It is essential that your website is optimized and that every aspect of it is working properly. If you hire an internet marketing agency for car dealerships to help you out with that, they are going to outline a strategy for you. It is your responsibility to know if any of what they are suggesting is underhanded, black hat SEO, or won’t work anymore because of recent adjustments to the Google algorithm. That applies to your link building strategy as much as it does anything else.
What Links Car Dealerships Should Avoid
For car dealerships, it is imperative that you only link to particular sites. You still need external links because of what they can for your site from an SEO standpoint, but your options are somewhat limited because of the nature of your business. You are trying to get people to come into your dealership, and e-commerce doesn’t account for any of your sales.
The first types of links you should avoid are any that you bought or sold that pass PageRank. If an internet marketing agency suggests something like this to try and establish your credibility, move on to someone else. Some sites still try to buy and sell links that have a no-follow attached because, in the past, this was a way that you could artificially inflate your site’s importance. But Google has long since caught onto this, and if you try it and get caught, you will be penalized, which you can’t afford.
The same goes for “hidden” links, the white link on a white background somewhere on one of your pages. This is another outdated black hat tactic, where the links would be hidden but the Google site crawlers would still pick them up. It was another way to inflate your numbers. Google has gotten wise to this type of nonsense too, however, so you should be skeptical of any internet marketing agency that suggests such a thing.
Site-wide links are also to be avoided. When we say “site-wide,” what we mean are links that appear as a top-level navigation link or a footer link. They aren’t black hat, necessarily, but they look very spammy. You want your site to advertise your business, but you should be able to do that without cluttering up the page. Let your site and the vehicles advertised there speak for themselves.
If you are careful to avoid these types of harmful links, the ones that remain will be all the stronger. If you decide to employ an internet marketing agency for car dealerships, then have a frank discussion with them about the kinds of SEO strategies you want to implement. Let them know that you’re only going to be interested in white hat optimization, and if they can’t provide it, you’ll be looking elsewhere.
