If you are considering working with an automotive SEO agency and they tell you that all you have to do is sit back and watch your rankings rise, this is a firm you should not hire.

Why not?

Because no firm is able to provide you with a functional automotive SEO strategy without the help of the dealership they are creating that strategy for.

They are going to need your help and patience, because you are the dealership that they are building the strategy around.

What exactly do you need to do to help?

 

1. Learn as much about automotive SEO as you can.

Learning about SEO might not be your top priority, especially if one of the reasons you hired a SEO firm was to avoid having to deal with all of the new information and task that come along with successful automotive SEO.

The truth is, however, that your strategy is going to be much more effective if you take steps to learn about what is being done in that strategy.

You don’t need to become an SEO professional yourself, but you should learn enough that you can stay on top of changes and so that you can make sure that the strategies that your firm is using are actually going to work for you.

In short, you just want to know the difference between high quality SEO and SEO that is actually going to harm your website.

The more you know about search engine optimization, the less susceptible you are to being taken in by a firm that is using low quality or even damaging techniques on your website.

2. Understand the nature of SEO.

There is a big difference between learning everything you can about SEO and actually understanding it.

For example, someone who knows a lot about SEO might still be upset if they do not see significant improvement in their rankings after three weeks.

Someone who really understands SEO knows that there are no guarantees.

What does that mean?

It is important to understand that most of what we know about SEO is not a result of search engines actually telling marketers what they are looking for.

It is a result of marketers making changes to their websites and seeing what improves their rankings.

This means that what we really know about how search engines rankings work is limited to what people have tried and what has been tried and works on one website might not work exactly the same on your website.

Expecting a guarantee or being upset that SEO does not work perfectly the first time is not going to help your SEO agency perform well.

 

3. Learn patience.

Automotive SEO is probably one of the most long term marketing strategies you will use to draw people to your website.

While you might not start to see significant improvements in traffic for months, once you do start to see a bump in the number of visitors each day, you are going to see a consistent and extremely valuable increase in traffic.

SEO is designed to bring you only the most qualified and prepared customers.

Unlike other digital marketing strategies that cast a wide net and pull lots of unqualified prospects to your dealership, SEO endeavors to only send people to your website that are interested in buying.

While it does take longer to set in, once it has started to gain steam, it will continue to snowball, bringing you more and more returns on your investment.

 

4. Be willing to work with your firm.

You cannot expect your firm to be able to do everything themselves.

They are going to need your help with a lot of the tactics they are going to want to do.

Realistically, you do not just want anyone opening up your website and making changes to it without your approval, right?

You need to still be engaged with this strategy, even if you are no longer the one leading the charge.

Being willing to help, to do what the firm needs you to do, even if it is only to answer questions or grant them access to your content management system, is often the best way to make sure that you are providing your firm with what they need.

Be wary of any agencies that tell you that they do not need your help or that they will never ask anything of you.

These are firms that are never going to have the access or information they need in order to provide you with a successful strategy.

Most of these firms do nothing but place backlinks and none of those backlinks are actually going to be one websites that are going to provide you with any real juice.

 

5. Ask questions.

The right automotive SEO firm for you is the one who is going to be willing to answer questions.

They are probably actually going to want you to ask them questions.

They want to explain to you what they are doing and how it is helpful to your website.

While you certainly do not want to be constantly peppering them with questions, the very worst thing that you could do is to not be interested at all in what they are doing to help your dealership’s website rank.

You are both busy companies, but you only want to be giving your money to a company that has the time and the desire to fully explain what they are doing to you.