September 2023 Update: Automotive Search, Helpful Content
Feels like more than I ever remember a lot is happening at once in the organic search industry in the last few weeks, but one thing amid the static and noise The Goog’s Gary Illyes commented on in a recent AMA seemed especially apt for any automotive SEO/PMs out there (represent). Applicable excerpt:
“It’s absolutely possible to rank without links, Illyes said, citing an example of a page with zero internal or external links that he knew of that was ranking Position 1 on Porsche cars – and Google had only found the page via a sitemap.”
So, first of all:
Must be nice for that to be a SERP you use seriously (although like most enthusiasts I’m as guilty of scanning Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids’ daily emails). Maybe in another 5-10-25 years I’ll be pushing either a Taycan or some especially rad whale tail 911 if my daughter secures a D1 volleyball scholarship like my wife and I joke about. (She is 97th percentile height tho, fingers crossed.)
Possible ≠ probable. A part of me wants to bite and run with the takeaway that this statement can be perceived to be encouraging, especially if you’re trying to rank a vehicle marketplace in its early phases. But I think it’s a little fascetious.
I think this example Gary-Ill uses opens the door to more introspection on site-level signals, as I don’t think it’s deliberately misleading per se.
I’m talking domain-level links, overall site quality as it relates to its hierarchy, content, potentially speed, its longevity, all of the intangibles that can and do let a page rank despite it having no external links, being brand new, etc.
I used to shoot fish in a barrel over at Discount Tire, very much seek and destroy in terms of spinning up some landing pages, light CRO, maybe some internal links, and Google would have it #1 for the target term (we never took shots at anything below 1K MSV) inside of a week. Usually we’d just update sitemaps—and this was going up against some highly credible brands like Michelin, Goodyear, Pirelli, no less the actual OEs and their dealer networks.
But that was effectively controlling the Terminator. I can see how this is possible and probably happens more than most SEOs realize, but you have to be at the controls of a monolith of your industry for Gary’s provided example to (I believe, anyway) be accurate.
All that is to say, I highly doubt this page he’s referencing was not a porsche.com page, and I would hope Google wouldn’t rank anything #1 for that query that isn’t a Porsche page. Everything else on page 1 for that and related keywords is research-intent content from established media, local dealer results that are going to be irrelevant for 99% of users on a geo basis, and third party marketplaces (at the bottom of the page).
So maybe this post is about picking smarter battles, understanding the limits of your site relative to its maturity, not totally taking Google Reps at their word, and yeah always (rationally) pursuing excellence with content.
In the startup space if your site/brand isn’t aggressively being supported by advertising, no matter how scrappy it is in other ways (to Gary’s larger comment on external links) you’re pretty much stuck with the fundamentals of a slow-growth organic strategy, where you’ll need to:
Build/ship product/feature/experience entry point that supports the larger core product
Support with related content
Really good Lenny’s podcast this week on the premise of word of mouth growth, NPS, etc. that I think is applicable to some of what I’m describing re: shooting fish in a barrel that my old team at Discount Tire successfully leveraged, and that I’m hopeful will have a similar effect on Bumper over time.
Too rad