Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a never-ending process, and it’s become a competition for many dealerships. When all of your competitors are doing it, not investing in SEO implementation is actually hurting your business.
At AutoJini, we want our dealerships to stand out to their customers. We want you to start off the new year with a strong SEO marketing strategy ready to go. That’s why we’ve compiled 9 different ways that you can improve your SEO for your dealership website and win the SEO game in 2020. Let’s get started!
1. Optimized Content
Content is the king of SEO, as you may already know. One of the most effective and easiest ways to improve your SEO is to optimize your web content. Choose a keyword or group of keywords for each page, and center your content around that keyword. Repeat the keyword and variations of that keyword up to 5 times (but don’t go over that because you may get penalized for spam.)
2. Backlink Building
Quality backlinks, or links from other websites that direct users to your dealer website, improve your domain authority by telling search engines that your website can be trusted. One way to build backlinks is to implement local SEO through managed local listings. Click here for a guide to get started.
3. Schema Markup
When you make a search on Google, you will usually see the name of the webpage, a link, and a brief description. Sometimes you will see a result that has the title, customer rating, a customized description, and a picture. This is called a rich snippet, which will stand out to online users. This can be done with Schema markup, which is the language of search engines that you incorporate in your website programming. According to SearchMetrics, websites that have Schema markup rank an average of 4 positions higher than those that don’t.
4. Page Speed
How fast does your page load? Did you know that your website speed is a factor in your Google ranking? A dealership site that loads quickly increases the time spent on the site, lowers your bounce rates, and leads to higher conversions. For every one second longer it takes your web page to load, your conversions drop by 7%. Learn more here.
5. Responsive Design
A responsive website design is one that adjusts automatically to fit any screen size. This is useful because your website will be mobile-friendly, tablet-friendly, and desktop-friendly. Whatever device your customers use to reach your auto dealer website, it will function properly and look great! Google prefers responsive websites, which will help your search engine ranking. A responsive website also loads faster, which improves your bounce rate and converts better.
6. Blogging
Running a blog on your dealership website boosts your SEO in several ways. First of all, it brings more traffic to your site by providing valuable content for your customers. Secondly, regular updates to your website via blog posts tell search engines that you are up-to-date and an authority figure in the automotive market. Here is a guide on 7 ways to optimize your blog posts for SEO.
7. Long-tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords consist of a string of 4 or more words that are specific to your niche or location. Instead of shorter keywords that are one or two words long and have higher competition, long-tail keywords are more likely to connect you with customers who are more likely to visit your website because their search is so specific.
8. Sitemaps
A sitemap is an important tool for anyone who owns a website. It is a map that shows you all the pages you have and where they are located. This is what you submit to Google to get your pages inspected and crawled. This is a more advanced SEO technique, so we’ve written a separate blog post about it here.
9. Metadata
Metadata refers to your page titles or title tags, meta descriptions, and meta tags that are embedded in the HTML of your website.
For your page titles, it is best to use your primary keyword first, followed by your secondary keyword, and then the name of your dealership. This helps because it tells search engines what your website or web pages are about, and it also tells users. You’ll want to make sure that your meta description also has your primary and secondary keywords, as well as the name of your dealership.
Start off the year right with a strong SEO marketing strategy and plenty of new customers on your lot. When you team up with AutoJini for your digital marketing campaigns or dealer website, you get all of our SEO expertise. Get started today by calling us at 515-232-2024 or sending us a message below.