Automotive SEO Tips

From running a vehicle dealership or supermarket to providing car finance, whatever area of the automotive industry your business is based in it needs to have a strong SEO strategy in place. You don’t need a big budget to compete either, and there are many ways to drive the right traffic to your site.

The auto market is changing, with more and more car buyers researching their next vehicle online, comparing new and used models along with insurance to find the best option and even booking in viewings and test drives for their next car. With a market growing competitively, these are some of our SEO tips for any automotive business.

Set an Appropriate Domain Name

If you’re just setting up your website or are looking to change its address then it is important that you choose an appropriate domain name, as this can improve organic rankings. Combining the name of your automotive business with its location, if appropriate, and ‘car finance/supermarket’ relating to the business model should provide a boost to rankings. Avoid sub-domains and microsites as when it comes to your SEO strategy this will require additional link building at an extra cost and can reduce performance.

Create Useful Car Content

There are various reasons the content on your automotive site needs to be useful:

• It will provide a genuinely useful source of information for visitors
• Increases the likelihood of securing organic, good quality links
• Avoids falling into black hat SEO tactics of keyword stuffing and irrelevant keyword stuffing, instead ensuring search engines pick up on the content
• Grows the potential of visitors to your site making a purchase

Useful content means it needs to be relevant to the automotive industry and your products or services. The information provided needs to serve a purpose, usually to inform the audience, which is why covering recent news stories, local and national events, changes to your car business and more is advisable. Regularly updating your site with useful, unique content will increase your site’s power too.

Within the content it is vital, you include a clear title, purpose and structure so that it can be read in depth but also scanned. It should clearly inform, answering any possible questions and include a call to action which can be tracked, along with relevant keywords.

Focus on Automotive Keywords

Use Google Keyword Planner to begin researching relevant keywords around your industry. A good strategy is to focus on long tail and local keywords first, especially for smaller businesses, as it can take a long time to rank for common phrases such as ‘used cars’. For example, if you run a car dealership in Hackney, London, it is more relevant to target phrases such as ‘used car dealership in Hackney’ than ‘second-hand cars’, as this is what your target market will be searching.

Where possible, include the targeted keywords in page titles, URLs, title tags and meta descriptions. This will all help boost organic rankings. Don’t keyword stuff pages though, ensure they fit in and read naturally, still providing a useful service.

Acquire Quality Links

Hopefully, the quality content featuring relevant keywords will begin to organically drive some traffic and boost rankings, leading to natural links emerging. Links power your rankings. A good way to easily secure some is by searching for your auto business and seeing what already exists, requesting links to be inserted into existing mentions. Asking for links through business contacts, local websites and directories and trade associations is another way to make a start.

For more help and advice creating an effective SEO strategy for your automotive business, our automotive SEO and PPC services can help you out.