We published our first case on this project in September 2021: Promoting a premium car rental website in the US.
In the current part of the case, we will describe the results for 2022 and early 2023.
Client
A premium car rental company (Land Rover, Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, Porsche, Maserati, BMW) in New York.
Our task
To improve positions and target organic traffic across New York City for general topic queries: luxury car rental/premium car rental and specific car brands/models.
Additional objective: to monitor and maintain the company’s reputation on review sites.
Input data
- Website: small project up to 50 pages
- Region: New York
- Language: English
- Priority search engine: Google
- CMS: Ruby
- Seasonality: Falling demand in February and September
- Start of work: October 2019
Niche and competitor analysis
At the beginning of the second part of our case, it should again be noted that this niche is particularly competitive; the sites ranking in the top 10 are:
- International car rental companies such as enterprise.com, Avis.com, hertz.com, alamo.com, budget.com, sixt.com:
- Car search and rental aggregators such as kayak.com, turo.com, yelp.com:
- Local premium car rental companies (direct competitors) such as gothamdreamcars.com, veluxityexoticcarrental.com:
| # | Target | Domain Rating | Domains | Total Backlinks | Total Keywords | Total Traffic |
| 1 | enterprise.com | 81 | 53913 | 4931316 | 613787 | 9167660 |
| 2 | avis.com | 81 | 39322 | 4216420 | 298289 | 3443712 |
| 3 | hertz.com | 83 | 40458 | 4830913 | 440496 | 4788351 |
| 4 | alamo.com | 76 | 14615 | 702854 | 168056 | 1187893 |
| 5 | budget.com | 78 | 36214 | 860470 | 273153 | 3832380 |
| 6 | sixt.com | 78 | 19262 | 1068869 | 246365 | 1244315 |
| # | Target | Domain Rating | Domains | Total Backlinks | Total Keywords | Total Traffic |
| 1 | realcar.nyc | 35 | 475 | 2339 | 2400 | 5494 |
| 2 | gothamdreamcars.com | 39 | 2900 | 34011 | 6570 | 16157 |
| 3 | veluxityexoticcarrental.com | 4.2 | 193 | 1570 | 3008 | 5837 |
List of project works for 2022
Technical optimization
- Our experts have upgraded the engine, resulting in faster website performance. As of today, the loading speed according to pagespeed.web.dev:
- Mobile devices — 61/100;
- PC — 98/100.
- We have implemented functionality to filter the car catalog by body type: SUV, Sedan, Convertible, EV.
- Our team has updated the design and layout.
- Our optimizers have audited the mobile app, providing recommendations on how to optimize it (ASO).
Semantic core and content plan
1. The project team expanded the semantics by adding new query groups for such brands to the promotion: Mercedes Benz, Land Rover, Porsche.
These pages are ranked by common query groups: car brands + rental, car brands + rental nyc/new york.
Query positions for some car brands:
Porsche
Land Rover
Filtering by body type: SUV, Sedan, Convertible, EV. These pages are ranked by common query groups: car type + rental, car type + rental nyc/new york.
Positions by query for some vehicle types:
Electric
2. On all pages of the website we have implemented an information block FAQ, which provides answers to possible user questions on car rental. This block is displayed in the output and has had a positive effect on the CTR of the snippet.
3. Following the expansion of the company’s fleet vehicles, our experts have taken 6 new car cards into promotion, including:
Cadillac Escalade
BMW 840i convertible
External optimization
For successful website promotion, the quality of external links is more important than their quantity. Due to high competition in the niche, quality backlinks are a key factor in success.
Work with toxic backlinks
Considering the constant appearance of low-quality links, our specialists review the backlinks every 2-3 months and reject toxic ones using the Google Disavow Tool.
Link building
To build links, we used the following methods:
1. Outreach – a “white hat” approach to increasing the number of links to a website, which involves finding quality web resources and reaching agreements with owners for placement. This is one of the most challenging but effective ways to increase the number of donors.
Examples of guest posts placements using outreach:
These articles are ranked for thematic queries and generate organic traffic.
Example of Link Insertion placement (adding links to existing articles) that rank for informational thematic queries in the top 3:
As you can see, this page ranks for 1.6K keywords and generates nearly 5K organic traffic. Placement in such articles provides not only maximum impact for position growth but also referral clicks.
2. Exchanges – the method involves placing articles on quality platforms using link exchanges. Unlike Outreach, this method simplifies the search for platforms since the exchange already has agreements with them, and we can choose a platform from the list considering the necessary criteria and cost.
3. Directories and aggregators – the method is used to diversify the link profile, increase trust, and attract additional audience.
Examples of directories where we conducted placements:
- local.yahoo.com
- sitejabber.com
- find-open.com
- yellowpages.com
- superpages.com
- dexknows.com
4. Crowd marketing is a link building method that involves placing links on thematic forums and is used to increase the diversity of the link profile.
The high quality requirements for the link mass are the reason for the large number of different methods for its growth. The more high-quality links from various sources lead to the website, the more natural the link mass will be. This ensures more effective and safe promotion.
Work with Google My Business
Working with the company’s profile on Google My Business helps increase the visibility of local businesses on Google Maps and in organic search results, thereby increasing website traffic and conversion.
In addition to basic profile optimization, we:
- Monitor the quality and quantity of reviews:
- Post new publications:
As a result, the number of interactions with the company’s profile keeps growing:
The number of website visits from the company’s profile is 30-40 per day, which is considered a very good indicator:
Reputation management
To promote our clients’ websites, we utilize SERM optimization, which helps enhance the business’s reputation online. Considering that the website falls into the YMYL category, we pay special attention to E-A-T factors such as expertise, authority, and trust.
Our specialists consistently monitor the company’s reputation through branded queries and generate positive reviews on third-party review platforms. As a result, the top 10 search results for the brand look like this:
Project results
Position dynamics for queries by semantic groups:
Luxury Car Rental NYC
Premium Car Rental NYC
Luxury Car Rental Near Me
Position dynamics for specific car models and brands:
Range Rover Evoque
Range Rover Sport
Porsche Panamera
Plans for 2023
- Launch the promotion of a similar website for Miami on a separate domain.
- Expand the semantic scope and create new landing pages to generate targeted traffic.
- Create a blog to generate informational traffic.
- Launch the promotion of a mobile application on the App Store and Google Play.
Conclusion
Despite the high competition in the car rental niche in the USA, our team managed to achieve top positions in search results for a small niche website.
- During the project, all target and important keyword groups for the client were ranked in the top 1 (less prioritized ones in the top 3).
- The percentage of keywords ranked (compared to December 2022) increased from 60% to 98% in the top 10, from 45% to 91% in the top 5, and from 31% to 86% in the top 3.
- Organic traffic in 2022 increased by 280% compared to 2019 (start of promotion activities).
Factors contributing to the achieved results
- High level of technical optimization of the project.
- Expansion of the website’s structure to cover the entire target semantic scope.
- Growth of high-quality backlinks.
- Effective management of the company’s profile on Google My Business.
- Reputation management for the brand online.
Project team members
Project manager: Kateryna Tymoshenko
SEO expert: Andrii Lehkobyt
Link builder: Yevhen Fedchenko