Several tricks exist to hit car dealer websites with negative SEO, and many of them may be put to use by rival dealers in order to bring down your auto dealership website rankings. They can use the same tricks to boost their online rankings as well.
For example, rival dealers can build multiple low quality links to your car dealer website. Poor links will hit your car dealer website rankings badly.
In this
article, we’ll give you a few tips to help protect your car dealer website from
negative SEO tactics.
Tip 1: Check
for Duplicate Content
Content
duplication, also known as scraping, is possibly the most common and easiest to
implement a negative SEO technique to pull down your car dealer website ranking.
Your content
can be copied and then posted repeatedly on various websites. Such plagiarized
content needs to be quickly identified and reported or taken down.
Tip 2: Regular
Link Audits is a Must
Auditing links
should be a part of your car dealer website’s monthly SEO activities, in order to remove poor quality back links or protect the good ones.
Link audits are
also the best way to track modified links and spam links. If link spamming is
detected, report it to Google and disavow the links as quickly as
possible.
Tip 3: Monitor Your Google My Business Account
Google reviews
are valuable and trusted by most visitors. If fake negative reviews are posted
about your car dealer website, it can cause severe damage to your auto
dealership’s reputation.
This is a clear
negative SEO attack inflicted on your car dealership. Watch out for these, flag
the reviews, and send the report to Google.
Tip 4: Always
Keep an Eye on Your SERP Ranking
You can never
predict when someone could attack your car dealer website. The best way to
ensure that these attacks do not go undetected is to keep monitoring your
search engine result page (SERP) ranking on a regular basis.
In the majority
of cases, site crawling is affected by negative SEO and therefore, it’s highly
recommended to check it periodically. Google ranking software can be an
effective tool in checking SERP ranking and the crawlability of your car dealer
website.
Tip 5: Check
Your Social Media Mentions
To project a
negative reputation about your auto dealer website, attackers can create fake
social media accounts under the brand name of your car dealership. It is very
important that you identify these fake profiles and report them before they
begin to gain followers.
There are
several reliable online tools that can be used to identify profiles that are
using your brand name.
Tip 6: Protect
Your Website
Cyber attacks
are definitely on a rise, and its best that car dealer websites take a
proactive approach to protecting their website.
Ensure that the
content management system (CMS) you use is regularly updated and protected.
This is old
news but, if you’re still using HTTP, migrate to HTTPS as soon as possible for
better security and higher ranking.
Tip 7: Site
Speed Matters
To deliver the
best user experience (UX), your car dealer website's loading time matters a lot, and it
also happens to be a key ranking factor. Auto dealerships must measure
their website loading speed regularly, and quickly fix any issue that may be
causing the website to slow down.
For more tips on protecting your website from negative SEO, Contact Us.