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
-
Poor internal linking?
Hi guys, Analyzing a large e-commerce site 10,000 pages on Magento and not getting much organic traffic to level 3 sub-category pages, the URLs are like: Primary Keyword Target: BODY MOISTURISERS https://www.adorebeauty.com.au/skin-care/bath-body/moisturisers.html Primary Keyword Target: LIP MASKS https://www.adorebeauty.com.au/skin-care/masks/lip-masks.html Plus another 40 other URLs at level 3 with low organic performance. Authority of the domain is strong, so it's not an authority issue I believe its internal linking. Besides linking form the blog and breadcrumbs is there anything we can do to improve internal linking to these level 3 pages? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nattyhall0 -
Page must be internally linked to get indexed?
If a there is page like website.com/page; I think this page will be indexed by Google even we don't link it internally from anywhere. Is this true? Will it makes any difference in-terms of "indexability" if we list this page on sitemap? I know page's visibility will increase when link from multiple internal pages. I wonder will there be any noticeable difference while this page is listed in sitemap.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Internal nofollows?
We have a profile page on our site for members who join. The profile page has child pages that are simply more specific drill-downs of what you get on the main profile page. For example: /roger displays all of roger's posts, questions, and favorites and then there are /roger/posts, /roger/questions, /roger/favorites. Since the child pages contain subsets of the content on the main profile page, we canonical them back to the main profile page. Here's my question: The main profile page has navigation links to take you to the child pages. On /roger, there are links to: /roger/posts, /roger/questions, and /roger/favorites. Currently, we nofollow these links. Is this the right way to do it? It seems to me that it's a mistake, since the bots will still crawl those pages but will not transfer PR. What should we do instead: 1. Make the links js links so the child pages won't be crawled at all? 2. Make the links follow so that PR will flow (see Matt Cutts' advice here)? Apprehension about doing this: won't it dilute crawl budget (as opposed to #1)? 3. Something else? In case the question wasn't confusing enough... here's another piece: We also have a child page of the profile that is simply a list of members (/roger/friends). Since this page does not have any real content, we are currently noindex/nofollow -ing it and the link to this page is also nofollow. I'm thinking that there's a better solution for this as well. Would love your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?
So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B). We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report. We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A. Has anyone had experience with this method? I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub1 -
How to find affiliate sites linking to a competitor website?
Hello here, I am trying to understand the best way to find sites that are affiliate of a competitor, through link research. Typically our competitor's affiliates link to our competitor website via any of the following links: http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp?SID=[aff_id]&LID=[link_id] http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=[aff+id]&offerid=[off_id]&type=2&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.musicnotes.com%2Fsheetmusic%2Fmtd.asp%3Fppn%3D[item_id] The first link looks much easier to find, so I have tried to find the first kind of links with Google by using the "link:" clause as follows: link:http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp Or, similarly, by using Open Site Explorer. But I always get 0 results! It is weird because I know there are thousands of affiliates out there with the same tracking code. How's that possible? Why does it look impossible to find the sites I am looking for? Would you suggest any different approach? Any ideas, suggestions and thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance. Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Improvement suggestions - Wanted!
Hi Mozzers, I'm looking for any suggestions on how to improve my on page SEO for www.data-contracts.co.uk Main keyword is 'Concrete repair' which is sitting at around about 20/21 in the SERP's Looking for blatantly obvious ideas that I've missed too Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hughescov0 -
Removed Internal Rel=NoFollows from power internal page - how long till reflected in Google?
I just started with a client, who has an internal page (not the homepage) that gets about 70% of all total links to the site and ranks #1 for a highly competitive keyword. For some reason, the first set of links, including the first anchor text link to the homepage are nofollowed. I removed the nofollows yesterday. Today, The internal page has already been reindexed in Google showing the followed anchor text link to the homepage Should I expect a jump in link juice pointing to my homepage immediately with a corresponding rankings boost? Homepage is #8 for target term. I hope this makes sense. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattAaron0 -
Sitewide blog link and Article links
Hi Guys I just wanted to give you all a heads up on something I adjusted recently that worked really well and wanted to ask for your own experiences on this. 1. We have a blog that adds regular content and within the blog we link from the keyword we are targeting. Standard stuff right ! We were struggling for movement on a keyword so I removed the links from the articles and added a link on the site wide blogroll. The link on the blogroll included the keyword but was a longer descriptive link. Low and behold we got a first page listing when the changed it.The change in ranking was made a few days later. I have always been given the impression that site wide isn't that great ? So explain this one . Of course there are many other factors etc 🙂 What are your experiences and thoughts on what happened here ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0