Can You See You?

If you are a surviving or thriving car dealership chances are you are doing some SEO.  All too often to many dealers sign the contract, but don’t really understand what they are getting.  I get so frustrated because I feel like dealers are over charged and misled when it comes to SEO and digital marketing in general.

What you should know, SEO is by far the most cost-effective marketing your dealership will do.  If it isn’t then something is wrong.  The right SEO is the most targeted marketing opportunity to the low funnel buyers.  We will get more into the ins and outs later but this is what you should do first…

When you and/or your vendor are creating your SEO strategy first research search terms that are most relevant to your dealership, your location, your services and your inventory.  Use tools like Google Keywords/Adwords to make sure these search terms and combinations of them are widely used.  The search terms should then be prioritized based on your sales objectives.  For example, if you are a dealership in the suburb of Chicago, IL called Elgin, and you want to increase your new Chevy business in Elgin and Streamwood your search terms should match the brand and the local cities you want to target.  A search term may be Chevy dealer near Streamwood.

Then establish what search terms you currently are ranking well with.  You can’t do this just by sitting at your computer and typing in the keywords you would use and see where your URL is.  The reason is because Google is all about relevancy so if you have been to your URL many times and then type in a relevant keyword to your URL your URL will rank higher naturally for you.  You want to use clean IPs if possible, just like a new customer doing a search.  Your vendor should provide you with a list of search terms and where your URL ranks on them for all the major search engines. Google represents about 67% of all searches so be sure to not forget about Bing, Ask or Yahoo.  This knowledge will allow you to see what holes must be filled and, also, save you money in the long run.

The last part of the analysis is to look at the competition and where they rank.  Car dealerships have to get their share from somewhere and sometimes it is about stealing it from the competition.  By knowing what rankings your competition has you will better understand how far or not so far you have to go.  You will also have created a baseline so that you can continue to monitor your competitions SEO efforts.  If they are asleep at the wheel, no pun intended, then you can move your strategy from maybe sales to service.  The opposite can happen too.  Maybe your competition is having a lot of success with their SEO rankings and you may have to do more or try something new.

There is a lot that goes into SEO but the first thing every dealer should do is challenge their vendor to establish a base line of where you currently rank and then monitor the results on the same baseline going further to see if they are successful.  Remember you are the one writing the check so you are the one to hold them accountable.  Define it up front.  Make sure you can see the work.  Then work with your vendor to create success.