Five common SEO mistakes to avoid

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is essential for automotive businesses to increase their online visibility, and to get it right there are SEO mistakes to avoid.

Indeed, successful SEO requires work across several areas and without proper attention can have a detrimental impact on a business, such as less traffic to a website, ultimately leading to lost sales.

Our SEO expert, Will Sibley, offers his insights on five of the most common SEO mistakes automotive, motorsport and technology companies should be aware of.

Key pages are hard to find

A website’s structure and hierarchy must be designed to aid navigation rather than hurting the user experience.

If a site is not built correctly, key pages can be hard to find or buried too deep and the site’s navigation is poorly optimised.

It’s vital to get this correct because, otherwise, visitors leave quickly and search engines struggle to see which pages are most important.

Ways to fix this include grouping pages by topic, keeping core services within two clicks of the homepage, using clear menu labels, adding breadcrumbs, and ensuring every page is linked from a hub or the main navigation.

SEO mistakes to avoid also include a page without a distinct purpose

SEO issues can occur when a page ends up being unfocused and too broad.

It matters to get this right, because without it, Google cannot confidently match the page to a search term, so it is far less likely to rank highly on the search engine results page (SERP).

Fixing it can be achieved by choosing one primary search phrase per page, with a few close variations. For example, the term “classic car restoration services” and “vintage car restoration service” are likely served by the same page.

Therefore, use the main phrase in the title, main heading, opening paragraph and some subheadings, ensuring it is written naturally.

One-off blogs that don’t serve a wider purpose for SEO

The mistake, here, is random articles that do not synergise with other key pages or articles on the site. In order to build topical authority, blogs need to work together with other pages covering related yet distinct aspects within the same topic.

It means that the time and effort that goes into producing original content brings little traffic or leads.

There are various strategies to fix this including planning topic clusters that support a broader subject rather than isolated posts, ie, cover all aspects of a given topic in individual blogs to support a key service offering.

For example, the diagram below demonstrates a likely topical map for a target keyword, “automotive engineering services”, with the relevant child blogs that would all link back to the main page to enhance topical authority. The child blogs can also link between themselves where relevant.

Additionally, ensure each post answers a specific question, links up to its hub, links sideways to related posts, and links to relevant service or case study pages.

Meanwhile, add a clear call to action (CTA) that matches the reader’s stage such as downloading a relevant PDF, viewing case studies or booking a call.

Other SEO mistakes to avoid include oversized images slowing the site

With this issue, image files are much larger than they need to be, which is not good for SEO purposes as slow pages mean higher bounce rates and lower visibility.

Resizing images to their display size, saving in modern formats like WebP and aiming for roughly 100kbs maximum are ways to fix this. It’s also an idea to enable lazy loading for images lower on the page. With this solution images are only loaded when they are needed, such as when the viewer scrolls to them, helping to improve site speeds.

Thin content on key pages

SEO issues also arise whenever you have pages on your website that are too short, generic, limited on social proof and do not provide value for the visitor.

This matters because these pages struggle to rank and do not build trust with potential customers.

For instance, often old blog content appears on websites from before an SEO strategy was developed. These are often only a few hundred words long and don’t provide any real value to your site visitors. It’s almost always better to delete these thin pages, unless you decide to properly expand them.

These pages can be fixed by adding more of what people are looking for from that page: what you do and what makes you great, how it works, deliverables, expected outcomes, example results, FAQs, testimonials, and a clear call to action. Make sure to use plain, specific language over fluff.

Do you need professional SEO support?

Red Marlin understands how important SEO is for businesses operating in the automotive industry and has a dedicated team of professionals with skills in this key area, from content creation through to technical SEO.

If your organisation needs our SEO expertise to help boost your business, then we’d love to hear from you.

For a free consultation, no obligation chat, please get in contact.