The Importance of SEO to Auto Dealerships
Paid advertising on search engines can be a valuable asset. If your dealership’s website isn’t showing up on the first page of relevant search engine result pages – SERPs – then running a paid advertising campaign is a surefire way to ensure that your dealership is visible at the top of SERPs. But increasingly we are seeing that consumers are more likely to click organic listings than advertisements. According to exteresauto.com 87% of all clicks in search engines come from organic listings. If you are a dealership and you haven’t looked in to Search Engine Optimization – SEO – then you could be losing valuable leads every time your website isn’t showing up in relevant SERPs. Here are a few basic SEO tips to get you started:
Keywords
The keywords that you use on your website are often the first ingredient in getting started with SEO. The keywords you use will greatly impact how people searching for your dealership will find your site. For example if you are a Buick dealer in Memphis one of the keywords that you might use could be “Memphis Buick”.
If you aren’t sure what keywords to use in your SEO efforts, there are a few tools available to help you conduct keyword research. Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool is a great place to start keyword research. Utilizing this tool, you can search for keywords by using your website, key terms or phrases that you want to use – like “Memphis Buick” – or by searching by category. The keyword tool will then return a list of suggested keywords, and from there you will be able compile a list of keywords that you will want to use in your SEO efforts.
Incorporating specific keywords across your website is the first step you should take in making your site better visible in SERPs. Making sure that every page is properly optimized with the correct keywords is a major step in getting more organic clicks and driving more traffic to your website.
Content Creation
Content creation is another SEO tactic that will make your site more visible in SERPs. Creating content for your website is another avenue where you can target keywords and include them in the content. Like the example above, if you are a Buick dealer in Memphis then creating content that includes the keyword “Memphis Buick” in your content will help further your SEO strategies.
But content creation is more than just writing articles saturated with specific keywords. In fact many search engines penalize websites for too much keyword saturation. The key to content creation, according to the blog iblogzone.com, is freshness. Many search engines look for “fresh” and current content. Making sure that you are updating your content frequently, with different information and different content dissemination methods – like videos, infographics, videographics, images or written articles is a very important aspect of content creation.
Now, what constitutes freshness and how often you want to create new content differs from site to site, but a creative and consistent content creation strategy will improve your standings in SERPs.
Site Experience
One of the most important, and sometimes most overlooked, aspects of an SEO strategy is your site’s architecture. Does it take your site a long time to load? Are there any broken links? Is it easy to navigate? And most importantly can search engine bots crawl your site? If your site is not performing optimally this can lead to higher bounce rates – people entering your site and then leaving without clicking to other pages – and fewer conversions – i.e. leads. Having optimized content is important but without a fully functioning site your SEO efforts will be moot.
Conclusion
SEO is an important, and often overlooked, component of a successful digital marketing campaign. SEO doesn’t have an immediate effect and a solid SEO plan could take months to build your site’s authority within search engines. Given the time that SEO takes to be successful, many people choose to forego it altogether. This is a mistake. According to a study done by exteresauto.com 84% of new car shoppers use search engines in their car shopping process, an all-time industry high. If your website isn’t showing up in relevant SERPs then you are losing out on valuable leads.
Sunrise Buick GMC at Wolfchase sells new & pre-owned Chevrolet, Buick and GMC vehicles, service & parts. We also house a large variety of pre-owned vehicles from other manufacturers. If you are searching for Buick dealer using keywords Buick Memphis or Memphis Buick, you should visit our dealership.
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