Google’s recent algorithm changes targeting search engine spam has got to have a few automotive SEO vendors worried. Not only has Google changed the algorithm to penalize poor content quality sites, they are providing a Google Chrome browser extension that allows anyone to flag sites they feel are not relevant or obviously promoted via black hat seo techniques.  This is a game changer as it allows individuals to police the content in ways that search engines cannot.  It also invites a host of other potential problems, doesn’t it?

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Dealers take care where your websites are linked and with whom you are linking to.  Most dealers have no idea how to determine where their websites are linked and whether there is a risk.  But given the direction of Automotive SEO, you cannot afford not to know.

In the interest of providing more robust lead generation for their dealers, some automotive SEO vendors are moving into the very dangerous business of building linkfarms (large networks of linked websites).  This is a seduction all webmasters flirt with sooner or later.  To go over the line that search engines have drawn very clearly in the sand has grave consequences. Any SEO knows this. The question is, do the clients?

A linkfarm is a group of websites whose only purpose is to promote each other via interlinking.  The quantity of links is meant to trick search engines into believing these websites are more authoritative than others in the same “theme” (Theme is a term used in the search business referring to the business category of your website as understood by the search engine.  i.e. Ford dealer websites).

If your website is identified by a search engine as belonging to a linkfarm, and Google is the most sensitive, you will certainly loose significant page rank (position in the search results) and in some cases, your website may be blacklisted (deleted from the search results altogether).  You’ll need to discard your domain name and start over – very expensive.

That is why quality matters.  Thats why your Page Rank matters.  Linking to websites with no or lower page rank will cause search engines to lower your page rank.  An alert SEO will avoid linking your site to bad neighbors.

Linkfarming is a seductive path in SEO. Its like a stack of bills left on an unattended table. There is the chance no one will see you grab the cash.  Do you want to go there?  You’ll get away with it for a while, but linkfarm long enough and your chances of getting caught approach 100% – as seems to have already happened in this video.

Google’s webmaster Matt Cutts has mentioned that there is a threshold of about 10 interlinking sites. More than that and you could become noticed by Google as a linkfarm.  A dealer with a dozen dealerships all interlinked has nothing to worry about.  There are other little clues the search engines pick up on; too little content, keyword stuffing, the age of the websites as a group and the C-block of the host IP addresses.

Legitimate large dealers and even large dealer groups run no risk of having their interlinked sites perceived as linkfarms.  But joining a network designed for this purpose is a risk a prudent business person will not take.  Take care, and check your backlinks.

This Car Dealer Website Vendor list was posted in December 2009. It may still be useful, but for a more up-to-date list you may want to go over here Directory of Automotive SEO and Dealer Website Vendors. The list and its purpose have changed because few of these vendors offered Automotive SEO services at the time.

Due to the time required to complete SEO Analysis Reports, time does not permit regularly scheduled releases.  Please feel free to contact me if you require a specific car dealer website SEO report.

All DealerComp SEO research begins with a control group located in the local area of a vendor-supplied example web site. Burnsville Toyota is the seed web site for this TK Carsites SEO analysis report. DealerComp takes a snap-shot of the local competition using a robot that analyzes keyword rank on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and AOL.

Keyword rank is not the best way to analyze web site SEO. It is useful to spot anomalies. You can skip directly to the SEO analysis of TK Carsites.

Twin Cities Toyota Dealers Keyword Analysis

This score is derived from approximately 30 Make/Model/Local keywords rank weighted by search engine significance. Weighting means that because Google handles approximately 70% of search traffic, the dealer’s keyword rank on Google carries 70% weight in this report.

This keyword analysis does not tell us much without a look under the hood of these web sites. For more detailed SEO analysis of TK Carsites.