Our sector reports cover a wide range of brands in a variety of industries. They analyse things like visibility, page speed, and keyword opportunities, and every now and again, a brand with a number of problems is identified which could do with a few urgent optimisations.

One such brand identified in the car finance report was Car Finance Plus. Although their visibility is just starting to pick up, they’ve lost 65% between 2018 and 2019. So, what’s causing this drop in rankings?

We asked ourselves this same question and challenged ourselves to see what we could do to reclaim this loss in visibility. How could we utilise the skills and experience we have as an agency to improve this website?

Car Finance Plus was deep-dived and investigated to see what’s going on and how their site can be improved. The following article describes the exact procedures we’d take to get this site ranking, beating its competitors and therefore profiting handsomely.

Let’s jump straight in.

Speed Optimisations

Speed is a crucial aspect of any site and if your site is working at a slow pace, your visitors will bounce, and your conversions will drop. Considering Google has officially stated page speed is a factor they consider when ranking a website, this should be enough to convince you that this is a priority.

When investigating Car Finance Plus and their page speed on both desktop and mobile, the results are mixed. Desktop is doing great with a score of 98. Mobile, on the other hand, could use a bit of a tweak as it’s sitting with a score of 63. Although the desktop version of the site is performing relatively well, mobile is bringing it down which could be hindering the site’s performance.

Our Solution

An analysis would be performed on exactly what’s causing the mobile site to load slower and an action plan would be created to remedy these problems to ensure the site runs smoothly.

Some of the issues that come up when looking at the mobile site speed include one single image, and it’s this single image which is affecting the entire mobile site. That, as well as unused CSS and other issues, are contributing to the slower speeds.  

Backlink Strategy

Backlinks are important in every SEO strategy. Since the beginning of Google, backlinks have played a crucial role in determining which sites ranks and which don’t. Of course, the influence of links has dissipated throughout the years and good content has taken the number one spot. However, despite this, they still remain relevant in 2020.

The backlink profile of Car Finance Plus is looking a little week at present. It does appear to be a younger site and when compared to the competitors and so its link profile is lacking a little. At the point of auditing this site, there are 128 referring domains linking to Car Finance Plus. When compared to the competition, such as Car Craft, which has 410, you can begin to see the problem.

There are a wide range of ways a backlink profile can be improved, including link reclamation, link intersects, and asset generation.

Link Reclamation

Link reclamation is a relatively simple method which relies on opportunities that already exist online. These include unlinked mentions, lost links, and broken pages (on-site). These opportunities are super easy to get and are often the initial links we like to build. A bit of outreach and some simple redirects could make a huge difference in the early stages of the link building process.

Link Intersects

Link intersects are linking sites which link out to all your competitors but not you. These are considered good opportunities to go for as we can assume that if they’re linking to the competition, they can link to your site as well.

Link intersects would be investigated between the competition for Car Finance Plus to see if there are any viable opportunities that are ripe for the taking. Outreach would be performed on the identified sites and, in most cases, results are seen quickly.

Asset Ideation and Execution

Assets are content pieces, tools, maps, and resources which are linked to by people around the web. They are sometimes picked up by PR or by neighbouring blogs and sites which want to share the asset with their audience. Assets are one of the more time-consuming backlink building methods, but they can be incredibly effective if executed properly.

Asset ideas would be created using data and resources around the web for Car Finance Plus. Data pieces do very well as well as large list-based articles that can be used as a reference point for other sites. This would be a continual process and new assets would be produced and marketed consistently throughout the month.

Content Strategy

A fleshed-out content strategy is a necessity for any website in this day and age. Without one, you’ll be missing out on a ton of easy visibility boosts as well as an opportunity to boost your authority and expertise.

At this current time, Car Finance Plus doesn’t have an extensive blog. They have a lot of posts but, in the grand scheme of things, they could do with some optimisations. Some of their categories don’t have any posts attached to them and none of the articles are attracting any links.

Car Finance Plus would need a content strategy to determine some priority in what should be created for their help and advice centre. This would be developed by keyword potential and opportunities. It could also be based on what other sites are writing about and ranking for via keyword gap analysis.

Keyword Gap Analysis

Sometimes, your competitors will come up with a great content idea which ranks well and pulls in a sufficient amount of traffic. When this happens, you can jump on the same idea and recreate the success they’ve previously had. To do this, you need to analyse the keyword gaps between you and your competitors.

Keyword gaps are keywords which your competitors rank for, but you don’t. These gaps, if used properly, can be used to find some interesting content ideas which you may have never thought of. Additionally, because they’ve already gone through the hard work of trialling and testing the idea, you know it’s going to work.

Car Finance Plus’s keywords would be compared against the competitors to see where the gaps lie. From here, a priority list of articles would be created which would be backlogged and saved for future sprints. After the implementation of these articles, visibility would see decent upwards spikes.

Summary

Car Finance Plus is a decent site and, in terms of CRO and design, looks incredibly neat and efficient. However, as with any site, there is room for improvement. Their mobile page speed is a little slow, their backlink profile could do with some development, and a content strategy to increase the effectiveness of their advice centre wouldn’t go a miss.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there. This is just the beginning of the optimisations we could make to boost Car Finance Plus’s SEO…

If you’re interested in seeing how your site could be improved to help you rank and pull in more traffic, get in touch today on 0800 122 3530.