Due to the high average check, car dealership customers carefully choose a specific seller. Therefore, you need to place the accents correctly. How? We tell you in the article
Expensive cost per click in context, a large number of aggregators in the search results – these and other factors make attracting customers through a car dealer’s website a difficult task. How to solve this difficult problem, how to promote a car dealership website and attract future car buyers – I will tell you later in this article.
Focus on the intent
The intent of a search query is the user’s intention with which he enters a certain key phrase into the search bar. This could be searching for an answer to a question, studying certain information, making a purchase, or performing any other action. Matching the landing page with user intent simplifies the task of getting good positions in the search results.
For such a niche as car sales, this is a very important point. The better the landing page is designed, the better we will be able to convert visitors who are already coming to us at a high price.
Optimization for intent is a separate big topic, so we recommend reading our material – “Search query intent: what it is and how to learn to determine it.”
Behavioral and commercial factors
The topic of matching site pages to intent is also closely related to work on improving behavioral factors on the site. After all, the better the user experience your visitors have, the more likely they are to submit a request.
For a detailed list of key behavioral factors, as well as tips on how to improve them, you can read this article on our blog.
Well, also a key area that needs to be paid attention to when working on a website for a business in the automotive niche is working on commercial factors. These are elements whose presence on the site is taken into account by Google search when ranking for commercial queries, for example:
- Detailed contact information (directions, addresses of branches, etc.);
- Presence in Google My Business and on Maps
- Well-designed page about the company
- Detailed information about payment and guarantees
- Width of the product matrix (number of car models sold), availability of prices on service pages, etc.
You can learn more about all this from the article in our blog “Master Etsy SEO 2023”. I repeat: when promoting any commercial resource, this is a really important area of work.
Website clustering: maximizing coverage
There are usually not many pages on a car dealer’s website, usually a couple of dozen. And this is a problem, since each page is an entry point from search for a potential visitor. Accordingly, the more there are, the greater the likelihood of receiving transitions from the PS at lower costs.
To increase traffic potential, it is necessary to cluster an extended version of the semantic core and create new landing pages for separate groups (clusters) of keywords.
Such work should be based on the study of user intent plus search demand. In the case of a car dealership, these could be landing pages under:
- specific car brands;
- different configuration options;
- body types;
- sign up for a test drive;
- credit calculator;
- comparison of complete sets/models;
- Maintenance services, etc.
The combination “specific service + car model” works well, for example, a landing page with the opportunity to get a Mazda CX5 on credit. And so on for all available models.
Local SEO is in the spotlight
Car dealerships are located mainly in big cities, and people often look for them in their own area. Therefore, when promoting a car dealer’s website, optimization for local search comes to the fore.
In this context, special attention should be paid to the services of the most search engines: creating company cards in Google My Business, as well as adding them to cards in both search engines. Presence on each of the services allows you to maximize your audience coverage in your target city.
There’s no such thing as too much content
Most car dealers don’t have a wide selection of models on their website, but when it comes to relevant content, the choice is even smaller. But a potential buyer certainly has many questions that he would like answers to before purchasing. And it is advisable that he receives them on your site, and not on the sites of your competitors
Here are some text ideas that can be used for car dealership websites:
- share what’s going on with you – a new range of cars, promotional offers, etc.;
- compare alternative models from a similar price category, suggest which option will be optimal and in what case;
- post photos and video reviews of models, test drives;
- help a potential client with a choice, and don’t just sell;
- Well, remember that content is not only texts, and the channel for its distribution can be not only a website.
Upgrading the link: putting the right emphasis
In such competitive niches, links are especially important, since they can become the very “golden share” that will help you gain a foothold in the top.
It is necessary to approach the formation of a link strategy competently in order to try to get not only link weight, but also other advantages:
- referral referrals;
- increasing brand awareness;
- Bonuses to the company’s reputation.
To do this, you should use such a method of obtaining links as crowd marketing, register your site in thematic directories and directories of city companies, publish articles in local media and strive to get links from other local resources.
Promoting a car dealership with such links works well not only for search results, but also provides bonuses for local SEO and brand awareness in general.
Not just a website: aggregators and other points of contact
Modern SEO is increasingly about search engine marketing and not just a set of website optimization activities. And in marketing, one of the most important tasks is to build points of contact with the target audience. This practice can be successfully applied when promoting a car dealership in search engines. Each of the pages on a third-party resource/platform that mentions your site is this point of contact and allows you to get additional rankings. In this context, special attention should be paid to aggregator sites, of which there are quite a few in the automotive sector. Presence on such resources allows you to get good positions due to high trust in them from search engines.
Let’s sum it up
As you can see, there are no secrets in promoting a car dealer’s website, even despite the high level of competition in this niche. It’s just that the work strategy should be comprehensive, not limited to just one of the directions. Both work on the site itself and work on external factors are equally important.
Due to the high average purchase price, car dealership customers carefully select not only the car model itself, but also a specific seller. Therefore, you need to place the right emphasis, including working on brand recognition. And local SEO is one of the key areas in this niche.
