White Hat SEO: A Strategy for Long-Term Success in the Automotive Industry

With automotive businesses highly relying on their websites – i.e., virtual showrooms - to generate sales, they are in need of online marketing strategies that will not only build traffic and generate sales, but will also establish their business in the online market ensuring long-term success.

A white-hat SEO strategy is one such strategy that improves the search engine rankings of your website and increases traffic in an ethical way. It includes several techniques such as using SEO strategies that abide by the search engine guidelines, structuring websites so they can be easily crawled by search engine bots, and creating quality content and building popularity online. These strategies are all based on ethical practices and positive attributes, and not by cheating the search engine bots.

Practices of white hat SEO
Using good quality content and keywords: Content is one of the key factors considered by search engines to evaluate a site's quality. The content presented in a site should be unique, fresh, relevant, informative and of high quality. All these things make the content worth reading. Also, it is required to see that your content includes keywords that are relevant to your business and are what your audience is looking for.

For instance, if your target audience searches for keywords such as, ‘warranties on used cars’ or ‘authorized dealers for certified pre-owned cars’, then in order for your site to appear in top search engine rankings you must create content on topics such as ‘warranty benefits of purchasing used cars from authorized dealers’, ‘benefits of purchasing certified pre-owned cars’, etc.

Internal linking: Internal linking is linking one page of your website to other related pages, which suggests that your site is a comprehensive unit of information. For instance, for the page that has details about your Chevrolet pre-owned models and features, you can give related links of other pages in your website like, ‘benefits of purchasing pre-owned cars’, ‘service offers for pre-owned Chevrolet cars’, etc.

As said earlier, information-rich, relevant content always fetches good credentials from the search engines as well as users.

Back-linking: Back-linking is a process of getting links from other websites to your website, i.e., allowing your content to be shared or bookmarked by others. This is possible only when your content is of high quality. It is also essential to make sure that the site which has given links to your site is well respected, relevant to your business and is not a spam website that is banned by search engines.

Back-links can be generated from reputed article directories (article marketing) in which articles related to your products and services are posted.

Filling in tags: It is very much essential to include alt tags, title tags, meta description tags, meta keyword tags for every page of your website as they play a key role in deciding your search engine rankings. All these tags contain content that have page specific and relevant keywords. In other words, these tags summarize the content on the webpages. If these tags have keywords or summaries that are in no way related to the content in the page, then the search engines will consider the website as spam.

For instance, if you do not sell spare parts, but add keywords like spare parts seller or genuine spare parts seller in your tags, then your website will be in trouble.

Long-term success by building the credibility of your business
Following white hat SEO strategies indicates that you are abiding by the ethical techniques of SEO, thus building your popularity online. Good, valuable, original and informative content not only attracts the search engine rankings, but also the trust of the users, thus, they rely on your website for information. This way, white hat SEO techniques build up your auto business’ credibility in the online space, assuring long-term success.

Cost-effective strategy
White hat SEO strategies are inexpensive. They are a natural way of building up your online presence, hence not much technicality or cost is involved. White hat SEO is more about common sense and genuine effort that costs nothing, but can make your online presence strong.

With credibility and quality being the main factors that customers take into account when deciding upon an automotive dealer, white hat SEO acts as a perfect marketing strategy, as it is a way of marketing your business. Hence, it is considered as a good long-term marketing investment and also a long-term revenue generating tool.

Search Optics, Inc. is a leader in digital marketing solutions for the automotive industry. Search Optics interactive marketing services include custom websites, search engine optimization, paid search and mobile solutions that generate leads which result in sales opportunities. Search Optics specializes in automotive internet marketing and automotive marketing services.