Making the choice to hire a professional search engine optimizer can be a difficult one.
There is no denying that you need search engine optimization, but making the jump from DIY SEO to hiring a professional to do it seems like a big step, especially for a small dealership.
Here’s the truth: all of the time and money you are spending right now trying to get your automotive SEO to work could be saved if you hire an automotive SEO professional, and your search engine optimization will probably be more effective, as it is being run by someone who really knows what they are doing.
Here are a few more reasons you can benefit from hiring a professional for your automotive SEO:
1. Avoid penalties.
Novices may find that their websites are slapped with a flag or a penalty and they may not even know why or how to fix it.
Chasing some SEO miracle is the leading cause of being penalized by Google, and repairing your website after it has been down-ranked or even removed from the search results altogether can be time consuming and stressful.
Working with a professional can not only help you avoid getting these penalties, he can also help you fix your ranking if you already have one.
2. You won’t have to spend your time trying to learn SEO.
Search engine optimization sounds simple when you first start it, but the deeper and deeper you go down the search engine rabbit hole, the harder and harder it is to make sure your dealership’s website adheres to the best SEO standards and that you have a complete understand of what those standards are and why you need to adhere to them.
This is, on the other hand, a search engine optimizer’s entire job.
They know what the most important aspects of SEO are going to be for your dealership, how to employ them, what updates need to be made and when, and what you really need to do to rank your website.
3. You have been doing SEO but you still aren’t visible.
If you have had a search engine optimization in place for six months but your dealership still isn’t showing up when interested parties search your keywords, you might not have been aggressive enough with your SEO strategy.
If you have already invested a lot of time and effort into your strategy, the wrong thing to do would be to abandon it and let the work you’ve done rot.
The right thing to do would be to hire someone who really knows how to get your dealership into the search results.
4. You can fix page views that are not converting into customers.
If your SEO has been successful in the sense that it brings you plenty of page views, but you are still not able to convert those page views into paying customers, a SEO professional can still help.
Search engine optimization is about more than simply bringing people to your website, it’s also about making sure that the content that brings people to your website gets those people to stay and to visit your lot to buy a car.
If you don’t think SEO content can do that, then you definitely need an automotive SEO professional.
5. Help you expand your business.
The vast majority of people, when buying a car, go online to research the cars and dealerships they want to buy from before they actually go in person, to any of the dealerships in their area.
This means that if you want to expand your business and sell more cars, you need to have a visible web presence.
A professional makes it easy to expand your business, by giving you that visibility and making sure that the people who do click on your link are likely to call you or visit your dealership to buy a car.
6. Get your site the highest possible rankings.
Those who are doing their own SEO may not be able to achieve the highest possible rankings for their website, simply because they do not have the time or the tools to get those rankings.
If you are on the fourth page of relevant search results, you are only going to see one fourth of one percent of the traffic that you could be seeing if you were on the first page.
A dedicated automotive SEO professional will show you how to get onto the first page, both through organic SEO and through PPC campaigns.
7. Improve dropping rankings.
If you have actually gotten onto the first page of the search results but you have recently seen your rankings starting to drop, a professional can help you improve those rankings again and maintain them once you have a link where you want it to be.
SEO needs almost constant maintenance, and even after you have a link on the first page, you still have to post fresh content and optimize for new keywords in order to maintain those rankings.
Hiring an automotive search engine optimizer might not be the best choice for every dealership, but if you are trying to attract more attention or maintain the rankings you have already achieved, there are many ways a professional can help you.
Think of hiring a professional as an investment, not as a short-term solution.
When you get help from someone who really knows what they are doing, you are more likely to get the traffic that your website needs in order to be successful and to bring real people down to your lot to purchase a vehicle.