I have to give VinSolutions credit for listening to their customers and industry consultants to improve their website platform in regards to SEO. Recently I sent VinSolutions a laundry list of suggested changes to their platform that I documented from a recent dealership audit. The goods news is is that many of the changes I suggested were implemented August 29th for all VinSolutions customers.
The bad news is that some of the needed changes did not make this round of updates. Also how some of the updates were implemented still need some collaborative adjustments. I hope Dealer Refresh members can help guide VinSolutions for their next SEO update.
Here is an overview of the changes that were implemented on August 29, 2013:
ALT Tags Added To Photos
Vehicle Detail Pages (VDP) have numerous photos that show different angles and details of a car. In the past, these photos did not have “ALT” tags to describe the photos. Now, VinSolutions will have all photos in the inventory feed marked with the year, make, and model of the vehicle alongs with some additional details.
Here is an example of the tagging that was found on a VDP of Morrie’s Ford: alt=”2002 Audi A4, Brilliant Black Clearcoat, 16373793″. As you can see the ALT tag is specific to the vehicle and not a generic message, which is often placed on photos in an inventory feed.
Duplicate Page Titles & META Data Fixed
One of the biggest complaints that I had with VinSolutions SEO is that some of their inventory pages created duplicate page titles and META descriptions. For the average VinSolutions customer, they would see hundreds of duplicates show up in Webmaster Tools. In this update VinSolutions has added Unique Identifiers (Stock# or Vin#) to the VDP page tagging to avoid duplicates.
In the example below, you can see that for this Vehicle Detail Page, the stock# and the VIN# have been added to the Title Tag:
Minnetonka, MN 2010 Mazda CX-9 Touring Certified SUV Minneapolis, MN Burnsville, MN Morrie’s Minnetonka Mazda | 2B10727 | JM3TB3MV9A0225220
The addition of these two fields in the TITLE tag and the META Description tag will eliminate mote of the problems that were being reported by Webmaster Tools.
Unique TITLE But Not A Great Design
I have a concern with how the <TITLE> tag was created; it is way too long and not optimized properly. The recommended length of a <TITLE> tag is between 70-90 characters depending on which SEO advisors you follow. The example VDP <TITLE> tag, shown above, was approximately 140 characters long. Also, I question the logic of the formula producing the TITLE tag because the page has to convert in a Google reach result.
A more functional <TITLE> tag could be:
Used 2013 Mazda CX-9 Touring For Sale Minneapolis MN – 2B10727 – Mazda Dealer Serving Burnsville Minnetonka
By placing the stock# in the first 80 characters, it will be definitely read by Google and make the <TITLE> unique. Also, when a consumer sees this in a Google SERP it will read much cleaner. The added cities at the end of the <TITLE> tag is to capture popular local searches. The <TITLE> tag reduces repeated words which inflate the length. We can all debate what the ideal <TITLE> tag can be but this iteration to create unique pages needs some fine tuning, and the VIN# should also come out.
Unique SEO Tags For Website Forms
This has been another item on my wish list that has been solved in the August 29th update, the ability to tag forms with proper SEO tags. In the latest release, dealers who build pages that are only forms, can properly tag the pages for SEO purposes.
Improved Video Sitemap
When I last audited a VinSolutions website in Webmaster Tools, I noticed that the video sitemaps were not loading and indexing properly. This has now been fixed in this latest update. VinSolutions dealers using their video package need to add the video sitemap URL to Webmaster Tools. The video sitemap can be found by adding /videositemap.xml after the domain. See the graphic above where you can do this inside Webmaster Tools.
When See Changes?
Google normally indexes dealership websites on a daily basis but over the next few weeks you should see a number of changes. The number of duplicate Page Titles and META Descriptions should start to drop dramatically. If you go into Webmaster Tools, and click on HTML Improvements, you can see the diagnostics on this important data, as shown below:
So I would expect over the next 30 days for these numbers to drop close to zero. There will always be a few duplicates but this update will prove to be a big win for VinSolutions customers. The only caveat on the decrease in Duplicate Page Titles is if Google does not index the long <TITLE> tags because the data is appended on a long verbose title. Time will tell.
On My Wish List For VinSolutions
Now that some of the structural errors have been fixed, what is still on my wish list?
- I would like to have a different URL path for new car and used car VDP’s. Right now, VinSolutions VDP’s just have “/vd/” in the URL which makes it hard to separate new and used car VDP views in Google Analytics. I’ll be checking how these updates improve the SEO visibility to VinSolutions customers in the coming month. Until then, I commend VinSolutions for taking action and making these changes to help the Automotive SEO efforts of their dealers and vendor partners.
- The Mobile sitemap issue is still not fixed. In Webmaster Tools, the number of pages “indexed” for the VinSolutions mobile sitemap is still zero.
- VinSolutions still needs to fix the duplicate pages associated with “Category” pages, which all have the SAME Page Titles and META Descriptions in this release. Here are some indexed “Category” pages in Webmaster Tools that all have the same tags:
- http://www.morries.com/inventory/view/Make/Audi/
- http://www.morries.com/inventory/view/Make/Ford/Used/
- http://www.morries.com/inventory/view/Make/Honda/Model/Civic/Used/
The problem is that all of these indexed have the exact same <TITLE> tag regardless that the pages list specific makes and models. The tag is:
Used Vehicles For Sale In Minnesota | MN Used Vehicle Dealership Serving Minneapolis
VinSolutions customers that have any specific SEO questions, can ask them here on this forum or send me an email: brian@pcgmailer.com. There has been renewed interest in SEO on the automotive forums for a good reason, SEO still drives affordable traffic to a dealers website. Also, if you haven’t noticed lately, organic traffic from Bing and Yahoo is growing and over 40% of the visits are going to a VDP. Mmmmm.
VinSolutions Updates Their Websites To Boost SEO is a post from: Internet sales manager training
This article was found on http://www.dealerrefresh.com/
