Carmax

Earning Industry-Relevant, High-Traffic Links for CarMax

How Link.Build Helped CarMax Drive Authority Through Strategic Publisher Partnerships

Client Overview

Name: CarMax
Industry: Automotive / eCommerce / Consumer Finance
Founded: 1993
Employees: 25,000+
Annual Revenue: $30B+
Use Case: National used car retailer competing in organic search against automotive giants, marketplaces, and media publications

The Challenge

CarMax wasn’t just looking for backlinks—they were looking for meaningful link equity from authoritative sites that:

• Already attracted organic traffic in the automotive, finance, or lifestyle verticals
• Were trusted by real human audiences, not just web crawlers
• Maintained editorial standards aligned with CarMax’s compliance guidelines
• Could reinforce authority across multiple categories: car buying, vehicle financing, used car market trends, and consumer education

The problem? Most link vendors couldn’t deliver more than recycled guest post farms and irrelevant lifestyle blogs. CarMax needed links that mattered—to both Google and real users.

‍

Our Approach

CarMax sits at the intersection of automotive, retail eCommerce, and consumer finance—so our approach had to reflect that complexity.

1. Industry-Relevant Targeting with Real Traffic Metrics

Our team didn’t just chase DR/DA. We used third-party tools like Ahrefs and SimilarWeb to qualify potential link targets by:

• Monthly organic search traffic (minimum 10,000/month)
• Keyword overlap with CarMax’s core topics (e.g., car loans, vehicle reliability, EV trends)
• Real editorial standards (no open guest post solicitations or PBNs)

We built a target list of auto blogs, finance sites, and consumer advice publishers with strong trust signals and existing traffic.

2. Publisher-First Content Collaboration

We pitched publishers based on their readers’ interests, not just CarMax’s SEO goals. Sample content themes included:

• “The Shift to Online Car Buying: What It Means for the Average Driver”
• “Car Depreciation Myths: What’s Still True in the EV Era?”
• “How Rising Interest Rates Affect Used Car Financing”

These weren’t keyword-stuffed SEO pieces—they were timely, engaging narratives designed to add editorial value while subtly referencing CarMax as a market leader.

3. Tiered Placement Strategy

We divided our targets into three tiers:

• Tier 1: High-authority auto publishers with 100K+ monthly traffic (e.g., enthusiast forums, consumer auto news outlets)
• Tier 2: Personal finance and fintech blogs with strong SEO trust
• Tier 3: General business or eCommerce publications covering DTC shifts

This allowed us to diversify link equity while maintaining industry and topical relevance.

Why It Worked

Most agencies optimize for link volume. We optimized for link value—defined by:

• Organic traffic of the linking page
• Topical and contextual relevance
• Domain trust and editorial quality

By targeting real publishers with real audiences, we helped CarMax improve SEO metrics while also reinforcing its brand credibility in the eyes of consumers, journalists, and investors.

‍