Automotive SEO is an excellent opportunity for your dealership to top the competition and invite more people to come to your showroom to purchase vehicles.
However, only a few dealerships are really investing their time, money, and energy into this aspect of digital marketing.
How do you know if it’s right for you or if your dealership can benefit from everything it has to offer?
Here are ten signs that it’s time for automotive SEO:
1. You have a limited budget.
If you have a limited budget, you might find yourself struggling to choose what type of marketing to invest in.
You don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw into any marketing campaign you want, without much concern for whether or not it will work for you.
If this is your situation, then automotive SEO is likely the right option for you.
Not only does it cost less than most other types of marketing, it also has much higher returns.
The only tradeoff is that it does take more time to be effective than, for example, a radio advertisement or a television spot will.
2. You have a terrible conversion rate.
Conversion rate optimization is its own beast, but that doesn’t mean that SEO can’t help.
If you have started to see your conversion rate plummet or you have never had a high conversion rate, SEO is a good option for you.
SEO focuses on bringing you more qualified traffic.
It wants to bring people to your website who are getting ready to buy a car, in addition to those that are causally browsing.
3. You are seeing very little traffic.
Many of your online marketing strategies might be geared towards driving traffic to your website, but the truth is that if you do not have automotive SEO, you are not going to be very easy to find and you are not going to see the traffic that you need to be successful.
SEO doesn’t just make your website easier to find, it ensures that it is near the top of relevant search queries so even people who didn’t know they were looking for you can find you.
4. Your customers don’t trust you.
A huge part of automotive SEO is building authority.
Search engines care about how site visitors view you.
Do they think of you as a source of reliable, interesting, and engaging information about automobiles?
Or do they think of you a scummy car dealership that only wants their money.
You want to be an authority, someone they can turn to if they need information about vehicles.
You want them to trust you when it comes time to purchase a new car.
5. Your brand is weak.
You sell a brand of cars, but your dealership has its own brand, too.
For example, your brand might be that you actually listen to your customers, instead of just forcing them to buy the nearest vehicle.
You want to have a brand that is easy to recognize and that your target audience identifies with.
SEO can go a long way to helping you build not just a strong, but recognizable brand.
- You do not have relationships in the industry.
You might have relationships in the industry offline, but in order to get customers these days, you have to have relationships in the industry online, too.
This is required for building links (which are a huge part of a successful automotive SEO strategy), but it is also a great way to draw business to you.
If you do not have strong relationships with other online entities, SEO can help you build them and then use them to drive more traffic to your website.
7. You want to be seen as an expert.
Every dealership wants to be seen as an expert in their field, but only those with a strong online presence have the opportunity to prove it.
People want to purchase vehicles from experts, not from just anyone.
A huge part of building your SEO strategy will be increasing your brand’s authority.
When you are seen as an authority, people are more likely to purchase from you.
8. Your traffic is not relevant.
You might be getting plenty of traffic to your website but are seeing none of those people actually come to your dealership to purchase a car.
This is how you know that the traffic you are getting to your website right now is just not relevant.
SEO’s entire focus is to bring you the very best traffic that is highly relevant not just to buying a car, but to buying the vehicles that you have to sell.
9. Your website is aimless.
SEO gives your website direction. It has to.
If you feel like your website is just sitting out there on the web, hoping for someone to run across it, it is time to give that website something to do, to give it a purpose.
Your website should be your most prolific salesman, rather than just a cost that drains your budget and gives nothing back.
10. You need way to drive foot traffic to your dealership but don’t want a hands-on solution.
SEO gives you the opportunity to place your website in the hands of an automotive SEO expert, sit back, and watch the customers roll in.
It is a little more complicated than that, especially if you want to do your own search engine optimization, but this strategy is much more effective and also much more hands-off than most other strategies.
