in this situation is to order an audit from a reputable digital marketing company, or reach out to an expert you can trust. Because when your site is losing traffic consistently day after day, you can't afford to sit back and wait to see if it corrects itself.

Inaccurate or Missing Local Citations

The idea of local-specific SEO is still relatively new to many business owners. But with map-based results taking over SERPs for more and more queries, getting on top of your local SEO can often make a huge difference in your overall organic results.

One of the keys to increasing your rankings in local search is finding and correcting inaccurate citations, as well as creating new citations on sites that host information about businesses.

What is a local citation?

A citation is simply a mention of your business, which can take the form of simply the name of your company in a local news article or name, address, phone number, and other basic information on site like YellowPages or Yelp.

If your business has ever changed phone numbers, addresses, or changed how the name is formatted, you should have updated each and every one of your local citations throughout the web.

This is a difficult task, but would you rather give up on it because it's hard or work through it and increase leads? Leads please!

Duplicate Content

If you follow Wikimotive's content, you're probably sick of hearing about duplicate content. Well, I'm tired of it too. The problem is, it's still an issue with thousands of dealer websites. So until it's no longer an issue, I need to take every opportunity to make sure it's on the minds of dealers across the country.

Google has stated that duplicate content on its own is not going to get you in trouble:

“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results,” the company says in its official article on the topic.

In thinking about car dealer websites, duplicate content is usually created by the website provider itself. Sometimes it's a part of an add-on SEO strategy, but most of the time it's just standard practice for website providers to just blatantly duplicate content over and over across individual sites and other dealers' sites, changing only keywords, in order to manipulate rankings.

"Wait, You Provide the Same Service to My Competition?"

Speaking of website providers, how many of you pay for extra SEO services from your provider? Well, good news! They're probably providing the same service to your competitor down the street, across town, and even a few towns over.

The problem? How can a company effectivily work on multiple sites that are all vying for the same set of keywords? Hint: it can't.

That doesn't seem to stop them, though. Will you?

Lack of Unique Content and Relevant Links

Content on its own won't take your site from page 3 to page 1; a hundred links won't do it either.

What makes the difference, however, is the execution of both of these integral parts of SEO. But if you create unique content, systematically link it to related content, and earn links based on the authentic value of that content, the possibilities are endless.

This can't happen if you're not willing to give it a try, though. If your site is struggling to grow organically, and you don't have a content strategy in place, it could very well be the missing piece to your SEO puzzle. 

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

Everyone involved on the marketing side of business is aware of Google's power. What most are not aware of, however, is that the search engine is constantly evolving.

This evolution includes updates that affect businesses around the world based on its vision of website quality. Staying on top of these updates is crucial to SEO, as what works today might not work tomorrow, and your ability to properly adapt can make a big difference in rankings.

If you've ever wondered how you can avoid site quality issues with Google, here are the absolute basics that will put your mind at ease and put you on the right path toward improving your site.

Get Up to Speed on Algorithm Updates (and Keep Up!)

It's more than likely you've heard about Google's various algorithm updates in passing, or read discussions here on DrivingSales, Facebook, and other forums. But have you ever taken the time to just sit down and read through the details of these updates?

It doesn't have to take up your entire day, so don't think that you'll be reading technical documents or anything like that. All you really need to do is read through summaries written by top marketers who break the updates down so they're easy to understand.

Search Engine Land has resource pages set up for each of the major algorithm updates that include a quick description and links to stories about recent changes related to each individual update.

Moz also has a resource set up to keep everyone up to date on the latest algorithm updates. But unlike Search Engine Land, Moz organizes their page by date and individual change. This is great for figuring out when specific updates happened, but can be confusing if you're not yet completely up to speed with all of the major updates.

I'd suggest reading through Search Engine Land's pages and then comb through Moz's page. Both can be found by searching "Google algorithm updates."

Audit Your Site Regularly

The last thing you want is to one day be greeted by a message in your Google Webmaster Tools account to find a message regarding manual site penalties. (This is Google calling you out on quality issues directly.)

After reading through this post and other pages mentioned, make it your mission to audit your site regularly for quality issues. Take a few hours each quarter to do a thorough check of your site to ensure nothing out of the ordinary or potentially damaging, such as thin content, is being overlooked.

Stop Investing in Black Hat

The SEO world is filled with conflicting information. Some experts say do this, while others preach against that practice. So unless your main focus is SEO, it's not surprising that you could get confused or caught up in the allure of black hat quick fixes, as we all want tomorrow's results to have already happened yesterday.

Unfortunately, this is unrealistic with SEO. You'll find that quick fixes don't follow Google's recommended guidelines, which will lead to eventual consequences. (You'll know when your search traffic begins to tank!)

Common quick fixes include buying links, copying content, and duplicate content. The most prevalent in the automotive industry is duplicate content. Many website providers and shady SEOs will take a single piece of content and repurpose it across its client base for many different keywords, changing only the targeted keyword in order to trick Google.

You might not even realize this is an issue, so be sure to check your site for duplicate content. A simple way to do this is to use Siteliner.com, which scans your site's pages for internal duplicate content.

Only Create Content That's Better Than Your Competition

Rand Fishkin's most recent "Whiteboard Friday" topic on Moz was about the phrase "good, unique content." If you've followed Navigating SEO, I have no doubt you've read that phrase, or one similar, many times throughout these posts.

It's common for SEOs to say "content is king" and "all you need is good content." Pretty vague, huh?

I've gone into detail in previous posts on exactly how to think about content, and what makes good content good, but here's an easy way to think about it:

MAKE IT BETTER THAN YOUR COMPETITION!

You should be aware of the content your competitors are producing, and should always research content that ranks for keywords you're targeting before beginning anything.

You want to understand the context, value, and other qualities of the existing content so that you can improve upon it. This does not take any sort of masterful skill, though. Just think what you would want as a user. Make your content more valuable and impactful than your competition and you'll see results. 

Navigating SEO is a DrivingSales.com exclusive series by Timothy Martell, CEO of Wikimotive. In this series, Tim breaks down ways dealers can improve their SEO and offers insight into how it will benefit business.

Creating original content is one of the best things you can do for your website's SEO. It's also one of the best ways to attract more visitors from social media and build a large following of local users.

But how do you combine the two?

In this post, I'll show you how you can create content that's not only beneficial to your website's search engine authority, but its social media presence as well!

Forget Everything You Know About Content

In order to have SEO and social success with your content, you need to forget everything you know about content. I say this because you need to have your mind completely open to ideas that may contradict other ideas about content that you've heard over the years.

Wait, why are these ideas different? Are you saying everyone else is wrong?

No, I'm not saying everything you've heard from other sources is wrong. The ideas in this post are different because we're not using content to generate sales like we would with content marketing, and we're not simply doing it for the SEO value.

We're creating content that will rank, attract links, build valuable authority to your website, and break through the noise on social media to drive more targeted traffic to your website.

How This is Different from Traditional Content

Traditional content is boring. Landing pages, model content pages, service-related pages, and keyword-focused blog posts are examples of content that serves a great purpose but often fail to engage users.

This type of content can be found on almost every single dealership website on the planet because it's basic content made specifically for search engines.

Content made for both search engines and users, when applied with a traditional content strategy, will take your results to the next level.

This content is unique, informative, entertaining, and serves a specific purpose. It's not just created to mention a keyword used by search engine users in your area.

The goal of this content is to truly engage the user. It makes them want to share it just based on its overall quality.

The difference from traditional content is that this content is not meant to rank for a high-value keyword. Instead, it works to provide a secondary rankings boost to your existing traditional content.

Steal This Example

Let's pretend you're a Chevy dealer and your goal for the month is to rank for the Corvette-related terms that local buyers are searching. You've got your traditional model content page in place, but it's not ranking as well as it should be compared to other dealers.

To supplement this page and give it a secondary rankings boost, you need to create content related to the Corvette that follows the principles I mentioned above. It doesn't have to mention your dealership, or even pitch the reader on a new Corvette, it just has to be unique and entertaining.

What if you published a post about the history and overall evolution of the Corvette? Go into extreme detail, include high-quality images, and draw people into the Corvette's long and interesting history. You'll find that through context, this type of content will rank for all sorts of longtail keywords. It will also engage readers who visit from social media, and get plenty of shares from enthusiasts who are passionate about the Corvette.

From there, you could even contact Chevy and Corvette-specific fan websites to let them know you created this content. These sites are always on the lookout for great content and will happily link to it if they think it's worthy of their audience. And if you go the extra mile, that won't be an issue.

Become Obsessed with Social

​

I feel strange asking car guys to become obsessed with social media. Many of you likely have kids that are glued to their phones and social media sites, but what good would that do you as a manager or marketer?

It helps you better understand social.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not asking you to start ignoring family at dinnertime to check out the latest updates on Twitter. What I want you to do is start analyzing content that's related to the industry that you see on popular social media sites.

Here's how you start.

1. Follow the major automotive news sources on Facebook, such as Motor Authority and Car and Driver, as well as popular blogs, such as CarScoops and The Truth About Cars.
2. Visit their pages and browse through their content, taking note of the user interaction (likes/comments/shares) on specific posts.
3. Make a list of topics you'd like to see on your dealership's blog based on what's popular.

By no means is this the absolute best way to generate ideas, but it's a simple way to get started if you feel completely out of your element.

Additional Tips

• Use social as a jumping off point - Don't simply take the news you see on these sites and write about that each time. If you notice that news about the upcoming Ford GT is really doing well, think of an original blog post that you could write about the Ford GT.
• Think about what attracts users to content on social - Images. Descriptions. Titles. These all play an important role in getting more engagement, so pay attention to how the big players use these while you're browsing.
• Promote your content right - You need an ad budget on Facebook. You can't build an audience without it, so don't just think having great content is enough. People need to see your content first in order to share it!

Always Do Your Keyword Research

Now that you've got the right mindset for creating social-friendly/shareable content, it's time to think about the SEO side.

Years ago, SEO-friendly content was not social-friendly content, but with the evolution of Google's search algorithm with updates like Hummingbird, it's less reliant on keywords to rank content appropriately.

Does this mean I can ignore keywords and just write? No, because keywords still matter. You don't want to stuff keywords into your content or use exact match phrases in a way that's not grammatically correct, but you do want to insert relevant keywords where it's appropriate.

How to Research and Insert Keywords

If you wanted to write the ultimate resource to the new Ford GT, and wanted to include a section dedicated to the price of the upcoming supercar, how would you research and insert a keyword?

First, start with Google's Keyword Planner Tool. This will allow you to see the number of monthly searches for a specific keyword (based on any location), which will let you know whether or not a keyword or topic is worth perusing.

Using the Keyword Planner Tool, I can see that the keyword "2017 Ford GT Pricing" currently receives 70 unique searches each month in the U.S. Not a lot, but we're looking to target longtail keywords that have less overall competition than another related keyword like "Ford GT Price."

If I were writing this resource piece on the new Ford GT, I would actually name the section "2017 Ford GT Pricing: How Much Will it Cost?"

This text would likely be wrapped in an H2 tag, a heading tag used to organize content and help search engines understand the structure of your content. By having the keyword wrapped in an H2 tag, you're also helping establish more authority for your page with that specific keyword.

Make it Relevant to Your Brand

Above, I've used the example of the Ford GT. I think it goes without saying that, if you run a Chevy dealership, you're not likely to want to use this idea on your dealership's blog, right?

Whatever brands you represent, make sure your content is as relevant as possible to those brands. As I've said countless times before in posts on DrivingSales, the ultimate goal is build authority through this content, and you want that authority to be tied to the brands your dealership represents.

Last Time on Navigating SEO: Advanced Local SEO