Our team of digital marketing experts has implemented a weekly series, Ask the Experts, dedicated to answering dealers’ questions regarding L2TMedia’s solutions and best practices. The success of our dealerships is our number one priority and we know that many of our clients have questions when it comes to what we do. So ask away!

SEO Actions You Can Add To Your Automotive Digital Strategy Now

No matter the size of your business, search engine optimization (SEO) is one aspect of the digital marketing strategy that will help you seat yourself among the competition online. As an auto dealership, you have a great opportunity to be unique and show that your business does that others do not. SEO is about creating engaging content, but there are some technical do-it-yourself ideas that can help to improve your SEO value in search results.

• Don’t neglect your third-party citations
  • One of Google’s top ranking signals is link signals. These can come from offsite and onsite cues. Offsite links are links that a page which is not yours, but links back to your site’s content. Consider Facebook, Google+ / Google My Business, Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc. as just some of the more popular offsite links you can control. Ensure that your business information is the same across all of these signals by harmonizing information such as name, phone numbers, address, and website URL. You can earn more value by being seen in more places while not confusing your customers (or the search engines).

• De-clutter your website
  • Help your customers out and de-clutter your website. Update old model pages or set up re-directs. Get rid of unneeded pages and consolidate your content into silos. For instance, if you have a category of new car inventory as your main drop-down, place any other content that pertains to new models under this drop down and link to lesser traveled pages from your main page’s content. This helps to provide a user experience that is more streamlined and easier for locating the information they need.

• Focus on local
  • Local search is a major focus of Google’s and part of helping to create a better search experience. Add nearby locations to your written content on third-party citations and add these to your meta titles, meta descriptions, H1 and written onsite content. As you add these nearby locations to keywords associated with your brand, this tells Google and other search engines that you are a business serving these areas. This can help you increase your presence in results for local businesses. However, don’t target too far away because these customers may not travel and may bounce from your site more often. There is a fine line, so it’s a matter of focusing on relevant nearby locations that are likely to be potential customers.

The specialists behind our automotive SEO digital marketing team recommend these quick tweaks and fixes to help streamline your site. SEO is a multi-faceted approach no longer relegated to stuffing keywords into your site. Your strategy needs to include managing your reputation and citations, creating a local presence, writing engaging content with keywords that people are searching for while simultaneously providing a positive user experience (UX).

Some things cannot be measured directly, but your site’s users will be more apt to trust and use your business if you’re showing in searches correctly and you are focused on providing them a great customer service experience from the digital side through your in-person interactions. You should see more interaction with page views and less bouncing, which will signal to Google that your business is beneficial to more people. This can also signal that you’ve improved your site’s experience and relevancy.

Do you have questions for our experts? Ask here!