Content
Key Strategies for Local SEO Success in Auto Business
February 13, 2024
10 mins
The nature of the car dealership is that it’s a 100% local-focused business. That’s why, at Promodo we consider the world of SEO opportunity to thrive in this lucrative niche. Today, we’ll revise some of the most effective digital marketing strategies of automotive local SEO that will help you succeed.
As a buyer’s market, the specificity of local SEO for car dealerships is in the fact that most buyers are searching for local car selling or rental offerings. Much of your digital marketing success is in promoting a local SEO strategy in the automotive business. The best-fit approaches we suggest will help you boost your visibility, attract the target audience, and get on top of automotive industry SEO local search queries.
The whole SEO trick is in the local essence of car dealerships. The prospects interested in car deals are browsing for individual solutions right in their local area. That’s why, your strategic automotive local SEO task is to match local demand for car dealerships within the geographic area you serve.
To ensure maximum visibility within your targeted geo-location, you'll benefit from qualifiers like
🚗 State
🚗 City
🚗 ZIP code
🚗 “Near me” searches.
The following stats show why local searches are prioritized across the niche.
Out of 95% of smartphone users searching for local businesses:
With that, 70% of mobile users call local businesses directly from the link in Google search results. Eventually, a staggering 78% of local mobile searches end up with offline purchases.
These numbers alone prove the power of location-based searches as the most effective approach to generating quality leads. Strategically, quality leads are worth much more than prospects who are interested in your local car dealership offerings. This is to stress why local SEO automotive marketing is so much important for car dealers.
While local SEO for car dealerships is no different from organic SEO, it is absolutely local-oriented.
🚗 Content-based links
🚗 Keyword research
🚗 On-page SEO approaches.
Once crafting your car dealership’s website, adjust your auto local SEO efforts to the following recommendations:
Physical location: the emphasis on your physical address is of paramount significance as you’ll want your dealership business to show up in local search results. Be sure to update your current business address in your Google Business Profile as well as other online directories. That’s crucial whenever your prospects are browsing for a locality brand name or “near me” search.
Listings: it is vital to consistently list your brand name, actual address, and phone number across the directories.
Citations: third-party mentions about the quality of your car dealership services are crucial for local SEO. Any positive citations about you as a local expert in the field surge your authority and credibility in the eyes of potential clients. Beyond earning backlinks to your car dealership website, ensure a couple of citations in local blogs that would recommend your dealership as a sound spot to buy or rent a car across the area. Citations are also critical for Google to rank you as a trusted car dealership business.
Reviews: while ranking local businesses like yours, Google considers customer reviews. You may even have negative reviews, and that’s fine. Your job here is to thank customers for reviews and promise to improve your service in case of occasional complaints.
Voice search: pay attention to the rising popularity of voice searches. Cutting-edge tech advancements like this are setting trends that predetermine how people search for car dealership services online.
Today, our SEO experts have gathered a bunch of hands-on advice to help you customize your car dealership business and scale up your Google ranking.
In times of digital technology, managing a physical auto service shop is just not enough. Considering the ever-growing competition across the niche, the only way to stand out is to deploy proven digital marketing strategies.
Local search engine optimization (SEO) is about boosting the online visibility of your dealership business. This is how you let your prospects (potential clients) instantly find your services online. That’s why local SEO for automotive service shops like yours is vital.
The importance of automotive local SEO is in developing a strategic approach that will help you engage more community-based customers. The effort is all about a comprehensive optimization process. You should tailor your website, online profile, and content to target the right audience individuals with an exact interest in buying or renting cars.
Try to not go overboard with your SEO effort, though. Focus on a specific service area. That way, Google will know that your dealership business concentrates within a particular area and show your services in local search results. Your strategic competitive advantage is in being visible on online platforms like Google Maps and across local business directories.
Our expert says: “As a local-oriented car dealership, do your utmost to leverage location-based keywords. That’s an essential part of penetrating local communities. The strategy will help you earn quality leads organically. Along with attracting potential nearby clients to your website, local keywords will also boost more foot traffic to your physical doorstep.”
While optimizing your car dealership website for local search, make sure it is
🚗 User-friendly
🚗 Mobile-responsive
🚗 Optimized with local keywords.
That’s an unparalleled competitive advantage of presenting your car dealership business on Google Search and Google Maps. All at once, such strategic positioning simplifies your connection with potential clients.
For starters, create and optimize your profile by mentioning essential information like
🚗 Exact location
🚗 Opening hours
🚗 Contact details
🚗 Customer reviews.
Along with boosting your online visibility, these essential details will raise customer trust and credibility for your services. Being present in online local listings, you may also
🚗 Post updates
🚗 Share photos
🚗 Responding to customer queries
Over time, you’ll enjoy a sufficient local customer base that will recommend your dealership services all across the area.
While content is king in digital marketing, the devil is in the details. Competitive auto service shops continuously generate informative blog posts that match essential dealership queries expressed by their target audience.
Valuable content proves your expertise and enhances your credibility over the crowd. Take informative blog posts as an organic opportunity to
🚗 Address common car issues
🚗 Provide your customers with maintenance tips
🚗 Produce service guides.
All these steps will not only educate customers about your dealership offerings but will get them closer to your brand name.
Not less important is the inclusion of FAQs on your blog page to address the most actual pains shared by your readers. Wider resonance with your target audience will help you:
🚗 Earn trust and credibility
🚗 Bolster organic traffic to your website
🚗 Up your positions in search engine rankings.
Example of valuable content which allowed to increase car dealers' blog traffic by almost 3 times. Find more details on how to surge organic traffic and sales for your dealership business in our featured case study.
Strategic emphasis on local-based keywords related to your service area will improve local search rankings and that’s how more customers will find your services online.
Leverage proven online tools like Google Analytics (GA4) and Ahrefs to explore keywords relevant to auto services. With that, make sure you do not reach beyond your local area. That will help you focus on the local customer base as the most prospective clients.
We suggest investing a fair share of time in exploring popular and tending to user queries. These will help you get an idea of what specific keywords and phrases will best match user queries for auto services:
To capture most niche inquiries, bet on long-tail keyword phrases relevant to your local dealership services:
SEO optimization of your web pages is crucial for Google rankings. In addition to crafting quality auto dealership content, fill your blog posts with
🚗 Meta titles
🚗 Meta descriptions
🚗 Header tags.
These on-page elements will help Google better understand the essence of your content and rank it appropriately:
🚗 Keep your meta titles brief to reflect the main topic of the page.
🚗 Caft enticing summaries in meta descriptions.
🚗 Utilize header tags (H1, H2, H3) to structure and signify content hierarchy.
🚗 Incorporate pertinent keywords in these elements so that Google ranks your pages higher in search results.
With all these elements in place, you’ll enhance a user-friendly experience (UX) on your website. User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) come as a strategic must-have to ensure the quality of a user journey through your website.
Our expert says: You’ll attain seamless navigation throughout your pages with a user-friendly design. It is crucial to let your site users find the right information in a few clicks. Furthermore, mobile responsiveness is critical considering the overwhelming prevalence of mobile searches.
It is also important to boost your auto business presence by nurturing connections with websites. Collaborations and affiliations will help you acquire valuable backlinks over time. That’s essential for bolstering your website's authority in Google and other search engines.
When reputable local websites start linking to your content, search algorithms will rate your car dealership website as a trustworthy source. The proven ways to earn backlinks are through
🚗 Content collaborations
🚗 Local partnerships
🚗 Promotions.
In our featured auto dealership case, we managed consistent growth for the client’s backlinks. As of January 2023, the site boasted 918 unique domains referring to it, which marked an increase of +225 domains since February 2022.
Our expert says: “Our primary focus has been on engaging with websites pertinent to the automotive industry, such as auto news platforms and those specializing in auto sales. However, we observed a diminishing pool of available 'donors' within the car dealership niche. Consequently, we expanded our approach to encompass more links from general news sites or websites falling under the broader car category."
The expansion of your digital footprint as a reliable and influential local entity will establish a positive reputation for your auto dealership service.
Having a mobile-friendly website is your must-have priority. Up to 90% of your prospects are searching for car dealership services like yours on their smartphones. Considering the short time spent on websites today as well as a high bounce rate, be sure to provide a satisfactory user experience on your pages.
Our expert says: “Not less important is that Google prioritizes mobile-optimized websites as a ranking factor. The search engine takes mobile-friendliness as proof that your content is easily accessible and visually appealing for smartphone and tablet users. That’s also how Google boosts your SEO rankings and helps you broaden your audience.”
With an active presence on Facebook and Instagram, you stand a higher chance to elevate your SEO efforts organically. Social media platforms serve local businesses as invaluable tools to engage with your local community. Meanwhile, with more social media activities, Google will enhance your search engine rankings.
You’ll soon build a sound digital reputation by
🚗 Sharing valuable content
🚗 Responding to user queries
🚗 Engaging in professional discussions.
Shares, likes, and comments are all important for disseminating a buzzword about your automotive local SEO company. Most importantly, even without paid ads, leverage social media platforms organically to
🚗 Bring traffic to your site
🚗 Expand your reach
🚗 Solidify your local presence.
Our expert says: “There are too many auto service shops benefiting from social media as a dynamic component of SEO strategy. Your task is to see how social media engagement works for the best market players and replicate their best practices to your venture.”
Deploying tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs among others is your way to extract invaluable insights into how effective is your car dealership website and user behavior. Be sure to closely monitor essential SEO metrics like
🚗 Website traffic (how many users visit your site organically vs. paid users)
🚗 Page views (what are the most viewed pages)
🚗 Bounce rates (how soon users are leaving your site)
🚗 Conversions (how many users convert into marketing qualified leads and end customers)
Pinpointing areas for improvement will help you enhance your website performance
🚗 Understanding visitor navigation patterns
🚗 Identifying drop-off points
🚗 Recognizing preferences
🚗 Optimizing content
🚗 Targeting keyword
🚗 Improving user experience.
You’ll gain a competitive edge by exploring the online presence of your local competitors. Be sure to monitor the SEO strategies and elements (i.e. websites, content, and backlink profiles) they deploy and adjust your marketing practices to the best marketing practices. With that, you will also spot the gaps in their SEO approach and seize opportunities for outperforming them.
Being aware of local competition will boost your positioning. Furthermore, knowing your competitors will help you
🚗 Stand out from the crowd on search engine results pages
🚗 Attract more customers
🚗 Solidify your standing as a lead local auto dealership spot.
Recently, we’ve analyzed core automotive benchmarks to give you an idea about the essential metrics in SEO marketing.
Given the growing popularity of voice search queries, be sure to optimize your content. Voice queries are mostly conversational reflecting how individuals naturally interact with digital assistants such as Siri or Alexa.
Our expert says: “To optimize for voice search, focus on long-tail, question-based keywords. Anticipate the common queries your audience might ask and create content that directly addresses these questions. The approach will help your car dealership website appear in voice search results. Furthermore, structuring your content to provide concise and informative answers will help position your auto service shop as a reliable source for users engaged in voice-assisted searches.
Take these auto local SEO recommendations to optimize your online space and make your car dealership shop more visible.
Whether you have an in-house marketing team or not, you’ll strategically benefit from leveraging 360 marketing. This will save you much time and effort because the implementation of an SEO is compliant with paid advertising, email strategies, and retention marketing.
With years of hands-on digital marketing experience, our expertise is beyond the scope of an automotive local SEO agency. We invite you to leverage the best automotive local SEO practices and feel the quality of the full-funnel digital marketing solutions.
We provide automotive local SEO service to the highest industry standards and with the utmost customization of your needs and individual preferences.
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Content Marketing Manager at Promodo
Taras has 16 years of hands-on copywriting experience overseas with 3000+ unique copies.
Accredited with Certificate of Proficiency in English (C2 level) by Cambridge University. Studied at Writing Launch Academy (United States) and owns an Academic Writing Certificate from Oregon University. Author of 12 dictionaries with Apriori Publishers.
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