How We Grew Our Automotive Client’s Traffic By +134% After A Google Algorithm Update

These days, for people to find your car-related services, you’d need to rank high in search results.

Consumers turn to Google for everything from dealerships to repair services, so if you aren’t ranking, you (almost) don’t exist.

Our client, a well-known platform for car services, was in a tough spot.

Despite being popular, they faced fierce competition from big players like Cars.com, CarMax, and TrueCar that were vying for the same search terms.

To complicate matters, our client was hit by Google’s core update in March 2023, which had a massive impact on their rankings and traffic:

Keep reading to see how we helped our automotive client recover and outpace their competitors with a strategic link-building campaign that harnessed their authority.

💡 Our Strategy

Our client already had a relatively high domain rating (DR) compared to many businesses in the automotive industry.

But there wasn’t much to differentiate our client from its competitors.

We knew that leveraging their authority and securing more high-quality backlinks would give them a competitive advantage and enable them to grow their traffic.

Here’s how we approached it:

✅ We focused on building links from trusted, high-authority websites within the automotive space.

✅ We capitalized on PR opportunities to secure backlinks from major media outlets.

✅ We built backlinks from relevant, high-quality how-to guides.

⛰️ The challenges

Our client faced stiff competition from other high-authority platforms in the automotive services space, including:

• Cars.com (DR 85)
• CarMax (DR 76)
• TrueCar (DR 76)

In addition, the Google algorithm update in March impacted their rankings.

Recovering from this update became our top priority:

⭐ Our solution

We implemented a combination of PR-driven and how-to backlinks to help our client boost their authority, traffic, and rankings:

✅ PR backlinks: We secured media mentions in top-tier publications like The New York Times, CNN, and USA Today to drive traffic and solidify our client’s position.

✅ Reactive PR link building: We built reactive links from PR campaigns where our client commented on current news and car market trends:

✅ How-to backlinks: We built backlinks from how-to articles and guides, which helped drive traffic and increase topical relevance for high-demand search terms like “how to sell your car online”:

✅ Branded anchor text links: To further boost brand recognition and authority, we made sure the anchor text for our links featured the company’s brand name.

🚀 The Results

Our strategy delivered growth across the board:

✅ Today, our client has 1.3 million backlinks from 2,200 referring domains.

✅ Our client recovered from their Google algorithm hit and monthly traffic grew from 138,545 to 325,042 visitors:

✅ Traffic value more than doubled to $439,953.

✅ Our focus on PR and how-to backlinks resulted in high-authority links from some of the biggest names in the media, including:

• New York Times (DR 94)
• CNN (DR 93)
• USA Today (DR 92)
• Lifehacker (DR 90)
• Nerdwallet (DR 90)

✅ We helped our client rank in the top three for several competitive, high-search volume terms, including:

• Car dealership (Search Vol - 23k)
• Used car lots (Search Vol - 3.9k)
• Selling car online (Search Vol - 3.1k)
• New car dealer (Search Vol - 2.1k)
• Sell my car (Search Vol - 1.3k)
• FTP server (Search Vol - 5.7k)

🚀 Ready to See Massive Growth Like This?

Not only did we help our client reestablish their online presence after the Google core update, we also helped them achieve a 134% traffic increase and double their traffic value.

The right link-building strategy can drive incredible results, even in the most competitive industries.

Let’s get your business the traffic and rankings it deserves. Book a free strategy call today!