Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Title tags should be a part of the SEO strategy of every car dealership website.  Why?  Its contents not only provide the text for the blue-links shown on search engine result pages (meaning users use them to help decide whether or not to click onto your dealership’s site), but also tell search engines what each unique web page contains.

Many auto dealers leave this important SEO aspect up to their dealership website providers.  For those that choose to take a more proactive approach, here are some things you should consider:

Create an Accurate Description of the Page: The title tag for the page should reflect the text content that actually exists on the page, both for human and search engine purposes.  Besides, why would you want anyone landing on your vehicle details page if they weren’t interested in the vehicle merchandised in that content?  For a dealership, most pages should contain information about your dealership, your inventory, and the locations that you serve.

Use Brief, but Descriptive Titles: Google only shows the first 70 characters of your title tag, including spaces, in its results.  Search engines tend to give less value to the content in title tags the further away from the start of the tag the content.  70 characters isn’t a maximum length for the title tag, but know that, for SEO purposes, you may not see the same results, and there are decreasing returns for more keywords.

Avoid Filler Words: Why waste your limited title tag space with words like “the”, “and”, “but” or “or”?  Make sure your title tag still flows and makes sense, but remember that these filler words don’t add any SEO value, so use them sparingly.

Keep Them Unique: Each page on your site has unique content (or at least it should), so each page should have its own unique title tag.

It Needs To Make Sense: Title tags are a mix of SEO and describing the content on the page.  That means that keyword stuffing should absolutely not be done.  Both website visitors and search engine users will see this content, so make sure it accurately describes the content.

Title tags can be a great tool in your SEO campaign, when used properly.  Check with your website provider to make sure your dealership site is getting the full advantage of properly optimized title tags.

Google+ has been promoted lately by many in the SEO industry as a “must-do” for local businesses to help their search engine optimization efforts.  While an important tool for SEO moving forward, there are other areas your dealership can utilize to keep your search engine optimization on the cutting edge.

Here are a couple of additional things your car dealership should be keeping an eye on to keep your SEO efforts top-notch as the search landscape continues to change:

Monitor Your Best Referral Sites: Check your Google Analytics for the third party sites that are sending quality traffic to your site.  This means it is traffic that converts into leads, and eventually sales.  It could be local sites, social media portals, or even your third party lead providers.  Keep track of this information and nurture those sites (and your relationship with them).

Generate Quality Content: Good content is good content, regardless of which platform you put it on.  That means it’s important to make the content your dealership produces “shareable” to other platforms.  One way this can be done is to make sure you have social media sharing buttons on your blog.  Also, create content with your SEO keywords in mind in case they do get shared and spread through the Internet.

Mobile Technology: Mobile is big and getting bigger!  Its roughly 20% of a typical dealer’s traffic right now, and growing every month!  Find out what your consumers want by taking every opportunity to survey them — ask for suggestions in your newsletters, converse with them via social media, and track the existing mobile traffic to your site through analytics.  Right now is the time to ensure your mobile site is properly search optimized so your dealership doesn’t get left behind in the future.

Google+ is just one of many SEO extras your dealership should be focusing on moving forward.  Once your car dealer website is properly optimized, make sure your dealership or SEO provider is engaging search engines through as many mediums as possible.

Many dealerships focus their search engine optimization reporting on how well they are ranking for certain terms.  As long as they show up on Page 1 of Google’s search results, they are happy.  While search engine page ranking is an important part of every dealership’s online marketing efforts, what happens if your auto dealer website is showing up on page 1 for every keyword, but you aren’t seeing any traffic?

If you are seeing this happening at your dealership, here are some potential causes:

Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords: Your dealership can rank first for “blue widgets”, but that probably won’t help you with leads and sales for the cars on your lot.  Make sure you, your website provider, and your SEO provider are all on the same page when it comes to ranking for effective, relevant keywords.

Double Check Your SERP Listing: Your organic listing should have an informative title tag and meta-tag to help entice searchers to click onto your website.

The only way your dealership will know how much traffic, leads, and sales you are getting from your high ranking keywords is by tracking all of these metrics.  Make sure your website provider and/or SEO providers are measuring all of these stats and that you are double checking them with Google Analytics.

While (I hope) most dealership websites won’t be affected by this, Google has recently announced they will begin penalizing websites that have too many ads at the top.  It’s being called the “page layout algorithm” and affects sites that “don’t have much content ‘above-the-fold'”, according to Google’s Inside Search blog.

We’ve all clicked onto a site only to have to scroll down through the ads to actually find the content we are looking for.  This algorithm change will penalize sites with little or no “non-ad” content visible above the scroll line, so that they appear less frequently and with less prominence in Google’s search results.

So how does Google tell what is an ad and what isn’t?  They have a “variety of signals that algorithmically determine what type of ad or content appears above the fold, but no further details to share.  It is completely algorithmic in its detection…”.  Not surprisingly, Google isn’t giving many details.

Double check your landing pages, micro-sites, and any sites your auto dealer website links out to, to ensure that none are so ad-heavy that users have to scroll down to see any content.  Keep in mind that the screen may appear smaller to those on an iPad or other tablet computer.

Google recommends using their Browser Size tool to see how much content and ads are visible under various screen resolutions.

For the most part, search engine optimization (SEO) is a recognized necessity of running a successful auto dealer website.  Not just in the auto industry, but there are still some hold-outs that think building websites and content to be found by search engines is a little spammy.

According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam fighting team, his company does not consider SEO to be spam.  “We don’t consider SEO to be spam,” and SEO is a “valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines”.  While he does denounce black hat SEO tactics, Cutts emphasizes that Google’s goal is to return the best possible search results they can, and sites with quality SEO help them achieve that goal.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that SEO is spammy, direct them to this video, and then hopefully to your search engine optimized auto dealership website at the top of Google page 1.