Used-Car Dealer SEO: Tips for Auto Dealers to Rank High on Search Engines in 2023

In the pre-Internet days, there was no need for car dealers to factor in SEO to be a successful dealership. Back then, it was all low-budget commercials with massive colorful numbers being price-slashed to numerically smaller (yet even more visually massive and eye-poppingly colorful) numbers. All the while, a hyper-enthusiastic spokesperson boasts and gestures wildly about the great great deals and super savings – with nothing about used-car dealer SEO in sight.

Thankfully, the used-car dealer commercials as an art form has not gone anywhere. Instead, what has happened in the Internet age is that the marketing needs of dealers have expanded. And at the top of the list for Internet marketing efforts is search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is the practice of helping a website increase the amount of meaningful traffic (i.e., customers looking to spend money) to a website by doing what is necessary to rank higher on a given search engine.

Examples of how to rank higher include content creation, the use of right keywords, and leveraging Google My Business for your best experience with car dealer SEO. We will go into all of these later in the article.

The Necessary Intertwining Between Car Dealers and SEO

Why is SEO necessary for car dealerships?

Most people nowadays do not simply roll into a dealership blind. Nor do they head to your dealership the moment they see your commercial.

No, what customers these days do is check out a car dealership’s website to look through the inventory. This is a good way for the customer to find out what cars are actually on your lot. And, if the customer is searching for a particular car, then they will be able to see then and there whether you have the vehicle available. Otherwise, they will not waste their time going into a dealership not knowing what cars are available there.

The Internet, as you may already know, is basically one huge repository of information. This is also to the customers’ advantage. Most good car dealerships are transparent about the pricing, mileage, and other key data that can sway a person toward or away from the purchase of a particular used vehicle.

Naturally, being able to compare the prices for particular vehicles across different dealerships is certainly to the customers’ advantage, and encourages dealerships to competitively price their inventory.

So, the centrality of the Internet to the contemporary customer’s car-searching experience makes the

Assuming you are offering fair and competitive deals on your inventory, being able to rank high on a search engine, so that your dealership pops up at or near the top of the results page, is a major key for gaining conversions.

Read on for some of the most important methods for how a car dealership can optimize its SEO practices.

Content Is King: Frequent High-Quality Output Gains Visitors

Everyone in SEO and online marketing in general will inform you that content truly rules. You must show homage by maintaining a consistent content output that you upload to your website.

Examples of this include blogs, which can range from everything from informational how-to’s that build your brand as a trustworthy car dealership, to blogs highlighting specific vehicles on your lot.

Of course, your relationship to content is going to be founded on a compromise between what you want your company to be posting, and what Internet users are actually searching for.

Go with only the former, and you will essentially be speaking to an empty auditorium, because your dealer SEO will not be lined up with what anybody is searching. Or if it is, then it is only by coincidence.

The secret to a successful content strategy is to view the content pieces as both a means to an end, and an end in itself.

It is a means to an end in that the ultimate goal is to write a content piece that drives people to your website, which hopefully converts to a number of sales for your dealership.

It is an end in itself because the content needs to be of the qualities that capture the attention of the search algorithm, which serves up content to searchers.

We will go into how you can capture the algorithm’s attention by using keywords.

Keyword Research

This ties into content. Keywords are basically the search terms that people are entering into the search bar.

Keyword research involves identifying what keywords people are typing in, so that you can capitalize on this. Choice of vocabulary on your webpages and blogs is an important aspect of SEO, and must not be overlooked.

Keywords such as “used cars under 50,000 miles” or “used cars for less than $25,000” might be keywords/key phrases that are important to you.

Google My Business

Having a Google My Business profile can be a game-changer, because this is where customers can quickly see important information about your business.

From reviews to opening and closing hours to Q&A’s and location information, a GMB profile functions like a one-stop-shop for all the essential answers that customers need about your dealership.

So, when they search your dealership specifically, or just car dealerships in general, good dealer SEO practices will ensure that your GMB profile shows up in the search.

Are you an auto dealer looking to leverage SEO to grow your business? Reach out today to Guardian Owl Digital, which has been in SEO from the ground floor.