BYD is the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer but was a newcomer to the European market. With limited brand awareness, a new website with little online presence, a complicated web infrastructure and regional teams spread across five key markets, BYD didn’t only need a search strategy to generate more EV (electric vehicle) leads – they needed an actionable plan that could be executed seamlessly while considering the impact on a global organisation with multiple moving parts.
UpShift’s work for BYD UK, Italy, Germany, Spain and France wasn’t a simple SEO checklist. Every decision needed to be agreed by multiple stakeholders across Europe, including marketing managers and developers. We presented evidence-backed solutions based on our previous automotive and SEO experience, plus audience, competitor and market analysis. This allowed us to gain the trust of key team members, which ultimately allowed us to move forward and get results.
Campaign Highlights
+
70
%
More organic leads
+
211
%
Increase in organic traffic
The Challenge
BYD may have been a newer name in the market, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a serious opportunity. At the time, annual global sales of EVs had increased by 15%, but still totalled 14% of all new cars sold, according to the International Energy Agency. Global incentives targeting a net-zero future means that more and more drivers are making the switch every year.
What’s more, insights from Google showed:
- 73% of EV customers enter the market undecided on a brand or product.
- 90% of loyal customers still consider at least one other automotive brand in their subsequent shopping journey.
- 1 in 4 consumer searches for EVs are unbranded.
Even so, thanks to sheer visibility alone, we knew battling major manufacturers like Tesla and Toyota would be challenging. We hypothesised that BYD was most likely to win by targeting the new to electric audience, but we needed further evidence.
Understanding the ‘new to electric’ audience
There are many different barriers and motivators which will impact the new to electric audience, as well as those who are looking at BYD as a manufacturer.
Google explains the most-researched EV topics include costs, charging, maintenance, reliability and environmental benefits. Furthermore, although Chinese EVs were receiving top safety ratings in European tests, there were still questions around quality, driven largely by a lack of familiarity.
What’s more, the average car brand faces off against seven brands in search (compared to just four in 2021), according to Google. Today, it’s harder than ever for a new automotive brand to compete.
To clearly understand our audience and evidence our hypothesis, we:
- Conducted a full PESTLE analysis to understand macroeconomic and regulatory factors shaping the EV market in each region.
- Built detailed audience personas using first- and third-party data, including psychographic and behavioural insights, to understand pain points and motivators.
- Researched competing manufacturers to understand their online and offline visibility, market share, solutions to adoption barriers and brand perceptions.
Integrated channel and performance audits to ensure every strategy was audience-first and market-aligned.
The Results
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+70% increase in organic leads across five European markets
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+211% average growth in organic traffic (peaking at +224% in the strongest market)
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+130% boost in search visibility (Sistrix), with major gains after gaining CMS access in Feb 2025
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Keyword rankings skyrocketed: average position improved from 55 → 3
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Now ranking top 3 for 450+ high-intent keywords (totalling 2.5M searches/month)
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Impressions up +73% and clicks up +65% YoY
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