Gerald Ferreira Founder of the 3D Car Shows website

I founded the 3D Car Shows website in 2004. The image in the header of this website is one of the photographs I originally captured at the Johannesburg Motor Show in 2004, when I created the first Johannesburg International Motor Show virtual reality tour. The original vision behind the platform was to create immersive virtual tours of cars and motor shows. At the time, internet speeds were extremely slow and virtual reality technology was not yet ready for mainstream adoption.

The website was highly optimized for search engines and quickly attracted a large audience. I regularly published press releases from major motor manufacturers, which eventually led to the website being accepted into the Google News network.

All Search Results Were Received from Organic Search

Search Engine Optimization Results

At its peak, the 3D Car Shows website received 2,571,179 page views between December 2012 and December 2014. The website still exists today, although I no longer have much time to regularly update or expand the content.

3D Car Shows in the Google News Network

Google News Results 3D Car Shows

The legacy of 3D Car Shows can still be seen today by searching for 3D-Car-Shows.com within Google News.

Search Engine Optimization Lessons I Learned

Running the 3D Car Shows website taught me some incredible search engine optimization lessons. At one stage, the website ranked among the top 500 most visited websites in South Africa. Being part of the Google News network meant that whenever I published new content, it could rank almost instantly on the first page of Google for related search terms.

Key Lessons Learned

• I gained valuable insight through the combination of the Google News Network and Google Real-Time Analytics.
• At the time, I could publish content on almost any automotive topic and the website would rank for those search terms.
• I carefully monitored search trends to determine which keywords would likely receive the most traffic and optimized articles around those terms.
• A highly optimized website can outperform significantly larger competitors.
• Google Street View and 360° panorama imagery can be powerful search engine optimization tools.
• During major international motoring events, I was able to dominate search engine results for highly competitive automotive keywords.