The automotive industry is a thriving and influential industry, but it does come with it’s challenges because of this. Across the country, each automotive dealership has the same core objective: gain the highest conversion rates. Essentially, sell sell sell!
SEO is an incredibly broad discipline, these are Honchō’s actionable tips that can easily be put to the test for your dealership and giving you results straight away.
As shown through our recent piece on AM Online’s top 100 car dealerships, there is a relationship between rank and revenue and search. Check out what the top dogs are doing in search.
In this article we will cover 3 SEO practices that you can action in order to get more traffic to your website and ultimately into your showroom:
- Getting the most out of your Google My Business Profile
- Consistent Information Across all Channels
- Listen to your customer
Firstly, the difference between standard and local search needs to be established.
When a search query such as “best car dealership” is displayed, Google signals this as a long-tail, broad search, with informational intent. However, when a search query such as “car dealership near me” is displayed, Google signals this as a transactional query with a purchase intent. Search queries with “near me” result in a location based search. From this, Google reads “car dealerships near me” as a location and purchase query as the user is more likely to purchase a car from a dealership in their local proximity.
Google is very clever at understanding that the user is most likely looking for business listings in their local area. For example, if you live in London, you are likely to be looking for a car dealership in the London area, not, let’s say, Manchester.
The type of query the user puts into Google is paramount to the success of a car dealership and why local SEO is so important for localised businesses.
Google My Business (GMB), also plays a big role in local SEO, but we will come onto this later.
If you would like a more in depth insight into local SEO and automotive, please take a look at our expert article on how dealerships can win at SEO.
Getting the most out of your Google My Business Profile
So now we have differentiated between standard SEO and local SEO, it is now time to fix your dealership website. Do these 3 top tips to increase your local visibility:
Fully optimise your Google My Business profile
In June 2019 Google My Business released new features for how car dealerships can utilise their GMB profile, in order to gain the highest number of users possible. Having a fully optimised GMB profile is so key to attract local users especially.
You can find out more about the latest GMB profile features on our blog.
So what does a fully optimised GMB profile look like?
- Correct admin information – this includes admin features such as address, phone number and the name of your dealership. It sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how many businesses lose potential customers due to a faulty contact number or address.
- Categorising your service – this is particularly important for filtering the correct type of traffic to your website, and in turn, your dealership. For example, if your dealership offers used cars specifically, then categorising that service will make it clear the user what you are offering. This will also help Google ensure the right search result is meeting the right search query.
The biggest takeaway is to ensure your name, address and phone number is correct and appears the exact same across all your digital platforms.
Here is an example of Renault Enfield GMB Profile:
Consistent information across all channels
Mentions on external sources that are mentioning in your dealership, should confirm to the user and Google that all your details on your GMB profile are correct.
If all the citations match up with your GMB profile then Google is more likely to show your profile in local searches, as it is signalled to be quality and accurate information.
In order to gain high authority to your GMB profile, you also need other high authority websites to have matched up information to yours. The websites that generate the best type of authority link juice are directories, such as Yell.com. Matching information from huge websites such as Yell.com will be a highly influential signal to Google that your GMB profile are providing accurate and trustworthy behaviour. All this results in the most appropriate and useful search results to the user search query.
Listen to your customer
Reviews and photos from your customers will boost your online SEO and stir trust between your users and your GMB profile.
Encouraging customers who come into your dealership to upload their own content onto your dealership’s GMB profile.
Customer Feedback – customer reviews and feedback is always beneficial for keeping the dealership in the know of how the user experiences your website and brick and mortar business. This gives real life insight into how certain aspects of the user experience can be altered or enhanced upon for a better result. Not only this, but the positive interaction between your GMB profile and website with the customer will signal to Google that you provide a quality service that is likely to meet the needs of other users.
So how does Honchō help let you achieve these goals?
As a digital marketing agency, we offer the highest quality automotive SEO service. Dealerships who utilise SEO to the best of their advantage are those that retain and attract the most amount of traffic to their website. Online visibility is the key factor in this. Without visibility, how can users find your website to then follow through with a purchase? The SEO experts at Honcho know what makes Google tick and how to carefully optimise your online and offline content in order for your dealership to gain maximum visibility in search results pages.
However, car dealerships belong in a niche where local SEO is a big factor. This is because users who are searching for their next used, new or nearly new car, are more likely to visit a dealership in their local proximity. As such, local SEO massively helps connecting local searchers to their local dealerships.
If you are about to embark on your next automotive marketing strategy on your digital platforms, make sure to check out our case studies. Honchō offer top standard SEO services to automotive brands and we would be excited to start your next campaign with you.
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