Long-Tail Keywords for Auto Dealerships

It’s pretty clear that consumers are becoming more sophisticated in their search engine usage and that car dealer websites should be getting a higher percentage of their search traffic from long-tail keywords over time.  What isn’t always clear is how to determine which long-tail keywords your car dealer websites should try to rank for.

Your auto dealer website provider should be able to track, monitor, and optimize your website for the proper long-tail keywords.  Ask your account manager to see a report of your top keyword phrases and if they’re generating leads.  You should understand what percentage of your total car dealer websites traffic (visits) and conversions (leads) come from natural search and from your branded keywords vs. your platinum phrases vs. your longtail keywords.  If you cannot get this information readily yourself, or if you have a fairly “hands-off” website vendor, here are some tips on how to
research the best long-tail keywords for your dealer website:

Analytics Software–This could include either a third party analytics program or the one that is included in your website package.  You should be able to track which keywords led to which visits, leads, and sales.  This will allow your dealership to focus on the long-tail keywords that are actually leading to dealership sales.

Check Search Engine Rankings for Primary Keywords–Type the keywords that your dealership website already ranks well for, and take a look at the keywords around it.  For example, when I searched for “Nissan Dealer”, the descriptions included “Nissan car dealer,” and “local Nissan dealership.”  These are potential longer-tail keywords that your potential customers could be searching for.  Play around with this technique, but be careful not to go too far.  Don’t try to optimize your dealer website for unrelated terms.

Talk to a car dealer online marketing expert.  At DealerOn.com we have a team of online marketing specialists who can readily help you size your local search market and can quantify and focus your keyword process to maximize your search exposure.  We do this as a service to the auto dealer industry.

Tags: keywords, search engine optimization

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Car Dealer Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.