As the manager of a car dealership, one of your responsibilities is to improve your store’s outreach. These days, there are so many techniques available to reach potential shoppers. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads, classified pages, radio promotions, and native ads on websites are just a few avenues to spread the word. Yet, these advertisements often get swept into the background because folks are oversaturated with information. Standing out among the crowd is more challenging than ever because it requires expertise and creativity. Search engine optimization is likely the tool that is missing from your marketing budget but is the one that will make all the difference for your digital footprint. 

Search engine optimization, or SEO, utilizes original content to enhance online visibility. To understand what that means in practical terms, let’s first examine how search engines work. Whenever a website goes live, the search engine bot (short for robot) crawls and indexes it. By doing so, this website now becomes part of the searchable web. So if someone types in “affordable sedans near me,” theoretically, your store’s website should appear on the results page. However, the order in which sites and ads appear on a search engine results page varies depending on the site’s page ranking. When bots crawl and index your site, they are also evaluating it for its quality. Depending on how good it is, your site will receive a score, a page rank, that determines its place on a results page. 

Though search engines never reveal the precise formula for achieving a perfect page rank score, SEO marketers have a general idea of what works. The best professionals usually have a contact person who works for Google or the Yahoo Bing Network to provide them with updates and policy changes. One of the first tips to prepare the stage for SEO is to ensure that your store’s website has no broken links or typos. A fast loading time and high-quality photos of inventory is another critical component of maintaining your website. Finally, making sure that your site loads correctly on various screens, such as tablets and smartphones, is a third crucial step to prepare the stage for more complex campaigns.

After completing the basics, it’s time to unleash a specialty campaign. Many dealers are looking for ways to boost the number of drivers who visit their maintenance departments. What would SEO for auto repair look like? Aside from other advertisements, an SEO expert builds pages of content to attract folks to your store’s website. For example, a blog post explaining why regular oil changes and tire rotations are essential for your vehicle goes beyond offering helpful advice. Such content taps into a wide range of keywords and questions people type into their search engine, and a high-ranking site offers the answer. Other examples include what to expect when it is time for a transmission tune-up or tips on choosing the right lift kit. The possibilities are endless. 

These may seem like apparent topics for anyone who’s worked in the car business. Consider all the people who know nothing about cars except how to turn the switch. Why plenty of people don’t even know what the different lights on the dashboard mean! These blogs are for those people: those who know nothing about autos, the first-time drivers and buyers, and the people who are curious about how to keep their car on the road for a few more thousand miles. By feeding into their needs with SEO techniques, your dealership has an opportunity to become more visible and attract more organic traffic than ever before. The next time someone talks to you about adding some SEO, be sure to listen to their pitch because it might offer what your store needs.