Hello DrivingSales community, and welcome to another Whiteboard tutorial!

This week, we’re discussing SEO for your dealership’s website, and specifically what to work on when you’re partnering with an SEO vendor, or if you’re tackling SEO yourself, what outcomes to keep in mind as you’re breaking out your work into campaigns.

So, let’s start with the two main objectives for dealerships when looking at SEO as a marketing strategy, and then I’ll walk you through 3 different SEO campaigns you should be running on a monthly basis.

Generally speaking, when it comes to SEO for local businesses, we have two main objectives:

1. Direct customers who are researching cars to your dealership website, and present them with an easy to use and valuable shopping experience so much so that they schedule an appointment, call or visit your dealership to complete their purchase.

2. Maintain positive and controlled real estate on the first page of results for your brand. This means that when someone searches Google or Bing for your dealership, they see your website, your social profiles, reviews and even press mentions in the search results. They don’t see “_______ dealership sucks”.

From there, we take those outcomes, and work up SEO campaigns with those goals in mind.

SEO has always been sort of mystical, in that the average person doesn’t really know why Google displays certain websites on page one of the results, therefore there’s a lot of voodoo that goes along with SEO. Right? That’s the thought.

Well, even though we don’t have direct access to Google and don’t know exactly what their search algorithms are, we do know that they consider many different things when determining who ranks in the top ten results, and these ranking factors are generally best practices.

Following one particular best practice isn’t going to get your dealership ranking near the top, but if you follow these best practices, and you’re a legitimate business providing value to your customers, you can see some success with SEO.

So, who is this whiteboard video for?

If you’re working with an SEO vendor, this will help you understand what they’re working on, and help you both align on common goals.

If you’re tackling SEO yourself, this checklist will give you a framework from which to build your campaigns on.

So, knowing what our goals are with SEO, and whether you have a team you’re working with, or you’re creating these campaigns yourself, what are specific SEO tasks you can do each month to increase your dealership’s visibility in local searches?

I have 3 different campaigns, with 3 tasks for each that you can audit and complete on a monthly basis, which will all tie in to your core objectives and help you rank higher in the search engines.

Local SEO Checklist For Auto Dealerships

First, we want to audit the technical aspects of our website, that can help people navigate and find what they’re looking for, and also help the search engines crawl and index the pages.

So there are a number of things we can look at from a technical SEO standpoint, but I think here are the most important factors. First, we want our business name, address and phone number to be listed either in the footer or the header of the website, and also on the Contact Us page. Also, we want it to be complete and consistent across the site.

Next, we’ve got to make sure that the content on the website is unique. A lot of times, dealerships may just duplicate content across the pages, for vehicle descriptions for example.

Also, make sure the URLs of the website match the site’s hierarchy. My example here is lexusutah.com. If you’re searching through the new car inventory, it would be lexusutah.com/new/. If you’re looking at a particular model, say the LC500, that vehicle is under the new car folder.

The 2nd SEO campaign to focus on is the business citations. Now a citation is any mention of the dealership’s Name, Address and Phone Number on the web.

This can be in directories like Yellowpages.com or Yelp, or Facebook, blogs and local news sites.

First, we want to run an audit of our dealership’s citations, just to see what needs to be fixed. This can be done for free using a tool from Moz. You can check it out at moz.com/local/search.

What we want to do next is after we have a list of our business’ broken, missing and incomplete citations, is to create a plan to fix them.

This can be done through a number of tools or services, or can even be done manually.

The goal here is that the more citations your dealership has, and the more consistent and complete those citations are across all these sites, the more likely your dealership will rank higher for these local searches in Google.

Also, we want to make a plan to build new citations on sites and directories that don’t have your information.

There again are a few tools that can do this, like Moz Local or Loganix.

The third ongoing SEO campaign we want to look at is our dealership’s reputation. Google wants to give preference to local businesses who have a good online reputation in the form of reviews and ratings, in addition to good technical site structure and citations that we just discussed.

So let’s talk about some things you can do to stay proactive with your dealership’s online reputation.

First, is displaying reviews and testimonials across the website.

Not only is this unique content, but it’s also going to give credibility to those brand new visitors to your site that maybe don’t know much about your business.

Second, is asking customers for reviews. Now, Google will display a star rating next to your listing based on the number of Google Reviews your dealership has. So one thing we can do is email our customers who have Gmail addresses, and ask them to review the dealership on Google. That’s an easy thing to do, and it will go a long way in adding more Google Reviews to our business listing.

Third, there’s always a possibility that a dealership can get negative reviews, so we want to make sure we’re being proactive with those negative reviews and responding to them in a professional and transparent manner, and also thanking those who leave positive reviews.

Now, all these strategies should be ongoing each month, meaning you’re auditing where you’re at with technical structure of the site, how the citations are being fixed and built, and the dealership’s online reputation, but you’re also being proactive and building new campaigns around improvement of each of these metrics.

Alright, we covered a lot of information today, and I’m eager to hear your specific SEO plans and which one of these strategies you’re going to be tackling first, so please leave your comments.

"I never lost a burger sale over price..."

Gary Vaynerchuk and Jared Hamilton sit down at the DrivingSales Executive Summit to talk about the future of the internet and how social media has changed the way business is conducted online.

DrivingSales Executive Summit 2011 Keynote Gary Vaynerchuk shares a story of how a signed Jay Cutler jersey resulted in a $1,000 purchase of wine.

Have you been to any of these?

1. Ford's Garage, Fort Myers, FL

Where: Mostly in Florida, but also in Dearborn, MI

2. Sparky's Garage, Dillon, MT

Where: 420 E Poindexter Street

3. Hozy's Grill, Santa Paula, CA

Where: 1760 East Lemonwood Drive

4. Retro Bar & Grill, New York, NY

Where: 150 Delancey Street

5. Flo's V8 Café, Disneyland, CA

Where: In Cars Land

6. The Garage Grill, Draper, UT

Where: 1122 E. Draper Parkway

7. Billy Blanco's Burger and Taco Garage, Park City, UT

Where: 8208 Gorgoza Pines Road

As an Internet Marketing Manager, you know how important it is to drive quality leads to your dealership through SEO, social media and paid sources. Here are 12 videos from Moz you should plan on watching to help boost your efforts.

1. 10 Things that DO NOT (Directly) Affect Your Google Rankings

In the world of SEO, there are a lot of different paths you can take to achieve more search engine traffic and higher rankings, but these are ten metrics you shouldn't be worrying about.

Watch here.

2. 3 Tactics for Hyperlocal Keywords

Learn how to find those valuable, hyperlocal search terms that can connect your dealership with the right people.

Watch here.

3. Why Every Website (Not Just Local Sites) Should Invest in Local Links and Citations

Every dealership should be pursuing citations and local links, and here are the steps to discover those opportunities.

Watch here.

4. Why Listing Accuracy is Important

The accuracy of your dealership's citations (local listings) can either help you get business, or become a barrier to being discovered.

Watch here.

5. How to Research the Path to Customer Purchase

What's the journey your customers take between awareness and conversion? By understanding this path, you'll identify what content your dealership needs to create, how to position your store, and how to convert your visitors into buyers.

Watch here.

6. Why You Need to Find All Your NAP Variations Before Building Local Citations

One of the most important ranking factors for local businesses is the accuracy and consistency of their citations, and here's how to discover all your dealership's variations.

Watch here.

7. Remarketing to People That Have Already Visited Your Website

People are visiting your dealership's website, but are they falling through the cracks? This video explains how to get back in front of them.

Watch here.

8. Customer Journey Maps

Mapping out your customer's journey includes identifying all the highs and lows in between their first interaction and the last.

Watch here.

9. Barnacle SEO: Leveraging Other Sites' Rankings

Are there bigger websites in your local market that are outranking you for certain terms? Here's how your dealership can be like a barnacle on a big ship.

Watch here.

10. Taking Advantage of Google's Bias Toward Hyper-Fresh Content

Learn how to produce fresh content on your dealership's website without risking penalties.

Watch here.

11. How Business Listings Are Made

What if your dealership has incorrect information in Google's search results? Here's how you can fix your dealership's local information.

Watch here.

12. Evolution of the Local Algorithm

What factors specifically affect the rankings of local businesses in Google? Here's what you need to know, and how Google's local search has evolved over the years.

Watch here.

Think you can identify these cars from their headlights? Test your luck by taking this quiz.

You finally did it!

You spent a good chunk of your afternoon writing the ultimate post for your DrivingSales Community blog.

You've got stats, research and quotes.

Even a couple of charts for extra context and value.

You hit "Publish" and wait...

"I bet I'll get 1,000 views by Monday."

When you check the stats on Sunday afternoon, you see a fraction of those views.

What gives?

If you're reading this, you're probably wondering how you can get more visits to your DrivingSales blog.

We held a webinar on this very subject in March, and had some great discussions around best practices when it comes to driving traffic and engagement on blog posts.

Here are the videos from that webinar, and we'd love for you to weigh in with your own best practices in the comments below.

What Is A DrivingSales Blog?

How To Post A Blog On DrivingSales

How To Plan The Best Topic For Your Blog Post

How To Write An Interesting And Click-Worthy Title

8 Best Practices To Follow When Writing A DrivingSales Blog Post

How To Promote Your Blog Post To Drive Traffic And Engagement

What are some traffic-boosting tactics that have worked for you? Share your best practices in the comments!

"Local SEO" means improving the online visibility of your dealership to local customers.

Your store’s accessibility and visibility during the holiday season is especially important, since many of your customers are already looking for deals and offers.

Dealerships should pay particular attention to their local SEO, to ensure their stores are visible in the search results and Google Maps.

Here are 5 ways to improve your local ranking:

1. Verify your business location

Claiming and managing your business in Google helps you control the information about your company that customers can see. You can do this through your Google My Business account (https://business.google.com).

2. Make sure your business info is complete and accurate

Log in to Google My Business and ensure the information about your business is up-to-date and complete. This includes your business' name, address and phone number, as well as contact information and photos of the interior and exterior. If you have special holiday hours, make sure these are updated in your business profile as well.

3. Include photos

Speaking of photos, there should be high quality photos of your dealership, including the exterior, inventory, your logo, and interior shots.

4. Review and respond to customer feedback

Reviews are a big factor to your company's local search visibility, so take the time to respond to customer reviews (good and bad) and give them an easy way to leave their feedback.

5. Sync your business info

Make sure the name, address and phone number of your business are exactly the same on both your website and your Google My Business profile. This includes variations of your physical address, as well as abbreviations in the business name. This great tutorial from Whitespark explains how to audit your dealership's citations.