Whether you manage a car and truck dealership, tire shop, or any other type of automotive business, search engine optimization (SEO) is a key element of every influencer marketing campaign.
In fact, digital marketing spending has now surpassed traditional advertising in many industries, including automotive.
Since 2015, automotive marketing experts have dramatically increased their SEO budgets, while spending on traditional channels like TV has remained flat or even reduce The entire automotive vertical.
Many shoppers start doing serious automated searches on sites like EveryCarListed.com or TrueCar and spend about 14 hours Research resellers, pricing, and reviews before contacting a business like yours.
More importantly, a complete 53% of mobile and desktop users click on organic search results instead of paid ads.
All these statistics make one fact clear: SEO is a strategy you can’t afford no Master in 2022.
However, automotive SEO is not a “set it and forget it” solution.
Google changed its algorithm 500 to 600 times a year.
To keep up with these changes and to be at the top of Google search results, you must know what factors are important.
Ready to get started?
Let’s dive into the most powerful SEO techniques for car dealerships and other auto businesses in 2022 – and discover how you can drive new leads directly to your website by incorporating these practices into your website Your Search engine optimization strategies.
1. Develop original automotive SEO content and incorporate rich text snippets
While a website can be a powerful tool for reaching customers outside a dealer’s designated market area (DMA), it can be tricky to figure out exactly how much content on every page of your website.
You may have heard that Google prefers pages that contain 1,600 words or more – While this is certainly true for longer content like blog posts, most visitors won’t read more than a few hundred words per page.
However, Google does prefer longer word counts for in-depth content like automotive blog posts.
While estimates vary, most experts agree that the ideal blog post length is between 1,500 and 2,400 words.
As a general rule, marketers agree that you can safely stick to around 1,600 words in length per post, giving or taking a few hundred words.
Posts of this length are generally preferable to shorter posts, as long as they are original, unique, and relevant (more on this in technique #2 below).
Surprisingly, this result holds true across all business types, including car dealerships and other auto companies, and across all geographies around the world.
When publishing your blog and setting up your pages, you need to make sure that your web developer or SEO expert adds rich snippets.
A rich snippet is code that tells Google what text to display when summarizing a page in search results.
Combined with modal markup (described in technique #4 below), rich snippets will ensure your page stands out from the crowd with a visually compelling message that will entice customers to click.
2. Incorporate video SEO into your marketing strategy
If you’re in the automotive industry, you know that video SEO is critical in attracting potential customers.
After all, car dealerships are one of the most popular categories on YouTube.
Since YouTube is the second largest search engine, make sure your Video is properly optimized appears in search results.
Research shows that internet users are far more likely to watch a video than to read a piece of text. By optimizing your videos for search engines, you can significantly increase your chances of being seen by potential customers.
Additionally, videos are also more likely to be shared on social media, meaning they have the potential to reach a wider audience.
Fortunately, there are some simple tips you can follow to improve your auto dealership video SEO.
- First, make sure your video is keyword-rich. Use relevant keywords in the title and description to help your video rank higher in search results.
- Second, keep your videos short and sweet. No one wants to watch a long and boring car commercial. Aim for two minutes or less.
3. Make sure your entire website loads beautifully on mobile
By 2022, more than 57% All online traffic (over 12 billion searches) comes from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
However, the average bounce rate is 51.6% are mobile users. This happens when a page doesn’t load properly on their device – and most customers never look back.
In other words, in 18,000+ car dealerships and other auto companies in the U.S., those that don’t take mobile search seriously are sacrifice More than half of the potential customer base.
That’s a big profit margin.
The good news is that you can gain market share for your auto business by deploying a beautiful mobile version of your website.
A skilled web developer can ensure that your website automatically detects mobile browsers, recognizes each user’s screen size, and adjusts each page to look appropriate for an individual’s display.
As more and more mobile users spend time on your website, your search rankings will soon rise.
4. Add Autodealer schema and declare your Google business profile
Lately, you may have noticed boxes with details about local businesses appearing at the top of your Google search results.
These business profiles are automatically retrieved from the company’s Google Business Profile And show a color photo of the business, a map with directions, and details like hours of operation, contact information, and even popular times to visit.
You can set up your own big color box by Claim your free Google Business Profile (GBP) – It only takes a few minutes.
Next, ask your web developer or automotive SEO specialist to add schema markup to the most visited pages on your site.
Schema markup code tells Google how to organize and display the information it finds on your site, such as images, street addresses, hours of operation, and rich text snippets (explained in technique #1 above).
In particular, make sure to add Auto Dealer Schedulewhich Google will use in conjunction with your Google business profile to create a showcase that grabs attention at the top of potential customers’ search results.
Once you’ve set up your Google Business Profile, remember to ask each happy customer for a positive review.
Positive reviews will Boost your local search rankingswhich provides valuable social proof for your profile on search pages and significantly increases the likelihood that your business will appear in search results on Google Maps and other GPS applications.
5. Use strategic relationships to build links
The more third-party sites linking to your pages, the more trust and relevance your business has with Google, especially if those inbound links come from relevant keywords.
Inbound links, also known as “backlinks,” are the cornerstone of an effective link building strategy and, when done right, can drive a lot of organic search traffic to your website.
The principle is simple: reach out to the owners of businesses and other organizations you work with and ask them to link to a specific page on your website.
For example, if you wanted to drive traffic to a page titled “Miami Florida BMW Dealer,” you could ask your local auto parts dealer to add a link to your website and explain how they would benefit from it.
Obviously, link building requires some skill.
start request inbound link from businesses and organizations in your locality Google takes their opinions very seriously when it comes to backlinks.
For example, consider requesting inbound links from local charities and sports teams you support, as well as vendors you work with.
In short, it doesn’t take much to update your 2022 automotive SEO strategy – just some original content, video and mobile optimization, Google business profile management, AutoDealer architecture, and link building.
Master these technologies and capture the largest share of the automotive market in your region.
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Featured Image: iQoncept/Shutterstock
