If you are just starting to consider marketing tactics for your dealership, search engine optimization might not be at the top of your list. It is certainly the slowest method of getting your website in front of people, but it also one of the best. Your goal right now is probably to get your dealership’s website in front of as many people as possible as quickly as possible, and that is not what automotive SEO promises. If you are new to search engine optimization, here are some of the pros and the cons:
Pros
- Automotive SEO brings you continuous traffic.
One of the biggest benefits of SEO is that its affect is continuous.
Every day, there are more than five billion searchers being made and SEO gives you access to those searchers.
It is and will continue to be the biggest source of the best traffic to your website, over the longest period of time.
Marketing campaigns are only so effective for so long, but SEO is effective indefinitely and continuously.
- The traffic you get from SEO is more targeted.
When you place a billboard ad, you are broadcasting your message to potentially millions of people, but very few of those people are actually looking for your message and are therefore going to hear it.
When someone gets on the internet and goes to a search engine to type in a search query, they are actually looking for something.
When your website is presented to them, it is as a solution their problem, which makes them much more likely to actually come to your dealership and make a purchase from you.
- SEO traffic is more likely to convert.
The whole goal of having a website for your dealership is to encourage people to come down to your dealership and buy a car.
The traffic that you get through your search engine optimization efforts are much, much more likely to do that, simply because when they go to a search engine, they have intent.
They are actively looking for what you have to offer.
And while they might not have started out looking to buy from your brand, when you build a website and fill it with content that presents you as authoritative and knowledgeable, you become an obvious choice for someone who is looking to buy a car.
- SEO helps you grow your business.
If your main goal is to get more people to come to your dealership, SEO is a great way to do exactly that.
You are going to get not just more visibility among people that are looking for a dealership like yours, you are going to get more sustained visibility.
While other marketing tactics might give you a bump in sales one month, automotive SEO is designed to help you sustain long term business growth.
You become more visible not just for a short time, until your ad becomes old news or, even worse, an annoyance, but for an extended period of time, into the foreseeable future, as long as your SEO campaign is maintained.
- Automotive SEO helps make you an authority.
People want to buy cars from people that they can trust.
Especially individuals who feel that they do not know very much about cars want to buy from someone who really knows their stuff.
This is one of the biggest benefits of choosing SEO for your website.
The type of content that is going to help you rank highly is also the kind of content that is going to make you look like an authority on vehicles.
Cons
- SEO takes times.
For some businesses, they completely go an effective SEO campaign, because they simply do not have time for it.
It takes time to get started, it takes time to be effective, and it takes time to maintain.
This is one of the biggest reasons that the people who need it the most do not bother with it.
It is important to remember, however, that SEO is a solid foundation for all of your other marketing efforts.
You need a strong search engine optimized website in order to be able to draw any traffic to your website at all, through any of your other tactics.
- ROI is a long time coming.
Because SEO might take months before it is fully effective, you might be dumping your time and money into it for months before you really see any results.
This might feel like you are flushing your money away, because you are not seeing a tangible return.
What many people do not realize is that SEO is bringing them not just more traffic, but higher quality traffic.
And while it should not be the only tactic you use to bring people to your website, it does have one of the statistically best returns on investment out of any digital marketing strategy.
- It can be difficult to rank in a competitive category.
Most dealerships do not really have to worry about ranking difficulty.
You are likely the only dealership of your brand in the area.
You only have to worry about the other brands and their dealerships.
This means that it is very easy to reach out to people who are already interested in your brand.
- SEO can be unpredictable.
There are people who have dedicated their lives to understanding Google’s algorithm, and they are still surprised when a change is implemented and their carefully optimized website drops in the search rankings.
It’s important to remember, however, that this happens to the best of the best and that ranks are almost always quickly restored.
