Gone are days when car dealers used to depend on TV spots or newspaper ads.
Today, the car dealers are admitting the power of digital by hiring automotive SEO services. And if you’re a car dealer who is yet to discover the new ways for generating confirmed leads, you must considering hiring an automotive company, too.
Why?
As per advertising 101, advertise where your potential customers are!
And your potential customers rarely watch a TV spot or read a newspaper ad before buying their next car. They search, they read online reviews, and they cross-check car prices on the web.
If you still need more information to understand the importance of automotive SEO, this blog is for you.
Come, let’s introduce you with some useful facts that why you need to hire an automotive SEO company, the best practices and some important automotive SEO trends.
What is Automotive SEO?
Before we discuss the automotive SEO trends and some best practices every car dealership should apply, let’s first discuss what is automotive SEO?
The automotive SEO is a way to optimize car dealership websites to make them discoverable by their potential customers when they search key phrases like “car dealers near me” or “best car dealership near me” etc. On-page optimization, structured data, and local SEO measures are some of the many strategies that small business SEO service providers use in automotive SEO strategy.
Let’s try to understand automotive SEO with a relevant example!
Take search engines as a highway and your car dealership the vehicle that is going on a drive on this highway. If your car has issues like broken engine, flat tires, or no fuel in the tank, it won’t run smoothly on the highway, will it? The automotive SEO is the maintenance work that your mechanic will do on your car to prepare it for a smooth drive on the highway. Similarly, the automotive SEO prepares your car dealership to be more visible in relevant searches when a potential car buyer in your area wants to reach you.
Automotive SEO vs. Traditional Advertising
You might be thinking what’s the need of automotive SEO when traditional advertising is doing just fine for your car dealership?
Well, thinking that is quite natural!
Here are some interesting facts about both the approaches to help you make a wiser decision for your car dealership:
- The traditional advertising broadcasts your message to broader audience reducing your chances to convert visitors into leads. And if we compare traditional advertising to automotive SEO, you can adjust your target audience based on the interests and buying habits of the potential buyers meaning more leads and less budget spending.
- If we talk about traditional advertising, you’ll be spending between $4000/- to $45000/- in a TV spot for a mere 30 second ad whereas automotive SEO will cost comparatively lesser than TV spot offering you cost effective marketing avenues.
- If you go with traditional advertising, you’ll have to wait for days till the ad works during one of those popular shows where it will be shown during ad-breaks. With an automotive SEO company, you’ll have an edge over marketing success measurements and access to SEO performance analytics. Not only you’ll be able to make quicker decisions but have every data in your access.
- Talk about TV spots, radio ads, or newspaper advertisements, you’ll have a standard rate list in each of the traditional advertising mediums. But when you turn to automotive SEO, you’ll find more flexibility to adjust your marketing goals without playing by third-party (traditionaladvertisers) rule and maximize your car dealership profits with a refined SEO strategy.
It’s evident that traditional advertising channels do contribute a business’s marketing success but on a high cost whereas automotive SEO is comparatively cheaper. The bottom-line is, automotive SEO services offer you more control over your car dealership’s marketing efforts whereas traditional advertising limits your marketing opportunities.
Automotive SEO Best Practices
So, now that you’ve understood the importance of automotive SEO, it’s time to discuss some essential practices you’d need to succeed while marketing your car dealership. Here are some essential automotive best practices you should know as a car dealership owner before you decide to hire an automotive SEO company or an in-house SEO team.
Invest in Online Showroom (Your Website)
The very first automotive SEO trend that you should know is that your professional website acts as your online showroom. So, the first investment, while working on your SEO plan, is to get an amazing automotive website that represents your business values just like your regular showroom does.
And without having a custom website, you can’t execute your automotive SEO plan, too!
See, every visitor would be introduced to your car dealership business with a website and having an amazing professional website should be in your To-Do list as every successful car dealer do.
Create Useful Content
The next automotive SEO trend that you should know as a car dealer is to create meaningful content for your dealership website. Because your website will look as empty as your car showroom would without those neatly dressed salespeople who step forward to explain car features to every visitor entering the place.
And while you do that, a logical question would confront you at every step of content generation journey. And that is…
How much content is enough for each page?
Well, Google recommends to have at least 1600 (or slightly more) words in your content for each page especially when you’re publishing a new blog post. But while you do that, you’ve to be very careful as you structure the content with different headings. Because you’re not creating the content for search engines only, you’re creating it for human consumption and it should be digestible for a human eye and mind.
Claim Your GMB (Google My Business)
After figuring out your content creation strategy, the next automotive SEO best practice is to get a Google My Business page for your dealership.
Why?
Because it’s an essential step for executing your automotive SEO strategy, plus it’s a free listing that has a positive impact on your dealership’s overall online presence.
While setting up your GMB page, you must provide accurate information like your physical address, working phone numbers, also the current images of your physical showroom and any service-related information that is required by Google. Not only will it help you in improving your local SEO score but act as an ambassador when people search car dealership near me” or a similar phrase in search bar.
Get Auto-Dealer Schema ASAP
Setting up a GMB page is not enough until you add an auto-dealer schema on your website!
You may’ve seen business listings while searching for local businesses in your surroundings and wonder why the search engine is showing you this detail?
The auto-dealer schema helps you display your business details like working hours, price information, or physical address by automatically pulling this information from your GMB page.
This is another important automotive SEO trend that you must cover in your checklist and if you’ve no idea how to do it, hiring a small business SEO service provider can be a good idea.
Devise Link Building Strategy
Link building is an essential part of the puzzle you’re trying to solve here – the automotive SEO strategy!
As a car dealership owner, you already know the importance of having influential contacts in your industry and quality links work just like that. Having valuable links pointing to your content prove your dealership business as a trustworthy entity to search engines.
And it benefits your automotive SEO plan even more when you earn those links against the relevant keywords that describe your business in best way possible.
So, devise a link building strategy or hire an automotive SEO company to do it on your behalf if you’ve no clue how to do it.
Ensure Mobile-Ready Website UX
While you work on your automotive SEO strategy, don’t forget mobile visitors in your plan!
A considerably large portion of online searchers access websites via their mobile screen. In fact, there’s a high chance that you’re reading this content on your mobile right now, aren’t you?
So, you must work on your professional website to make it mobile-friendly!
Doing so will help search engines send the mobile-based traffic to your website whenever someone searches for a car dealership on their phone.
Benefit from Video Marketing
As we progress, our habits of consuming content evolve with us and today most of us prefer watching a video than reading content.
There’s an opportunity for you to strengthen your automotive SEO strategy by including video marketing in it. Because every one of us prefer understanding content through short videos so it’s a nice approach to include video-based content on each page along with written one.
Plus, you’ll get to create video content in much less cost in comparison to the traditional TV spot that not only costs higher in production but also has a high broadcasting fee.
In-House vs. Outsourced Automotive SEO Services
You now know the automotive SEO best practices but there’s one question that is still unanswered.
Hire an in-house SEO team or seek an automotive SEO company?
Well, here are some interesting facts that will help you in deciding which option to go with:
- An in-house SEO team costs more since you’ll be covering for salaries and other benefits of each team member in comparison to outsourcing an automotive SEO company having standard packages for each client.
- An in-house SEO team may limit your marketing efforts with limited resources or knowledge in comparison to an outsourced small business SEO company that goes above and beyond to keep your as a client.
- Not just salaries and employee benefits, you’ll be covering the cost for tools required as well whereas if you go with an automotive SEO company, you’ll be paying a standard retainer fee and they’ll bear the expenses incurred on SEO tools.
So, this was all that you needed to know about automotive SEO best practices and whether to go with an in-house SEO team or outsource one. If you’re a car dealership with high marketing budget then hiring an in-house team is advised otherwise you reap the same benefits with an outsourced automotive SEO company and that on a monthly retainer fee.