Scott's Specialties

[ScottSpec]

Our Volvo specific site: http://www.4volvoservice.com/

And 

Our general repair site: http://www.scottsautospec.com/

 

Scott

[Alex]

Hi Scott, both sites looks good. Your Kukui site should be giving you analytics, so I'd be curious to know how it's performing for you. Your wordpress site (volvo) looks to be running the latest version which is good. Is Kukui doing that one also?

• When I search for "volvo service Rockville, MD" or "volvo auto repair Rockville, MD" your volvo site does not come up on the first page or in google business listings. Are you listing that site as a separate business listing in google? Your other site does come up (Kukui). Are you getting traffic to your volvo site or is that something you recently put up using wordpress? When I search for your volvo site with "volvo service Maryland, DC" or "volvo auto repair Maryland, DC" your site doesn't come up on the first page of google or business listings.
• Your kukui site, I like what they do with reviewsyou may want to see about having the phone number clickable, especially in the mobile version.

Your wordpress site is mobile friendly, but I would add a clickable phone number and maybe think about adding a volvo logo somewhere on your main image or somewhere above the fold. Without reading the text, i quickly see Scott's Automotive but no images about what you specialize in with this site, that a logo could correct.

• I do like the idea of branding with multiple websites, especially for niches. However, you can probably accomplish what you want by creating a volvo dedicated section with volvo rich keywords on your http://www.scottsautospec.com/ website. Kukui manages that for you and I would have them add a Volvo Service page under your services tab to test it out. 
• When I search for "scotts automotive rockville md" I get your business listing which includes your volvo website and not your main site. But in the organic search results I get your http://www.scottsautospec.com website results. I would change your business listing to include http://www.scottsautospec.com or add another one and differentiate a bit. Here's what I see:

 

• Is Kukui incorporating Google and Yelp reviews or are the reviews on your site generated only from visitors to your site? 

Looks like you are investing in your online presence, which is good to see. Maybe think about either combining or differentiating more between the two sites as two separate channels.

[ScottSpec]

3 hours ago, Alex said:

Hi Scott, both sites looks good. Your Kukui site should be giving you analytics, so I'd be curious to know how it's performing for you. Your wordpress site (volvo) looks to be running the latest version which is good. Is Kukui doing that one also?

• When I search for "volvo service Rockville, MD" or "volvo auto repair Rockville, MD" your volvo site does not come up on the first page or in google business listings. Are you listing that site as a separate business listing in google? Your other site does come up (Kukui). Are you getting traffic to your volvo site or is that something you recently put up using wordpress? When I search for your volvo site with "volvo service Maryland, DC" or "volvo auto repair Maryland, DC" your site doesn't come up on the first page of google or business listings.
• Your kukui site, I like what they do with reviewsyou may want to see about having the phone number clickable, especially in the mobile version.

Your wordpress site is mobile friendly, but I would add a clickable phone number and maybe think about adding a volvo logo somewhere on your main image or somewhere above the fold. Without reading the text, i quickly see Scott's Automotive but no images about what you specialize in with this site, that a logo could correct.

• I do like the idea of branding with multiple websites, especially for niches. However, you can probably accomplish what you want by creating a volvo dedicated section with volvo rich keywords on your http://www.scottsautospec.com/ website. Kukui manages that for you and I would have them add a Volvo Service page under your services tab to test it out. 
• When I search for "scotts automotive rockville md" I get your business listing which includes your volvo website and not your main site. But in the organic search results I get your http://www.scottsautospec.com website results. I would change your business listing to include http://www.scottsautospec.com or add another one and differentiate a bit. Here's what I see:

 

• Is Kukui incorporating Google and Yelp reviews or are the reviews on your site generated only from visitors to your site? 

Looks like you are investing in your online presence, which is good to see. Maybe think about either combining or differentiating more between the two sites as two separate channels.

Alex,

Thanks for all the feedback. I have some questions but want to give you some history so you better understand my situation. We started in 1989 as a Volvo specialist. I was one of the first adopters of Google pay per click and it served us quite well especially at .10 to .20 a click, that faded as it's popularity as well as the price rose. We still did very well with organic since everything continued to show us as as Volvo Specialist. About 7 years ago we started getting into general auto repair. While we still did pretty well organically with Volvo, not so much with general auto repair as there are a lot of shops in this area. Starting last January, we started direct mail marketing for more BMW customers. In May we bought the customer base of a German Car specialists and did some more direct mail marketing to those customers. The direct mail company created what they call slant sites for many of these marketing pieces. http://bmwrepairrockville.com/ http://audirepairrockville.com/ http://vwrepairrockville.com/ http://volvorepairrockvillemd.com/  earlier this year we had another company create us a 4 page site to see how it would do in organic search as many of the other shops they had built sites for were coming up on the first page. We also got the urls, yelp page, and google business listing for the other business. I started redirecting the urls to a page on our site.

From my research, I think there are pros and cons to having all this presence on the web. On one hand it could provide several avenues and gives us a bigger foot print on the web, on the other hand Google may see it as spammy and not get a clear picture of what we do. Since our search results have been dropping over this past year, I have to believe something is negatively affecting us. So a few weeks ago I created the 4volvoservice.com site and linked it up to the Google business page I got from the other business and I started redirecting the other 4 page website to the Kukui site. I also ended up removing the Google business page from the other business because while the reviews were ok, they are related to the other business. I have since recovered it. This in an effort to see if I can bring Volvo Search back up.

A big part of my marketing challenge is our split identity. Our business is about 76% European cars and 24% other makes. While we would love for it to be 100% European, we would not survive without the non European. I have read, as you mentioned that it is usually best to optimize one site. So the challenge of that is creating a site that European car owners will not see as just another general repair shop, while not alienating the non-European car owners. As I am writing this, I'm thinking it may be best to create 2 websites. One for the European and one for the general auto repair and take down everything else.

Love to hear your thoughts on this. Also, I have a bunch of domain names that are forwarded to my sites. I have heard this can hurt SEO as well. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Scott        

 

[Alex]

So first off, I applaud your efforts because it takes a lot to do this and you have a good handle on troubleshooting your results and a good grasp of how organic search works. As far as the slant slides, they are ok as along as they aren't duplicating content and in most cases a one pager doesn't get the weight of a 5-10 page site because of the content. Domain redirects in my opinion are not worth much because Google will index the final destination on the site you redirect to and that will be duplicate content from the domain you are redirecting from. There are mixed feelings on keyword rich domain names where some feel they don;t hold the weight they used to and well optimized and unique content page is better. Some still feel that keyword rich domains are the way to go. I think it doesn't hurt but in the end content is king.

http://audirepairrockville.com/ redirects to http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ so you really are only getting indexed for http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ and when I search for "audi repair rockville md" none of your sites come up in Google on the first page. My recommendation would be to heavily optimize this page for audi which I don't really see anywhere: http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/. It's currently listing text for volvo on the page and nothing about audi. List out Audi multiple times along with models and services and go from there. 

Same thing with http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/bmw/ it's not optimized at all for BMW, it's like a duplicate page with volvo info. Mercedes, VW, and Mini pages on http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com as well. Make it unique and custom content to that manufacturer and you'll get higher rankings. Do the same for your other manufacturer pages and I think you'll see some more clicks.

A few other tips:

1. Have Kukui or your host switch to SSL(https) and redirect all http pages to https. Make sure an htaccess redirect is in place. If using webmaster tools in google and bing, update your site to https

2. Have them also create a sitemap for your pages and add it to webmaster tools in google and bing if one doesn't already exist.

3. If you are going to keep those additional domains, consider small (unique) sites for each, 3-5 pages. In the footer of each website, have links to each of the sites so that they link to each other. These sites could be informational with service tips and other content with an appointment for service redirect to your main site. But adding content that is as unique as possible is key to having them picked up by search engines and indexed.

Remember, a redirected domain a user would have to type the domain in the address bar because more than likely they will not find it in organic search. With all of your sites, link them from other sites like facebook, twitter, local business listings, etc. External links help with ranking. It's hard to really see where you are with SEO without analytics, so you may know some of this already...Hope this helps and keep me posted on how it goes. Good case study on having additional websites!

[ScottSpec]

24 minutes ago, Alex said:

So first off, I applaud your efforts because it takes a lot to do this and you have a good handle on troubleshooting your results and a good grasp of how organic search works. As far as the slant slides, they are ok as along as they aren't duplicating content and in most cases a one pager doesn't get the weight of a 5-10 page site because of the content. Domain redirects in my opinion are not worth much because Google will index the final destination on the site you redirect to and that will be duplicate content from the domain you are redirecting from. There are mixed feelings on keyword rich domain names where some feel they don;t hold the weight they used to and well optimized and unique content page is better. Some still feel that keyword rich domains are the way to go. I think it doesn't hurt but in the end content is king.

http://audirepairrockville.com/ redirects to http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ so you really are only getting indexed for http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/ and when I search for "audi repair rockville md" none of your sites come up in Google on the first page. My recommendation would be to heavily optimize this page for audi which I don't really see anywhere: http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/audi/. It's currently listing text for volvo on the page and nothing about audi. List out Audi multiple times along with models and services and go from there. 

Same thing with http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com/bmw/ it's not optimized at all for BMW, it's like a duplicate page with volvo info. Mercedes, VW, and Mini pages on http://www.scottsautomotivemd.com as well. Make it unique and custom content to that manufacturer and you'll get higher rankings. Do the same for your other manufacturer pages and I think you'll see some more clicks.

A few other tips:

1. Have Kukui or your host switch to SSL(https) and redirect all http pages to https. Make sure an htaccess redirect is in place. If using webmaster tools in google and bing, update your site to https

2. Have them also create a sitemap for your pages and add it to webmaster tools in google and bing if one doesn't already exist.

3. If you are going to keep those additional domains, consider small (unique) sites for each, 3-5 pages. In the footer of each website, have links to each of the sites so that they link to each other. These sites could be informational with service tips and other content with an appointment for service redirect to your main site. But adding content that is as unique as possible is key to having them picked up by search engines and indexed.

Remember, a redirected domain a user would have to type the domain in the address bar because more than likely they will not find it in organic search. With all of your sites, link them from other sites like facebook, twitter, local business listings, etc. External links help with ranking. It's hard to really see where you are with SEO without analytics, so you may know some of this already...Hope this helps and keep me posted on how it goes. Good case study on having additional websites!

Alex,

Thanks. I have been working on this the last few hours. I thought I would try eliminating the slant sites creating optimized content pages on my site which is why you are now being redirect from those sites. I did copy the Volvo page for all of these and I am going to start editing them tomorrow. I'm going to focus on building the site to attract owners of European cars since that is what we want the most. I don't see the slant sites doing much for me so I don't think there is any harm in removing them for now. Once I get the site further developed, I'll check back in. I do have Google analytics on the site, and a sitemap which I submit to Googles Search Console. So I will monitor those as well

Thanks

Scott

 

Edited December 6, 2017 by ScottSpec

[Alex]

1 minute ago, ScottSpec said:

Alex,

Thanks. I have been working on this the last few hours. I thought I would try eliminating the slant sites creating optimized content pages on my site. I did copy the Volvo page for all of these and I am going to start editing them tomorrow. I'm going to focus on building the site to attract owners of European cars since that is what we want the most. I don't see the slant sites doing much for me so I don't think there is any harm in removing them for now. Once I get the site further developed, I'll check back in. I do have Google analytics on the site, and a sitemap which I submit to Googles Search Console. So I will monitor those as well

Thanks

Scott

 

Sounds good, I look forward to hearing about your results. If you remove those slant pages, i would still redirect the domains to your main site pages so that anything you do get will get redirected.

[ScottSpec]

On 12/5/2017 at 10:11 PM, Alex said:

Sounds good, I look forward to hearing about your results. If you remove those slant pages, i would still redirect the domains to your main site pages so that anything you do get will get redirected.

Alex,

When you get a chance would you try a search for Volvo Service Rockville and see if we are on the first page. I have been doing some work on my SEO and from the computers I have tested at, I have made it to the first page of results for that. I'm working on consolidating urls to scottsautomotivemd.com but the results may come up with one of my other urls.

Thanks
Scott

[Alex]

Here's what I see on that search term for page 1 Google.

 

I do see your sites on page 2:

 

[ScottSpec]

20 hours ago, Alex said:

Here's what I see on that search term for page 1 Google.

 

I do see your sites on page 2:

 

Alex,

Thank You.

Scott

[ScottSpec]

On 12/11/2017 at 7:13 AM, ScottSpec said:

Alex,

Thank You.

Scott

Alex,

When you get a chance could you try searching Volvo Repair Rockville. I think  Ihave made it to the first page. Also I would like your feedback on a design idea I have had for awhile. I have made the site to look like a smart phone. If you click on the icons, a modal box opens to display more info. This way the user does not have to go from page to page and it really works great on mobile devices. 

Thanks

Scott

[Alex]

Scott, you are coming up on the first page for 2 sites, nice job! 

 

I like the design, very cool.  Looks like you are really doing some great work. If you want to hide some of the elements like your text box/link on desktops, you can hide it with custom css on certain screen sizes. Check out this tool to see what can be worked on to optimize your site http://nibbler.silktide.com/  since you are working on it yourself. It's not always possible to be perfect on everything but I find that its a good tool to see where improvements can be made with coding, optimizing images, social network ranking, etc.

 

[ScottSpec]

10 hours ago, Alex said:

Scott, you are coming up on the first page for 2 sites, nice job! 

 

I like the design, very cool.  Looks like you are really doing some great work. If you want to hide some of the elements like your text box/link on desktops, you can hide it with custom css on certain screen sizes. Check out this tool to see what can be worked on to optimize your site http://nibbler.silktide.com/  since you are working on it yourself. It's not always possible to be perfect on everything but I find that its a good tool to see where improvements can be made with coding, optimizing images, social network ranking, etc.

 

Alex,

Thanks

Scott