Investing in automotive SEO is crucial for dealerships and auto parts retailers. Learn the industry's SEO best practices to rev up your rankings.
Whether you’re a dealership or auto parts retailer, investing in automotive SEO is essential to your bottom line. It helps your business show up on Google when consumers search for relevant information, services, and products you offer online.
If you aren’t optimizing your SEO marketing strategy for search engines, your brand is basically invisible online to users you want to reach, especially in an oversaturated digital market. You may already be creating SEO content or utilizing Google Business Profile.
But, are they generating the results you’re looking for?
Auto dealers often make mistakes with their SEO marketing, like using the wrong search intent for blogs or keyword stuffing their websites—which is common! You’re not expected to be an SEO expert. But as a result, you may not see high keyword rankings or web copy that doesn’t convert to sales.
Our complete automotive SEO marketing guide walks you through the best practices and mistakes to avoid. That way, you can better drive your dealership to the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
Automotive search engine optimization (SEO) has many facets, including content marketing, local SEO, and more. However, they all share the same focus—generating traffic to your website by strengthening your online visibility. Some SEO automotive marketing strategies have additional end goals, such as converting paid search ads to sales.
Below are the SEO essentials your auto brand must know to meet your SEO goals effectively.
SEO for the automotive industry is especially crucial for local dealerships and auto part retailers with physical stores. You need to reach local target audiences while standing out from competitors nearby.
That’s where local SEO comes in.
You know local consumers read your reviews and check how you compare to the competition to see if your online reputation is trustworthy. While you may have a Google Business Profile (GBP), it may not be optimized fully or marketed correctly to target local audiences.
Some automotive SEO tips for GBP include:
You know each customer is unique. Every driver isn’t always car-savvy. Some may only know basic information to look for when car shopping, like vehicle history, entertainment features, and test drive comfort. Others may have more technical knowledge, like understanding the powertrain they want for a work vehicle.
A vehicle is a significant investment. Drivers nowadays are conducting preliminary research to ensure they’re making the right choice in their car purchase. Creating blogs for users in all funnel stages is key to meeting them where they are in their buyer’s journey by providing valuable, relevant content.
The three funnel marketing stages with automotive blog topic examples are:
In addition to valuable funnel content, you must optimize all blogs for users and Google to find online, including:
We mentioned common SEO mistakes auto dealers make, like using the wrong search intent in their blogs. Search intent means exactly that—the intent behind a user’s search.
The four types of search intent with automotive keyword examples are:
If a user searches for “vehicles for sale in manhattan” and you create a blog topic on “How to Find the Best Vehicles for Sale in Manhattan,” that’s not what they’re looking for. They’re searching for Manhattan vehicle product listings, not a blog with tips on finding one because it’s a transactional search intent.
You can verify a keyword’s search intent by simply typing it into Google and checking the SERPs. Do the SERPs show all blogs or product pages? While some keywords may have mixed search intent, if the SERPs don’t show blogs, it’s not the right search intent for your blog content.
If you don’t know where to begin with your keyword research, start by conducting a competitor SERP analysis. Enter a keyword into Google and perform a content audit with your SEO software of the top-ranking competitors. Content audits allow you to see which keywords they’re using and uncover content opportunities where you can outrank.
For example, you might find many question-based keywords related to a blog topic you’re writing about. You can take this opportunity to create an FAQ section to rank for those keywords if your competition didn’t make one.
As mentioned earlier, another common mistake auto dealers make with their SEO is keyword stuffing their websites in hopes of higher rankings. This practice can do the opposite and harm your keyword rankings instead.
Google prioritizes E-E-A-T content (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, & Trustworthiness) to deliver more helpful, relevant information when searching for information. If your website is over-optimized with keywords, it makes your content’s readability less enjoyable and weakens your user experience (UX).
Remember, you’re also writing for humans, not just search engines.
Other common SEO mistakes include not optimizing your site for mobile devices or creating a separate website for your blog. A recent study shows that 33% of car shoppers use mobile devices to research vehicles online, and 60% of them would call a dealership from a call extension link.
Additionally, hosting your blog elsewhere is basically like having two different websites. Automotive SEO is comprehensive enough. Optimizing for two sites creates more challenges, and your end goal is to drive more traffic to your main site.
Website optimization must include on-page, off-page, and technical SEO:
While this may seem like a lot of information to digest, don’t get overwhelmed with this part. SEO tools and software platforms, like SEMRush and Ahrefs, automate website optimizations for you. Through website audits, they’ll flag areas of your site needing optimization, which types, and how to do it.
Some automotive SEO tips for website optimizations include:
Website optimizations are about making it easier for your users and Google to discover online.
In addition to generating organic traffic, auto dealer SEO should promote paid traffic to your website. Also known as search engine marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC), it boosts your search engine rankings through paid search ads. However, aligning your SEO and SEO marketing strategies can produce optimal results for automotive brands.
Remember, some users are ready to purchase a vehicle (transactional intent) or are comparing local providers before purchasing (commercial intent). The difference with SEO is that it focuses more on informational search intent and research-oriented queries, like “car buying tips.”
Combining SEO and SEM allows your brand to cover all relevant vehicle-related keywords consumers use when searching online. And, Google makes it easy for automotive brands to do so with its Vehicles for Sale and Vehicle Listing Ads.
The Vehicles for Sale feature allows auto dealers to integrate their inventory directories directly into Google’s search results via your Google Business Profile. Users can apply search filters and browse your inventory outside your website to learn more about a specific vehicle. It also links back to your site when they’re ready to buy.
The Vehicle Listing Ads feature matches your vehicle inventory data feed within Google Merchant Center to provide a personalized shopping experience via advertising. Google matches specific car details users search for by displaying relevant vehicle ad listings. They enter the features they want, like location, mileage, and price, and an ad listing is shown.
While everything we mentioned is auto dealer SEO best practices, that doesn’t mean it’ll always generate the results you want. Google’s algorithm and car consumer demands are consistently changing—especially with various technologies disrupting the SEO landscape, like AI content writing and Search Generative Experience.
Continuously monitoring your SEO marking strategies helps you measure their success with data-driven insights.
Key SEO metrics to track include:
While KPIs will vary depending on your SEO goals, you can find these metrics in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEO platforms.
As an auto dealer, driving sales and investing in SEO can be time-consuming. You have to manage your company and your trade while understanding the importance of SEO.
Let our automotive SEO experts do the heavy lifting for you. At Reach Marketing Pro, we have extensive SEO experience in the automotive industry. We’ve worked with used and branded car dealerships and auto parts brands to enhance their online presence for their bottom line.
From website designs and optimizations to multiple GBP location management and content writing, we can supercharge your SEO efforts for optimal results. We’re fully transparent with in-depth monthly SEO reporting to continuously measure your strategy’s success.
What makes us stand out is our tailored automotive SEO services.
Our Dealer VIP Program boosts sales for your vehicles in production like SEO content writing for the customer reservation process and designing custom home page slider graphics.
Our Absorption Boost package streamlines your customer’s buying process, like mobile QR codes to scan specials easily within OEM and Google’s guidelines.
Ready to rev up your automotive brand’s rankings?
Learn more about our SEO services or contact us for help today!
AI website builders offer several advantages for businesses. However, there are careful best-use practices on…
Website crawling issues can make it become invisible online. Here's how to enhance your crawling…
Streamline your content marketing efforts with these six recommend AI writing tools.
Integrating SMS and email marketing can help you reach more customers. Here's how to boost…
Your website is comprehensive with many moving parts and teams to organize. Make your site's…
Don't push potential customers away by making your site harder to use. Here are the…
This website uses cookies.