Car Dealer SEO: Driving Better Results

Running any kind of car dealership or car sales? You need to invest in car dealer SEO.

Think of it as a golden ticket to online success. With it, you can attract more customers and make better deals.

Getting car dealer SEO right involves a mix of local SEO, high-quality content creation for your website, and ticking various technical boxes. Get this right, and your sales could explode.

But don’t take our word for it: just look at the statistics. According to data, 92% of car customers research online before purchasing.

That’s a gigantic market you want to be a part of.

Your cars and deals might sell themselves, but that doesn’t matter if no one is finding your site.

If you want to improve your car dealership’s prospects, this guide will help. We cover:

• What car dealer SEO is
• Why car dealer SEO is beneficial
• How to do get car dealer SEO right so that you win

What Is Car Dealer SEO?

So, what is car dealer SEO?

Car dealer SEO is the same principles as any regular SEO work, but with a focus on what makes car dealerships unique.

For example, car dealers tend to do business locally. Therefore, car dealer SEO emphasizes the importance local SEO techniques (like Google Business Profiles) more – we’ll cover that as we go along.

It also focuses on image or video-led content production as a way to stand out in a crowded space, really selling your cars to enthusiasts and interested customers alike.

Gone are the days where customers simply stuck to whichever dealership was closest – with customers driving hard bargains and looking further afield than ever before you need to stand out.

How Car Dealer SEO Helps

Sure, search engine optimization matters for every business. But it’s more important for car dealers because of the industry’s unique challenges.

Alleviates High Competition

For example, the automotive sector is highly competitive. Research shows the U.S. alone has 18,000 garages, meaning that dealerships face competition wherever they go.

Here’s an example of the level of competition in Boise, Idaho:

A single street has more than a dozen dealers selling and repairing every brand available.

Fortunately, automotive SEO can help. Targeted campaigns can improve rankings for keywords with after specific characteristics (like those looking for Toyota parts only you offer).

Improves Image-Heavy Websites

Car dealer SEO also improves image-heavy automotive websites. Technical SEO can help correct lag on many automotive websites due to high-definition photographs of vehicles.

Here’s an example of an automotive firm in Boise with a fast-loading site with dozens of images on every page:

Source

It loads without delay, so Google puts this brand in first position on Maps, a testament to the value Google places on slick, efficient websites.

Improves Local Presence

Improving local presence is another benefit of car dealer SEO. Search engine optimization helps firms get onto Google’s Local-3-Pack for searches with commercial intent.

Here’s an example:

Again, Maverick Car Company is at the top and is the one most users will click. Below it, two other results also appear, propelled by their quality imagery and high review scores.

Struggling with bad reviews? You need to invest in reputation management SEO, which we’ve covered in our full guide.

Counteracts Physical Test Drive Declines

Finally, car dealer SEO can help counteract the decline of physical test drives. While some customers still demand these, many prefer to watch videos online, narrowing down their options before they even arrive at your dealership.

Here’s a great example from another Boise-based car dealer:

The video is informative but also aspirational. The content enhances the overall experience of the vehicle by adding drama and a narrative and it starts selling itself to the customer.

Google loves serving up engaging video content to searchers, so this is a vital investment if you’re taking car dealer SEO seriously.

It doesn’t just have to be serious videos though – just look at how many car dealerships are getting great traction and engagement from funny TikToks, Instagram Reels and the like.

Anything you can do to stand out is worth the effort!

How To Master Automotive SEO

Let’s say you already understand SEO basics. How can you master automotive SEO from here?

Generate Local Backlinks

Start by ensuring you have plenty of local backlinks to your site. Google uses these to determine your authority or how important other webmasters consider your pages.

Relevancy is critical for backlinks, which means that sites pointing to yours should be:

• Non-competitors in the automotive industry
• Local publications
• Automotive publications
• Event organizers and other businesses nearby
• Genuine local blogs

Gaining backlinks from these is far more valuable than paying for spammy links from shopping or fashion websites and PBNs (private blogging networks).

These days, you can check your existing backlink quality by using tools like Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.

Below, we’ve analyzed the backlinks pointing to one of the car dealerships in Boise, and you can see that the relevancy is low. Only 4% of the links are automotive.

This output explains why this specific dealer’s domain authority is only 16 (out of 100).

Fortunately, you can get agencies like fatjoeto build relevant backlinks for car dealerships. Writers place contextual links on relevant sites that cover vehicle and automotive news.

Prioritize Long-Tail Keywords

Next, explore whether you could prioritize long-tail keywords. Adding these can help you side-step more competitive phrases and win more organic traffic.

Long-tail keywords are typically any phrases users type into Google search with more than, say, three words in them, which can start quite broadly like:

• Toyota car spares
• Mitsubishi cabling for sale
• Lexus EV servicing for brakes

And can then become very targeted like:

• Used Toyota Camry less than 100,000 miles
• Mitsubishi cabling for sale late 2010 model
• Lexus EV servicing for brakes making screeching sounds

Usually, you will find that there are under-targeted keywords in your niche that you can add to your website’s content.

This activity tells Google you offer highly relevant results for its users, which pushes you up the rankings.

You can use the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool to see which keywords are low-competition in your area. Here’s an example for the keyword “Toyotas in Boise:”

You can see from this output that any dealership targeting long-tail keywords like “Toyota dealers in Boise” and “Toyota dealerships in Boise” will have a relatively easy time. The “KD” or “keyword difficulty” here is low, and the cost-per-click (CPC) is also reasonable, especially for a high-ticket seller.

You don’t typically need to hyper-target the really long tail examples, but you can tick them off by including relevant copy on your pages that hits semantically relevant content.

For example, adding some details of when people might need to replace their brakes to your brake parts page could help it pick up the “Lexus EV servicing for brakes making screeching sounds” longtail query.

Maximize Local SEO

We also suggest maximizing local SEO as a car dealer. Appealing to people who live nearby is critical, especially in isolated locations like Boise.

Local SEO has several goals:

• To provide you with a prominent position on Google Maps Search
• To enable you to get onto the Map Pack (discussed and shown above)
• To ensure users can see your reviews and contact details

Doing well with local SEO requires completing and finalizing your Google Business Profile. Completing the requirements tells Google that you are a real business and that it should start advertising you to local users. Then, over time, you can use local SEO to gain prominence compared to rivals and begin to stand out.

Collect Reviews

Collecting reviews is another strategy we suggest. The more five-star reviews you can accumulate, the more likely people will buy from you.

Reviews are critical because they act as “social proof.” Even if a prospect has never encountered you before, they are more likely to trust you if you have great reviews.

Check out the quality of the review scores in this Map Pack for the keyword “car dealer Texas”:

One of these firms has 7,900 reviews with a star rating of 5.0!

via GIPHY

You can collect reviews by:

• Providing compelling service to customers
• Sending them emails with links to place reviews
• Asking them for reviews when following up

According to Google Maps data, the more reviews a car dealer has, the more likely it is to rank high. First-position Google Business Profiles average over 800 reviews, while second-position results average over 750 reviews, so even tiny improvements can make a difference.

Use Internal Links

Effective car dealer SEO involves “on-page” SEO activities, including internal linking. Getting this step right tells Google more about your automotive site’s structure, allowing it to organize pages and promote the ones you want in SERPs.

The more complicated your site’s structure is, the more critical internal links become. Car dealerships usually have large sites with pages for each vehicle in their inventory, meaning this tip is particularly important for the industry.

When creating internal links, ensure that:

• Every page has other pages linking to it
• There is a hierarchy of pages, with category and home pages with the most links pointing to them
• There are no orphan pages with no links
• You provide breadcrumbs in the URL that Google can use to infer site structure

Here’s what the top result for the keyword “Texas car dealer” does:

You can see they start with the website address, then the “used” section, and then the specific make and model of the vehicle the user clicks. This approach makes it easier for Google’s bots to crawl the pages and index them so they appear in a suitable order in search results.

Use Digital PR

Finally, consider using digital public relations (PR) to promote your automotive dealership.

This method is like regular SEO link building on steroids.

Agencies like fatjoe connect you to dozens of media publishers who publish news stories about your business with links. Because their domains are high authority, these links offer tremendous SEO juice, allowing you to race into first place.

Here’s an example of the sort of publishers a single digital PR campaign can access:

Yahoo! News has a domain authority of 92–almost the highest you can get.

Now You Understand Car Dealer SEO

You should better understand how car dealer SEO works and why it matters.

Follow these SEO tips for your dealership to put yourself in the driver’s seat when it comes to outranking your competition.

But don’t worry if you’re just getting started. Agencies like ours can help you get the links and visibility you need on Google to thrive.