How to improve internal linking for automotive reseller website?
-
Hi everyone,
we set up a website for an automobile reseller. The site is online for about 10 days now and is doing ok. The competition is at a medium level.
The URL is http://fahrzeugankauf-wehrle.de/
Now I wonder how I can improve the internal linking a little more. I already read this one https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link but still wonder whether I should link from the sub-pages with the main keywords like "auto kaufen freiburg" oder "autoankauf freiburg" to the mainpage.
Instead I am linking right now from the mainpage to the subpage "Auto verkaufen".Isn't this a bit contradictory?
-
Hi,
How significant did the ranking increase?
Would you be able to go into more detail on how you approached the websites. Since each one would be in different location. Would you take a different approach from a destination location then a high traffic area location.
Thank You!
Scott
-
Hi Rob,
thanks again for this second very detailed answer.
I now do understand that using the silo or thematic architecture is really a good thing to establish and I'm willing to implement it in my client's website.
Now I do have one or two last questions that I am wondering about.
- Let's say I use your proposal Home --> Freiburg --> Auto Purchasing --> Auto Purchasing Freiburg which I find very good.
What do I do about the Freiburg page ? Do I just use an empty page, or do I have to fill it with content about the city of Freiburg? Does it have to show it in the menu or does it have to exist without a menu entry just to be there as a hook for the next page?
What I mean is: People and also Google will maybe wonder a little to read content dealing with Freiburg when coming to a cardealer page.
- Let's say I would use Home Page --> Cars For Sale --> BMWs For Sale --> BMW [Model]
Doesn't this produce a lot of duplicate content? I cannot imaginge having very differing content for pages like BMWs for sale, Audis for sale and Fords for sale...
Thanks again Rob for taking the time!
It really opened my eyes for a big SEO topic and takes me to the next level!
Highly appreciated!
Cheers
Marc
-
Hi Marc,
I had to go digging for this one as it is about 5 years old now, but it is Matt Cutts effectively stating the same thing I did in my answer above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H49pOqkQPF4
For a better idea of what a silo looks like, you might check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNVPkonEW6E
Again, an oldie but a goodie. This stuff has been around for a while and a lot of people have argued about its effectiveness. I'm just saying that in my experience it has worked wonders.
When I say "Website Silo", other names can be "Website Theme" or "Thematic Architecture" or 100 other names. Basically what you are trying to do is categorize every item or service you are selling so as to target long tail keywords as well as categorize your terms for LMI keywords. So in your case, you might try:
Home Page --> Cars For Sale --> BMWs For Sale --> BMW [Model]
since someone looking to buy a BMW is likely to use keywords like "buy a bmw" or "cost of a bmw" or "how much is a bmw" and then you can even break it down to specific models for further long tail targeting.
I used to conduct work like this for the largest auto dealer in North America - I managed about 450 websites for them for over a year with each website correlating to a location. We utilized this strategy for every dealership and the rankings/traffic boost we saw was pretty significant.
It's a lot of work from a web dev perspective, but once it's set up it's tough to beat. It's particularly useful if you only have to target a couple of locations as opposed to an entire continent like we did.
Let me know if you want to discuss how to make it happen - I'm always around to send some info your way.
Cheers,
Rob
-
Hi Robert,
thanks very much for your answer. I saw this kind of several times when looking at competitor sites. I wonder whether this is a procedure that is really appreciated by google. I cannot find any whiteboard Friday about it? Do you know any video from Matt Cutts, Wil Reynolds or Rand talking about this topic?
Best regards
Marc
-
Hi there.
The idea of internal linking is quite simple - link with relevant keyphrase to a page, you want to have some boost amongst internal rankings. It's far not necessary to have an internal link going back to main page from each of sub-pages. Just make sure that every page is accessible and navigation makes sense.
If you have sub pages which are about "Auto verkaufen" (i assume it's quite broad keyword), maybe you should have more narrow topic sub-pages and then link to them with more specific keywords?
-
Hello,
So the main point I would make here is that you are attempting to create relevancy with your internal linking to terms users may be searching for. Where I work, we call this a website silo - creating tiered relevancy based on location, keywords, intent, etc.
For example, a website which features the following architecture:
Home --> Region --> Service --> Keyword Term
Will do better than a website which features:
Home --> Keyword Term
Because such a structure is self-limiting (how many links can you really have coming off your Home Page?) and it poses technical ranking problems (a Home Page with hundreds of links coming off of it will look spammy).
This is going to be a huge factor moving forward, especially with Local SEO becoming more and more prevalent in algorithmic updates.
So you might try:
Home --> Freiburg --> Auto Sales --> Auto Sales Freiburg
Home --> Freiburg --> Auto Purchasing --> Auto Purchasing Freiburg
(Or whatever keywords you have lined up)
This means you can expand your site at a later date along geographical or service-oriented lines, and you will have created the relevancy that Google wants when showcasing organic listings.
Hope this helps and feel free to touch base with any further questions.
All the best,
Rob
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Someone redirected his website to ours
Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us? Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles1 -
If my website do not have a robot.txt file, does it hurt my website ranking?
After a site audit, I find out that my website don't have a robot.txt. Does it hurt my website rankings? One more thing, when I type mywebsite.com/robot.txt, it automatically redirect to the homepage. Please help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | binhlai0 -
Google cache from my website give another website
Hello, Some time ago, I already asked a question here because my homepage disappeared from Google for our main keyword. One of the problems that we showing up was the Google cache. If you look to the cache of the website www.conseilfleursdebach.fr, you see that it show the content of www.lesfleursdebach.be. It's both our website, but one is focus on France and the other one on Belgium. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.conseilfleursdebach.fr&oq=cach&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0j69i60j0l2.1374j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Before, there were flags on the page to go to the other country, but in the meantime I removed all links from the .fr to the .be and opposite. This is ongoing since January. Who has an idea of what can cause this and most of all, what do do? Kind regards, Tine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TineDL1 -
Is a link inside a video player considered an inbound link from the domain the player is embedded in?
Good afternoon...We just added a link to our homepage inside the menu of our video player. In the link below, if you click on the menu icon in the bottom right corner of the video player, you'll see a "Powered by WellcomeMat" link at the bottom of the menu. http://www.wellcomemat.com/video/kt216e25172416n/-Rancho-Santa-Fe/Ca/92067/16596-Via-Lago-Azul/1234567890/ My question for the community is would that link be considered an inbound link from any site that has the video player embedded? So hypothetically, the video player is embedded into www.abcd.com. If a user would click on that link and go to our homepage, would search engines recognize that as an inbound link from abcd.com, even though it sits within our video player? And most of the time, the player sits within an iframe. So that's why I'm not 100% sure. Thanks for reading and for your help! It's much appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brian7201 -
Removing Bad Links
Hi all, I am in the process of conducting a Link Audit and I am faced with quite a lot of seemingly poor quality examples, such as; http://gotogetaways.com/tag/cunard/ http://jobhiringlocalandabroad.blogspot.com/p/job-hiring-for-cruise-liner-orchestra.html http://lumukixu.xlx.pl/p-o-cruises-aurora.php To me these should be removed \ disavowed but I am getting a little resistence from stakeholders regarding the amount of links I am seeking to rid ourselves of - all are of a similar quality to my examples above... Just so that I know that I am not being 'over eager' with my audit, I welcome your opinions Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Internal Link Analysis (Site Wide)
Hi i'm currently doing a internal link analysis for one of my clients and want to pull internal link data for the entire website. So i can look at the distribution of internal anchor text and to identify ways in which we can optimize internal linking. I have had a look at screaming frog the trouble is, this data is only exportable one page at a time. Meaning, you can’t export an entire site “In Link” data. The site has 200+ pages so pulling in link data for each page would take quite long! Can anyone recommend anyways or tools which can look at the entire link profile for a website. I have checked OSE but there's not much data because the site is relatively new. Cheers, RM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
My Website Has a Google Penalty, But I Can't Disavow Links
I have a client who has definitely been penalized, rankings dropped for all keywords and hundreds of malicious backlinks when checked with WebMeUp....However, when I run the backlink portfolio on Moz, or any other tool, they don't appear anyone, and all the links are dead when I click on the actual URL. That being said, I can't disavow links that don't exist, and they don't show up in Webmaster Tools, but I KNOW this site has been penalized. Also- I noticed this today (attached). Any suggestions? I've never come across this issue before. xT6JNJC.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 01023450 -
Is there an optimal ratio of external links to a page vs internal links originating at that page ?
I understand that multiple links fro a site dilute link juice. I also understand that external links to a specific page with relevant anchortext helps ranking. I wonder if there is an ideal ratioof tgese two items
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Apluswhs0