We Know Local SEO, Do You?
Local SEO is critical for getting your dealership the best visibility in local searches. In fact, boosting your site’s local SEO signals will give your dealership more visibility than solely focusing on organic SEO. That’s where DealerOn comes in. Because, honestly, we’re pros at this.
If your dealership wants more organic traffic, then your website needs local SEO signals that only DealerOn can provide in order to show up in the search results when Google is picking the very best local sites to display.
But we don’t just mean slapping your city’s name on your website. DealerOn is an expert with this complex subset of traditional SEO and we’ve got a killer strategy to prove it.
For some serious education (and some nerdy details), keep reading.
Traditional vs. Local SEO
When most people think of SEO, they’re thinking about organic SEO, which is the practice of optimizing websites to influence their relevancy in search engines like Google. Local SEO is a more complex subset of traditional SEO, and the whole goal is to optimize a website’s relevancy for a particular geographic area. Like Dallas, or Chicago, or your local city.
For example, if a dealership wanted to rank for the search term “new honda accord,” they would use traditional SEO best practices to make sure their website was showing up in Google’s search results. But Google is now starting to consider a website’s “local signals” and subsequently showing users local results.
That means that searching for “new honda accord” will turn up local dealerships. So how do you optimize your website’s local signals? We thought you’d never ask.
Four-Point Plan of Attack
Since search engines like Google are getting smarter and smarter, they know that people are looking for local results when typing their searches into their phone or computer — even when people aren’t specifying a city in their search. Just trying Googling “pizza delivery” and you’ll see what we mean.
We don’t believe in generic, one size-fits-all strategies. We don’t even have generic employees (have you seen our videos [link to blog/workshop wednesday page]?). We stay on top of the SEO industry and we’ve got a four-point plan of attack for your dealership’s local SEO strategy.
On Site Signals
Your on site signals are all the things on your site being optimized for local search results. This will include the content on your site, your blog, as well as the dealership’s name, address, and your phone number.
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Off Site Signals
Links are the biggest part of your off site signals, but so are your listing sites, like Google My Business. Getting active in your local community is another type of “signal” that doesn’t require a computer to optimize.
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Social Signals
Your social activity is more important than you think, which means that people pay attention to those posts your dealership is putting out. If they’re all about your new financing options & inventory, well, that’s not very social is it?
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Review Signals
Since people trust reviews more than they trust businesses (in general), it’s crucial to have positive reviews from varied sources. If you’ve got that one family member who posts 20 different reviews for your dealership’s Facebook page, tell them to retire their well-worn keyboard, because you’ve got a new technique.
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A Winning Strategy
Getting noticed online is hard enough with all the competition on the internet, but it’s also a never-ending King of the Hill battlefield. Clients that use our automotive SEO services get an upper hand because we not only have an elite staff that’s hard at work to be the best in the industry, we also have a proven strategy that gets results.
Local SEO: On Site Signals
Optimizing Your Website for Local
Your digital marketing strategy needs to include the local SEO techniques that only DealerOn can provide. Before your dealership spends money on a stack of blog posts, a pile of links, or anything else, read about our take on local SEO.
Since Google shows people local results when they search for new and used vehicles, doing local SEO (and doing it right) is absolutely vital to your success.
And you want to sell more cars, right?
Content
Content is king. The content you put on your website (hence, on site signals) is the most important element of local SEO, so let’s talk about how to do it right. DealerOn’s local SEO strategy is to provide our clients with excellent content that’s optimized for local signals.
And since the idea is to boost local relevance, your website content ought to have local significance. Practically speaking, this means that your dealership’s blog will cover interesting things happening in your community as well as local event. In other words, it won’t just be copied & pasted from Car & Driver.
Long gone are the days when a carpet-bomb approach to web content actually worked — quality over quantity, every single time.
But content is more than just writing blog posts and engaging descriptions about your inventory; it’s also your website’s headings, the page URLs, meta descriptions, and other places where text is used to convey your dealership’s location information.
Name, Address, Phone Number
Showing up for local search results through Google is more involved than just making sure your address is spelled correctly (though that’s important, too). Your website also needs uniform Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) information coded in a certain way, then placed in just the right spot.
Content Silos for Multiple Locations
If your dealership has several locations, especially in the same metroplex, DealerOn uses the “content silo” strategy to create localized, unique content for each rooftop. All of your dealerships live on the same domain, but Google is able to direct internet leads to their relevant location.
That’s the kind of power that DealerOn brings to your local SEO game, and our clients’ websites consistently outperform their competition.
Our Research, Your Results
We like to educate dealers on best practices when it comes to SEO and all things digital marketing, because it’s an ever-changing industry and you need to be ahead of the curve, or else fall behind. Our dealerships know they’re getting award-winning service, and we don’t mind sharing our knowledge or success.
Read about Off Site Signals next →
Local SEO: Off Site Signals
Local SEO That’s Out of Site
When the world went online, so did sales and marketing. Auto dealerships understand this all too well, as customers are regularly using their phones and computers to search for & price out their next vehicle. Search engines like Google are also changing their game, showing local results to people searching for things like vehicles, service & repair, financing options, and the list goes on.
Traditional SEO may have gotten things started when it comes to internet marketing, but local SEO is the way your dealership will reach potential customers in your geographic area looking for a new vehicle. DealerOn recommends having a solid strategy for your optimizing your website’s local signals (link to On Site signals).
Of course, when it comes to optimizing your website’s signals, there’s quite a bit of work to be done off site. That is, these are things your dealership can be doing to increase its relevancy in local search results that involve signals pointing to your location.
Links
Within off site signals, links pointing back to your dealership are an ever-important component. The simplest explanation is that it lends credibility to your dealership if another website is willing to direct internet traffic towards it.
Much like with your online content, though, your site won’t be judged by how many links you have, but rather their overall quality and authority.
Dozens of questionable sites pointing to your dealership doesn’t help anyone. While a lot of digital marketing companies have gone after big-name websites for big-name links, that strategy is difficult and time consuming. Our strategy is to focus our efforts on getting quality links from local businesses instead. Frankly, you’d be better off with a link from your local tire shop than spending time & money to get a link from Firestone or Goodyear.
Citations
Your off site signals also include your citations across all directory sites, like YP (Yellow Pages) or similar listing services. In other words, your contact information. This is crucial for your dealership to get right. Having inaccurate and inconsistent citations will kill your online traffic in its tracks because Google won’t even be able to tell where your business is located.
Part of your dealership’s citations also come from your Google My Business listing, where it’s critical to have consistent and accurate information.
Get Involved with Your Community
Often overlooked is actual involvement in your community. A dealership that’s actively involved & and investing in their local city is one that’s well-known — both around town and online. Sponsoring a local sports league or donating to charity is just one of many, many ways to step up your community involvement.
Our Research, Your Results
We like to educate dealers on best practices when it comes to SEO and all things digital marketing, because it’s an ever-changing industry and you need to be ahead of the curve, or else fall behind. Our dealerships know they’re getting award-winning service, and we don’t mind sharing our knowledge or success.
Read about Social Signals next →
Local SEO: Social Signals
Social Media For Dealerships
DealerOn not only provides Elite SEO service for your website, but our strategy doesn’t stop with just your site. If your dealership wants to be visible when search engines like Google are displaying local results to potential customers, then your social media presence is going to be important.
This is different from on site and off site signals, which are larger parts of our local SEO strategy.
Your dealership’s social media activity should be, well, social.
It sounds easy, but you might be surprised at how much social media shared by dealerships does little more than drive potential leads further away.
Now, social media isn’t an element of SEO, per se, but it’s vital that your customers have a good impression of your dealership, and most of your customers are using social media daily.
Use Social Media to Be Social
DealerOn’s employees are pros at this, don’t worry, but it requires a little work from you as well. In an age where self-promotion is only a few taps, clicks, or keystrokes away, it can be tempting to use your social media to do nothing but share links to your inventory or promote your dealership.
No offense, but that’s a little bush-league. People want to see interesting things when they log onto social media like Twitter and Facebook, so share interesting and fun things!
Of course, this requires your dealership to have some personality. Nobody ever logged onto Facebook to check out financing options on the new Ford F-150 4X4.
Consistency in posting to your various social media is also a key element in optimizing your social signals, as well as remembering to connect with your local community’s events.
Get Out There and Meet People!
Interacting with your customers social media is a key element in maintaining relationships, and it can make the difference between being a faceless entity and an inviting dealership with a personality.
We may be nerds over here at DealerOn, but we’re pretty cool nerds, and we’ll make sure your dealership’s personality shines through your social media accounts.
Our Research, Your Results
We like to educate dealers on best practices when it comes to SEO and all things digital marketing, because it’s an ever-changing industry and you need to be ahead of the curve, or else fall behind. Our dealerships know they’re getting award-winning service, and we don’t mind sharing our knowledge or success.
Read about Review Signals next →
Local SEO: Review Signals
A Good Review is Worth 1,000 Words
It’s no surprise to anyone that your customers are doing a lot of research before walking into your dealership. In fact, research shows that 4 out of 5 people are dissuaded by negative reviews, and nearly 90% of people trust a review the same way they’d trust a family member.
When your customers are finding your dealership online, what are they reading? Do you have any reviews for them to read?
Unfortunately, this is the part of local SEO that often gets pushed to the wayside as an afterthought. But if you’ve worked with DealerOn, you’d know that we not only help manage your dealership’s reputation, but we cultivate good reviews organically and surgically respond to the negative ones. And, no, turning your computer off isn’t how you get rid of a negative review.
It’s simple to understand how on site signals, off site signals, and even your social media signals are important, but it’s not always clear why a review can make a big difference in your local relevancy in the search engines.
Good Reviews
Having good reviews for your dealership will not only boost sales (obviously), but it helps your local SEO signals as well. Google likes to show people the businesses with the best ratings from honest folks online.
Translation: having good reviews can help your website’s visibility in local search results and will most definitely entice potential customers to click through to your website.
Focusing on Google Reviews before moving on to other sites will help your dealership get star ratings, which are enticing to people browsing the internet for their next vehicle.
And getting those positive reviews doesn’t have to be difficult, DealerOn has several proven methods for encouraging customers to share their experience on Yelp or other review sites. Our experts also monitor sites like Facebook, Yelp, Google Reviews, DealerRater, Cars.com, Edmunds, BBB, and others so that all reviews are immediately addressed, whether good or bad.
Hey, we even have a private form that we redirect unhappy customers to so that they have a chance to vent their frustrations and your dealership has a chance to hit another home run.
Here’s a freebie tip: When it comes to tooting your own horn, trade in your “Testimonials” page on your website and link to your review sites. Honesty is the best policy, after all, and customers want unbiased reviews of your dealership before they decide to invest their time and money.
Bad Reviews
People are skeptical, we get it, and they want to make sure they’re getting a good deal before investing so much as a visit to your showroom. If your review signals are weak, or you’re only getting the occasional negative review when the coffee in the lobby wasn’t hot, your dealership needs help or it will be a digital step behind the dealerships that are getting positive reviews.
And responding to negative reviews shouldn’t be overlooked. With the right tone and tact, your dealership can redeem themselves in the eyes of your customers. Hey, DealerOn worked hard to get where we are today, and we’re not about to let you down now.
Our Research, Your Results
We like to educate dealers on best practices when it comes to SEO and all things digital marketing, because it’s an ever-changing industry and you need to be ahead of the curve, or else fall behind. Our dealerships know they’re getting award-winning service, and we don’t mind sharing our knowledge or success.
