Everyone knows about the different electric vehicle manufacturers (Tesla, Rivian, Nio) and how their products change the world. They are pioneers in their industry and paving the way forward, but I had one question – How good is their On-Page SEO?
While chipping away on some Local SEO, I got distracted and started looking at electric vehicles online. I started with some videos and then ended up on the different electric car manufacturers’ websites. As I was scrolling through and checking out the vehicles, I decided to check out the On-Page SEO factors.
The first website I was on was Tesla, so I will start with them. Please note that I did not spend hours going over this but saw what stood out to me right off the start.
Here is what I looked at on the homepage of all 3 of the websites:
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UX/UI
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Headings (which ones and how many of each)
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Page Titles
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Images (alt-text)
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Website Copy
Let’s get started!
Tesla Inc.
Website: https://www.tesla.com/en_ca
Tesla On-Page SEO
First off, I have visited the Tesla website many times, and I have always been impressed with its visuals. The vehicles are up close + centred, pixel perfect, which makes it easy to see all of the details (the image of the Model Y stands out the best, in my opinion). Another attractive feature is the smooth-scrolling, which brings it all together.
The lack of copy on their homepage did not stand out right away, and I think this is really easy to miss when having such great visuals. You are drawn in immediately and don’t even notice The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” can be used here.
When placing headings on a website, I was taught to use only one H1 tag, and that is how I still operate. Tesla on their homepage has seven different H1’s, and that for me is too many. If you want to read more on this topic, check out the Search Engine Journal here.
Here is what I saw for the H1 tags:
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Model S
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Model Y
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Model 3
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Model X
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Solar Panels
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Solar Roof
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Accessories
And my guess for having multiple H1 tags would be because the site is built in React (a JavaScript Framework), and a single component was used numerous times, and the title was swapped out (just my guess).
On this site, the page title reads nice and clean, “Electric Cars, Solar & Clean Energy | Tesla” with a good meta description as well.
Lastly, all of the images surprised me. One thing you see very frequently as an SEO is missing alt text, but here everyone was filled out with good details. This one was my favorite “Pearl White Model X navigating a mountainous road,” somebody put some thought and effort into writing these! 👍👌
Nio Inc
Website: https://www.nio.com/
After browsing Tesla, I Googled “Tesla competitors, “and Nio is one of the first that appeared on the results. Nio is a Chinese company that designs and develops next-generation smart electric vehicles and other electric offerings.
Nio On-Page SEO
As soon as you enter the Nio website, you are presented with an above-the-fold full-size image of their flagship electric sedan, the ET7. This image is very crisp, which allows you to see many of the exterior features. Scrolling down, you will find a section for blog posts on a slider followed by their other vehicle models (EC6, ES8, ES6, and the EP9). You get a cool video effect displaying vehicle details and features when hovering over each model. Overall great UX/UI with solid imagery.
The heading tags on this website were actually done very well! There is a single H1 tag with good use of H2’s and H3’s.
The Nio page title was also well done, “Next Generation Smart Electric Vehicles| NIO” and a well-written meta description.
Like the Tesla website, there is not too much copy on the home page but right below the fold is the blog section where you can read some recent articles.
Going through all of the Nio images, the alt texts were filled out, but many of them were short in length, non-descriptive, and duplicates. If you are unaware, the alt text assists people who use screen readers to give them more information about the image.
There are two issues with copy and pasting alt texts.
1) People who use screen readers often have vision problems, and if the exact text is used over and again, they will keep getting the same description for different images.
2) From an SEO perspective, if your alt text is empty or missing, your work may appear sloppy. Also, you may be misguiding Google when it is crawling the site, and the image alt text is not relevant to the copy.
This is an easy problem to fix, and if there are hundreds of images, there are plugins that can help you out.
Rivian
Website: https://rivian.com/
Rivian On-Page SEO
Compared to the previous two electric vehicle makers, Rivians’ UX/UI is a little different. Instead of showcasing one of their vehicles in the header, they have a fantastic picture of mountains with text reading “Preserving the natural world. Forever“. Having strong imagery and empowering text in the header a web design project makes it really stand out.
Rivian is taking an Earth-first approach with their web design, and all the different earthy color tones work well together. The website copy on the home page is also minimal, but their video creates a lot of buy-in for the brand. Check out their “Forever” video here.
The headings on the Rivian website are minimal. There is no H1 tag present, only 1 H2 and 3 H3’s. I am sure Google will understand what the website is about with the H1, but it is always recommended to have one.
The alt text accompanies the Rivian website images, but it is only a single word being used. This is very similar to the situation above with Nio, where more information can be provided, including their main keyword in an image alt text.
Overall, each of the websites had some great and negative things about their On-Page SEO. Tesla had great meta descriptions, Nio made good use of heading tags, and Rivian had a great video that enhanced user experience.
Read More: Top 10 Search Engines’ Webmaster Tools – Crawl Sitemaps
