95% of car buyers use online resources such as search engines, websites and reviews to make their buying decision. The decision on which vehicle to buy is largely made by the time a shopper reaches a dealership. For these reasons, your online presence is critical to capturing leads for your automotive dealership.
When trying to draw online traffic to your automotive dealership website, the best place to start is ensuring you have effective search engine optimization set up. Automotive SEO is critical for dealerships because there is so much competition to try to rise above. When SEO is properly utilized, your dealership can rank first above your competition so you are seen first by vehicle shoppers.
A quality SEO strategy for auto dealers will be individualized to your unique brand and business goals, but there are several common elements that you will ant to incorporate:
1. Choose your keywords carefully - Be sure you are using the
right tools such as SEMrush to research keywords and determine the best ones to
use based on your region, customers and products for sale
2. Create quality content - Determine the most important queries
your customers are making, both online and when you talk to them in person, and
create high quality blogs and videos that address these concerns. When your
customer feels they received value front ou long before you are asking them to
put a deposit on a vehicle, they will already feel a sense of connection and
loyalty to your dealership
3. Optimize every element - Do not overlook basic Google
algorithm requirements like load speed and bounce rate on your website. Leave
no stone unturned when it comes to making sure you have optimized at every
opportunity. Sometimes even the smallest of changes will make a huge impact!
4. Track and monitor SEO results - When you are tracking results,
be sure to analyze how things are going via reporting tools, but also evaluate
that against your current inventory and business goals. At times, it may be
necessary to rank for new keywords and to adjust your strategy. This could be
due to Google algorithm changes or to changes within your dealership. Either
way, it’s important to regularly review your results versus where you are going
to get ahead of any changes that will be needed
5. Make automotive SEO a regular task - It goes without
saying that if you want consistent results, you have to keep at it on an
ongoing basis
6. Use Google My Business - Google My Business accounts provide an excellent opportunity for local SEO since you can use it to attract more attention to your business based on your Maps location. Be sure to learn about this beneficial feature Google offers and all of the ways you can use it to your advantage.
For many automotive dealerships, managing SEO on an ongoing basis is a big job that they may not have time or expertise to keep track of regularly so they may decide to contract outside help for a digital marketing agency that provides automotive SEO services for dealerships. When reaching out to find automotive SEO services, be sure to look for this important features to ensure your dealership gets a quality SEO strategy.
