As a car dealer, you know that SEO is essential. But what are the best ways to optimize your website and drive traffic? This blog post will share our top tips on car dealers SEO and how to find a reliable SEO company to improve your dealership’s website rankings.
Let’s dive in:
What Is Car Dealers SEO?
Car dealers SEO is all about getting your dealership’s website to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs). The higher your website ranks, the more likely people are to click through and visit your site. And, of course, the more visitors you have, the better chance you have to convert them into customers.
But how do you go about ranking highly on Google and other search engines?
Well, there are many factors that Google considers when deciding where to rank websites. These include but are not limited to the relevance of your content, the number of high-quality backlinks pointing to your site, your site’s overall loading speed, and more.
Optimizing all of these factors can boost your dealership website’s search engine rankings.
Why do Car Dealers Need SEO?
The new car dealers market has witnessed an average growth of 0.9% per year between 2018-2023. This simply means your car dealership, whether it is new or old, is going to face tough competition ahead.
To grow your business, you need to reach out to more potential car buyers than your competitors. And SEO is one of the most effective ways to do this.
When people search for keywords related to your dealership, you want your site to be as high as possible in the search results. This is because most people only click on the first few results when they perform a search.
If your website is not ranking well, you could miss out on many potential car sales, as 81% of buyers conduct online research before buying anything.
SEO can also help you to reach people in your local area who are searching for car dealerships. This is because you can target specific keywords and phrases (search queries) that are specifically related to your location.
Optimizing your dealership’s website for SEO can ensure you reach all potential customers looking for a dealership like yours.
Related: Why Is SEO Important to a Business?
Car Dealers SEO Tips to Boost Online Presence
Here are SEO best practices you can follow to improve the search visibility of your dealership website.
Keyword Research
Anyone who wants to ensure their car dealership website is optimized for Google and other search engines should start with proper keyword research.
Thorough keyword research helps you identify the terms and phrases potential customers use to search for car dealers. It can also help you understand which keywords are most likely used by potential car buyers.
Here are a few tips for conducting keyword research for your car dealership website:
- Don’t just go for monthly searches blindly, consider user intent as well
- Look at your competing dealership to find keyword ideas
- Find long-tail keywords for your car dealership
- Look at Google Suggest for keyword ideas
- Find common questions potential car buyers might have
A few keyword research tools, such as UberSuggest, Moz Keyword Explorer, and SEMrush, can help you conduct in-depth keyword research painlessly.
Related: SEO Keyword Research: 9 of the Biggest Mistakes You MUST Avoid
Optimize Website Content for Search Engines
By ensuring that your web pages are optimized for search engines, you can attract the right kind of visitors to your site and ensure that they find what they’re looking for.
However, creating SEO-friendly content for your dealership website can seem daunting.
Here are simple tips that can help:
- Focus on creating helpful content that answers potential buyers’ queries
- Use relevant keywords throughout your content
- Cover topics in-depth with a logical structure in your content (proper heading tags)
- Use internal linking in your website and blog content
- Write keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions
Also, you should create content in a casual tone. Make sure potential car buyers feel like a trusted friend is talking to them when they read your content.
Adding engaging visuals can increase the effectiveness of your content.
So ensure you include relevant images (with proper ALT tags) in your content.
Which type of content should you create for your website?
You should create evergreen content types rather than sticking to just one kind of content to maximize your SEO success.
However, you should note that creating quality content alone doesn’t move the needle. You should make an aggressive plan to promote your content so that more and more potential buyers can see your content.
Related: Copywriting Tips to Boost Your Website Conversion Rate
Fix Technical SEO Issues
Technical SEO might sound like a bunch of jargon, but it’s pretty simple: it’s all the behind-the-scenes stuff you need to do to make sure your dealership website is easy for search engines to find and index.
And that’s important because if the search engine can’t find or read your site, you’re not going to rank for any keywords, which means potential buyers will not visit the website. That’s why technical SEO is crucial for car dealership websites.
Here are the best practices for technical SEO:
- Remove broken links, 404s, and broken pages
- Eliminate duplicate content and mixed content issues
- Create an XML sitemap and submit it
- Check your site for crawling and indexing issues
- Add structured data
If not given due importance, technical SEO can break the overall success of automotive SEO.
So, run a technical SEO audit and fix all issues you find as soon as possible to improve the search visibility of your dealership website.
Related: Technical SEO Audit Checklist to Boost Technical SEO
Focus on Mobile SEO for Car Dealership
People spend more than 70% of their time on mobile devices these days. So, there is no surprise that mobile searches have outgrown desktop searches.
That said, you should include mobile SEO in your online marketing strategy.
But what is mobile SEO?
Mobile SEO is nothing but optimizing your car dealership website for mobile phones.
Here are some best mobile SEO practices you can follow to improve the ranking of your website on mobile searches:
- Run Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check the current level of mobile optimization
- Run Google’s Page Speed Insight to know the areas for improvements
- Optimize content for mobile devices (Use subheadings and bullet points to break long text into small chunks)
- Eliminate intrusive interstitials
- Optimize content for voice search
When Google is removing desktop-only websites from its index, you cannot ignore mobile SEO if you want to boost the success of car dealers SEO.
Related: A Definitive Guide to Mobile SEO
Implement Content marketing
By definition,
Content marketing is a type of marketing that involves creating and sharing online materials such as videos, blog posts, and social media posts. It aims to attract and retain customers by providing them with valuable and relevant information.
Content marketing can be a helpful strategy for improving SEO for car dealers.
The following is HOW?
To run a content marketing engine, you will have to create tons of different types of helpful content and promote it like crazy.
More content means more keyword opportunities. And unique content you create for content marketing efforts will help you achieve better rankings in search results.
So implement content marketing to improve car dealers SEO.
Related: Most Important SEO and Content Marketing Trends You Need to Know This Year
Update Your Content Regularly
To make SEO work for you, you must update your content regularly. Doing so will keep search engines and potential car buyers happy.
Search engines will see that your site is active and relevant, so they’ll be more likely to rank it highly. And customers will appreciate the fact that they can always find something new when they visit your site.
So if you’re looking to boost your car dealers SEO, ensure you’re regularly updating your content. It’s the best way to keep your site visible and engaging.
Earn Quality Backlinks and Digital PR
Backlinks are a strong ranking signal in the Google search algorithm. So if you want to improve the ranking of your car dealership website, you should earn quality backlinks from relevant websites.
Here are some ways to earn quality backlinks:
- Create data-driven research to attract journalists
- Do media outreach when you have exciting stories to share with car buyers
- Identify broken links in your niche and outreach to build backlinks
- Allow embedding your videos, image, and infographics
- Find opportunities to get interviewed
Last but not least, you should check your competitors’ backlink profiles to explore link-building opportunities.
Quality wins over quantity when it comes to link building for your car dealership website. This means getting ten links from high-authority websites is better than 100 links from low-quality websites.
Related: Powerful Ways to Generate More Backlinks and Organic Search Traffic to Your Website
Use Social Media
Though social media doesn’t directly improve the SEO ranking for car dealerships’ websites, it indirectly supports SEO efforts.
According to a study conducted by Cognitive SEO, the best-ranking pages are often those with more social shares, comments, and likes.
Here is how social media can complement your SEO efforts:
- Social media can help you amplify the reach of the content you create for SEO campaigns
- Regular posting on multiple social media platforms can boost your online visibility. And potential car buyers may start conducting brand searches seeing your strong presence on social media
- Social media management can improve brand recognition for your car dealership and supports various online marketing strategies, such as SEO
- Social media engagement may improve your ranking on local searches if you use the right keywords in your posts
What’s more, effective social media management can enhance the brand reputation of your car dealership. You cannot ignore it with simply 5.07 million people using social media.
According to Google’s Gary Illyes,
“The context in which you engage online, and how people talk about you online, actually can impact what you rank for.”
That being said, you should create an aggressive social media marketing plan for your car dealership to boost car dealers SEO.
Related: Ways to Boost Success of Branding Campaigns on Social Media
Focus on Local SEO for Car Dealers
As a car dealer, you would like to target people in your locality who want to buy cars. And one of the best ways to do it is to improve local SEO for your website. This means you should optimize your car dealership website to rank higher on local searches.
Here are key benefits of local SEO for car dealers:
- Better local visibility translates into more foot traffic to your car showroom
- Google Business Profile (formally known as Google My Business) improves your visibility on Google Maps, offering you more calls and in-person visits
- Local SEO focuses on earning positive reviews and ratings that quicken decision-making. So local SEO can increase car sales.
- When you implement a local SEO campaign, you study your competitors – what they are doing. This makes you more competitive and sets your dealership up for success.
- Local SEO supports the overall SEO of your car dealership website
Now you know why local SEO is important for your car dealership. But how can you improve your website’s local SEO?
The following are a few proven strategies to ace your local SEO game:
- Create and optimize Google Business Profile
- Conduct thorough local keyword research to find relevant keywords and optimize your content for these keywords
- Do local link building on leading websites and local community engagement
- Ensure business listing on reputed online directories with name, address, phone number, and website
- Actively manage reviews and ratings
You should ensure that all local location pages are linked to an easy-to-follow navigation menu.
Local SEO is huge. Your car dealership website cannot reap the optimum benefits of SEO if you ignore local SEO.
Related: 100+ local strategies to increase local sales
Improve User Experience
User experience is one of the most critical factors in website design, and car dealers are no exception. Improved user experience can help boost a dealer’s website SEO score because search engines reward websites that are easy to use and navigable.
Here are some tips for improving user experience:
- Use clear and concise language on your pages. Use bold titles, blockquotes for emphasis, and headings that provide specific information about each page section.
- Ensure all text is easily readable without having to scroll down or click on links multiple times.
- Create simple but effective graphics that will not distract from the content
- Stick to fonts that are easy on the eyes, and avoid using too many colors or distracting patterns.
- Improve your website’s loading speed. And make sure that your website has a responsive design so potential buyers can access your website on screens of all sizes.
- Offer helpful content in areas such as FAQs (frequently asked questions), buying guides/tips, support resources, tutorials, videos, etc. This will help website visitors find answers to their queries
By following these simple guidelines, you can improve the user experience of your dealership website.
Related: Tips to Enhance User-Centric Speed Metrics for Your Website’s Performance
Track, Analyze, and Tweak Your SEO Strategy
SEO for car dealerships is not a strategy fixed in stone. You should track and analyze the performance of your SEO efforts. Doing so will help you make the needed adjustment in your SEO strategy to maximize success.
Should You Hire a Freelancer or Agency for SEO for Car Dealers?
There are a few key reasons why you should hire an SEO agency rather than a freelancer for your car dealership’s website:
Experience
An SEO agency has years of experience working with dealerships of all sizes and learning the ins and outs of optimizing a car dealership’s website. They will have a proven track record of delivering results.
Scale
A good SEO agency can handle large-scale projects that would be too much for a single freelancer to manage. They have the workforce, resources, and expertise to do the job correctly.
Specialization
An SEO agency specializes in search engine optimization and knows precisely what it takes to improve your dealership’s website ranking and visibility. They will have the latest insights.
Whether to hire a freelancer or an agency for your SEO needs should come down to what you’re hoping to achieve and how much you’re willing to spend.
How to Find the Right SEO Company for Car Dealers
Not all SEO companies are equal when it comes to delivering results. Some can provide results, while others only talk big about showing results.
The following are some proven tips for hiring a reliable digital marketing company for your SEO needs:
1. Look for Successful Past Performance
Any company you hire for SEO for your car dealership should have a proven track record of success.
Many so-called “experts” will try to sell you their services, but only a handful can deliver on their promises.
When you’re searching for an SEO company, make sure to ask for case studies or other examples of their previous work. This will help you understand what they’re capable of and whether or not they’re worth your money.
A reputable SEO company will have no problem providing you with this information, so if they don’t, it’s best to move on to someone else.
Don’t take chances regarding your car dealership’s SEO – only work with the best in the business.
2. Enquire About Transparency and Reporting
If you’re looking forward to hiring a company to help with your car dealer’s SEO, it’s important to enquire about transparency and reporting.
You want to be sure that the company you’re working with is being upfront about its strategies and tactics and that they’re providing detailed reports on its progress.
Otherwise, you could end up paying for services that aren’t effective or, worse, that are damaging your site’s ranking.
A good SEO company will be happy to provide you with references, case studies, and detailed reports on their work.
So before you sign on the dotted line, be sure to ask about transparency and reporting.
3. Look for a Customized Car dealers SEO Package
There are plenty of SEO packages out there. A customized SEO package for car dealerships offers many benefits you can’t get with a generic plan.
A customized package will be designed specifically for your dealership’s needs. This means it will consider factors such as your location, target market, and the type of cars you sell. As a result, you can be confident that your SEO plan is laser-focused on bringing you results.
In addition, a customized SEO package for car dealerships can be flexible and easily adaptable as your needs change. So if you add new services or expand your inventory, your SEO plan can be quickly updated to reflect these changes.
If you’re serious about driving traffic to your dealership, then you should subscribe to a customized SEO plan.
4. Search for Specialization
When you’re looking to hire a company for car dealer SEO, it’s essential to find a specialist who can provide the services you need.
While many generalist companies out there claim to be able to help with SEO, the reality is that they often don’t have the specific expertise needed to boost your dealership’s website in search engine rankings.
A specialist car dealer SEO company will have a deep understanding of how search engines work and how to optimize car dealerships’ websites for maximum visibility.
It will also be up-to-date with all the latest changes in the algorithms used by the major search engines, so they can ensure your site is always compliant and visible.
5. Read Reviews and Testimonials
When looking for a company to help with your car dealers SEO, reviews, and testimonials can be extremely helpful.
You can learn about the quality of their work, their customer service, and their overall experience.
Hearing from other customers can give you a good idea of what to expect from a particular company. Reviews and testimonials can also help you narrow down your options and choose a company that is right for you.
Related: Ways to Spot If Your SEO Company is a Scam
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several things you can do to improve your car dealership’s online presence and get more website visitors. By following our SEO tips for car dealerships, you can start seeing results in no time!
Additional Resources:
- Website Architecture – Definition and Importance of a Good Website Structure
- Simple Steps to Compose an SEO-Friendly URL Structure
- How to do SEO For ‘Near Me’ Searches (SEO Tips That Really Work)
- Automotive SEO: Everything You Need to Know
