According the 2016 NADA dealer study, fixed ops makes up almost half of a dealer’s gross profit. Given how much potential revenue is out there in search, it’s more important than ever to know how people are searching so your website content connects with the actual searches happening.

In the automotive industry, we are great about using words to describe a product that no one actually searches for. Think about it for a second. If you want to find a deal for shopping, will you search for a coupon or an offer? The same applies in automotive. A dealer thinks about the oil change as their “special” or “offer” but your customer is looking for the “oil change coupon”.

There is a great out there to help you understand how your customers are searching. First is Google Search Console. Search Console is an amazing tool to understand how people are searching in your area. Even more, in the queries section, you can filter out for everything that contains a certain word.

Once you log into search console, filter your queries to everything that contains “service”. As you see from this example, the keywords with high impressions and high clicks don’t contain “offers” or “specials”. One of the highest performing keywords is “service coupons”. These phrases and keywords should be the starting point for the content strategy on your site.  Once you understand how people search for service, filter your keywords for “oil”, “battery” and “tire” to get an idea of some of those major offerings. If you don’t see a lot of keywords show for that term, or none of them have a high impression, it means your website isn’t visible at all for those related terms. It is a sign you need to be focusing more on content for each offering.

Want to know more about how to build a service strategy that drives customers into your service department? Make sure to attend my session at DSES “Driving Service Customers from Your Website to Your Service Bay” and get all your information about the DSES speakers here.