We analyze a 7-year-old automotive troubleshooting website, CarTreatments.com. The site receives about 180,000+ visits per month (Ahrefs estimate).
What makes this site interesting is that it started out with subpar-quality content written by a non-native English speaker but still experienced good traffic growth. It looks like a new owner improved content which helped it reach a peak of 500k monthly traffic before falling to 100k traffic from a Google update.
Automotive troubleshooting is a good niche because over 90% of US households own a car and will inevitably need help with issues that arise. Repairs can be expensive so many people turn to Google to find more information about the car issue they need help with.
This is what I cover in this report:
- Website overview
- Major highlights
- Competitor overview
- Easy wins to increase revenue and/or traffic
- Actionable takeaways you can apply
Let’s get into it!
✅ Website Overview & Highlights
After publishing over 600 pieces of helpful content written by experts in car repair, Google has rewarded this site with 180k traffic per month and high rankings for many automotive-related keywords.
The site was started in 2016 by a Toyota technician who appears to be a non-native English speaker based on the sentence structure and frequency of grammar issues found on Archive.org snapshots.
The site appears to have been sold around 2020 to Mark Stevens who rewrote some of the existing articles, started publishing higher-quality articles, and got the site approved by Mediavine.
The Ahrefs data shows a steady traffic incline from 2016 to 2022. Traffic reached a peak of 500k but appears to have been affected by a Google update around August 2022 around the time of the 2022 August Helpful Content Update.
The website design is pretty basic with a subpar logo that sends signals of a site run by an amateur blogger rather than a professional publisher.
With the potential to bounce back to previous traffic levels of 500k per month, we recommend a design refresh that instills confidence in a new visitor.
Highlights
- 15k referring domains
- Ranks for 235k keywords
- 600+ well-researched articles written by experts
Why is this site winning?
- Strong link profile including AAA.com, Wikipedia, TheDrive.com, Motor Biscuit
- Good keyword targeting of keywords with high search volume and low competition (due to the technical subject matters).
- The owner took a site that was already performing well with “low-quality” content and improved the content significantly.
- Good topical authority was established with many articles covering categories related to the topic of automotive troubleshooting (see sitemap)
Top 3 Competitors
Here are similar competitors targeting the majority of the same keywords.
- MechanicBase.com – A popular automotive informational site with 280k traffic per month from over 1,000 articles.
- MyCarMakesNoise.com – A car troubleshooting site with 150k traffic per month.
- Oards.com – Another car troubleshooting site with 30k traffic per month.
Let’s get into the easy wins to grow this specific website.
🔥 5 Easy Wins To Grow This Website
There are opportunities to significantly grow this brand. I break down the following easy wins:
- Add call-to-action buttons
- Improve branding and trust signals
- Add more product reviews
- Repurpose troubleshooting content to YouTube
- Study competitors to find content ideas and content gaps
Let’s get into it!
➡️ Win #1: Add Call-to-Action Buttons
The main affiliate program on the site is Just Answer, an affiliate program promoted by many car troubleshooting sites.
This affiliate program looks like an excellent fit because people looking for information about an issue with their car are probably willing to spend a little money to chat with an expert mechanic about their specific issue.
However, the CTAs on the site could be improved to increase the click-through rate. Currently the “Ask a Mechanic” link blends into the rest of the top navigation.
Call-out boxes for the affiliate program are added near the top of informational articles, but they may be missed by a visitor who is quickly scanning the page.
Adding a CTA button to these call-out boxes could help increase clicks to this affiliate program.
Additionally, an exit intent popup could be worth testing. An exit intent popup with a call to action button linking to an affiliate program can be one of the best ways to generate affiliate sales.
The product review articles on this site are well-written and provide a lot of useful information for buying products for car repair and maintenance.
However, the buying guides only use text and images when recommending products.
We recommend adding product call-to-action buttons with text like “Check Price” in a color that contrasts with the site’s main colors.
Additionally, a product box with a product image could be added to informational articles when a product is mentioned to increase the number of clicks to Amazon.
➡️ Win #2: Improve Branding and Trust Signals
When people are looking for advice in a technical niche like car repair for help with an issue that could cost hundreds of dollars, they want to be reassured that the site they visit is providing accurate expert advice.
The site does a good job of showing the people who are writing the content with author bios on articles. The About page highlights the credentials, experience, and expertise of the multiple authors.
They also include a physical address and phone number in the footer which adds credibility because they are acting like a real business.
However, CarTreatments.com is lacking in some areas that would help their brand and site look more like an authoritative source rather than a common blog.
One thing they could add is a graphic showing top online brands that have featured them. This is a good trust signal that will improve first impressions for first-time visitors and writers looking for a good source to cite in an article.
They can also replace their current logo with a custom professional logo so that the site looks more like a real company instead of a low-budget solo blogger.
Another way to add credibility for visitors is to highlight the credentials of the authors. It would help to add text to the homepage and articles that highlight the author’s automotive certifications (e.g., ASE certification). They could also mention that the authors have X years of combined experience working as auto mechanics.
➡️ Win #3: Add More Product Reviews
With this site’s strong link profile and ranking power, we think the ratio of commercial to informational articles is too low at around 3%.
Since the site has earned the trust of Google, it should leverage this to increase revenue by publishing more affiliate content around car repair and maintenance.
Based on data from Motion Invest listings, an affiliate-focused automotive site can earn 10 cents or more per visitor. An informational-focused auto site may earn between 1-6 cents per visitor from display ads.
An appropriate ratio of commercial articles to informational articles varies by niche but a relatively safe target ratio is 20% commercial to 80% informational. Some successful site builders recommend a more aggressive ratio of 40-60 or higher.
➡️ Win #4: Repurpose Troubleshooting Content to YouTube
CarTreatments.com has an abundance of useful articles on common automotive troubleshooting issues but only 3 YouTube videos on their channel.
One way to leverage this content into earning more revenue is to repurpose the content that has already been created into other content types like video.
Additionally, the videos can be added to articles where they can be monetized by Mediavine and increase time on page.
This strategy can be tested by starting with faceless videos with a narrator that reads a script based on existing articles. A low-cost video editor can add photos, screenshots, and stock video to make the video more engaging. Costs can be lowered by using a natural-sounding AI narrator and generating a script from existing articles with the help of ChatGPT.
Automotive troubleshooting videos are very popular on YouTube as people frequently search for car help in a video format.
One of their competitors, VehicleFreak.com has a YouTube channel with over 13k subscribers and 2.4 million views from 49 short faceless videos.
➡️ Win #5: Study Competitors to Find Content Ideas and Content Gaps
This site can leverage its strong link authority and topical authority by targeting more keywords with high volume and low to medium competition.
We recommend building a Google Sheet with all the automotive repair websites that can be found by checking Ahrefs and Googling relevant keywords.
These competitors can be analyzed in Ahrefs to find their high-traffic pages and keywords. The Ahrefs content gap tool can highlight additional keywords that competitors rank highly for that haven’t been covered yet.
A great source of content ideas in this niche is the MechanicAdvice Subreddit which has 1.2 million members. Plugging this URL into Ahrefs shows many Reddit threads with decent traffic and low competition.
YouTube would be another good source of content ideas as you can see exactly how many views a specific topic receives.
👉 Actionable Takeaways
Here are actionable takeaways that you can apply to your niche website today:
- Don’t forget to add call-to-action buttons in the content or in highly visible sections like the header to maximize clicks to affiliates.
- Work on building a reputable brand that visitors will trust for important information that affects the quality of their life.
- If you have a large library of high-quality text content, consider repurposing it into video content for additional revenue opportunities.
- Maintain a growing list of competitor sites to monitor and analyze to discover good keywords to target.
