Check out the newest automotive SEO trends for this year and beyond to help your dealership or auto brand get noticed in search.
Whether you run a car dealership, a tire store, or another form of the automotive business, search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential component of any successful marketing strategy.
In several industries, including automotive, digital marketing spending now outpaces traditional advertising.
Since 2015, automotive marketers have raised their SEO budgets dramatically, while spending on traditional media like television has remained steady or even reduced across the automotive vertical.
Many car buyers start their searches on sites like everycarlisted.com or True Car, and they spend an average of 14 hours investigating dealerships, pricing, and reviews before contacting a company like yours.
Furthermore, organic search results are preferred by 53 percent of mobile and desktop users over sponsored ads.
All of these figures point to one thing: SEO is a set of methods you can’t afford to ignore in 2022.
Automotive SEO, on the other hand, isn’t a “set it and forget it” answer.
Every year, Google updates its algorithm 500 to 600 times.
You need to know what criteria matter to stay on top of these changes and at the top of Google’s search results.
Are you ready to begin?
Let’s look at the most effective SEO tactics for car dealerships and other automotive businesses in 2022, and see how you can use them to bring new clients to your website by incorporating them into your SEO plan.
Create Unique Automotive SEO Content that Includes Rich Text Snippets
Although a website can be an effective tool for contacting clients outside of a dealership’s designated market area (DMA), determining how much content to include on each page of your website can be challenging.
While it’s true that Google favors sites with 1,600 words or more for longer content like blog posts, most visitors won’t read more than a few hundred words per page.
For in-depth information, such as automobile blog posts, Google prefers longer word counts.
While opinions fluctuate, most experts agree that the ideal length for a blog article is between 1,500 and 2,400 words.
Marketers agree that adhering to a length of roughly 1,600 words every post, give or take a few hundred words, is a good rule of thumb.
Posts of this length often outperform shorter posts if they’re creative, unique, and relevant (see Technique #2 below for additional information).
This finding holds across all business kinds, including car dealerships and other automotive businesses, as well as all geographic areas around the world.
Rich snippets should be added by your site developer or SEO professional when writing blogs and creating web pages.
Rich snippets are pieces of code that inform Google how to summarize a page in search results.
Rich snippets, when used in conjunction with schema markup (covered in Technique 4 below), can ensure that your pages stand out from the crowd, with aesthetically appealing messaging that encourages customers to click.
Include Video SEO in Your Marketing Campaign
If you’re in the auto industry, you already know that video SEO is critical for attracting new customers.
Car dealerships are, after all, one of the most popular YouTube categories.
Because YouTube is the second most popular search engine, it’s your videos must beastly be optimized to show in search results.
Internet users are significantly more inclined to watch a video than read a block of text, according to studies. You may drastically enhance your chances of getting seen by potential buyers by optimizing your videos for search engines.
Furthermore, videos are more likely to be shared on social media, allowing them to reach a larger audience.
To begin, ensure that your videos are keyword rich. To help your movies rank higher in search results, use important keywords in the title and description.
Second, keep your films brief and to the point. Nobody wants to sit through a long, tedious vehicle commercial. Aim for under two minutes.
Ensure that your Entire Website Loads Smoothly on Mobile Devices
By 2022, mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets will account for more than 57 percent of all web traffic (upwards of 12 billion searches).
The average bounce rate for mobile users is 51.6 percent. This can occur when a page fails to load properly on their device, and the majority of those customers never return.
In other words, out of the 18,000+ car dealerships and other automotive firms in the United States, those who ignore mobile searches risk losing more than half of their potential customers.
That’s a lot of profit margin to be leaving on the table.
The good news is that by launching a beautiful mobile version of your website, you can capture that market share for your own car business.
A competent web developer can ensure that your site detects mobile browsers, recognizes each user’s screen dimensions, and modifies each page to look custom-made for that user’s display.
Your search rank will rise as more mobile consumers spend time on your site.
Claim Your Google Business Profile with Auto dealer Schema
You may have recently seen large detailed information boxes about local businesses appearing at the top of your Google search results.
These business profiles use information from a company’s Google Business Profile to display color images of the business, a map with directions, and information such as open hours, contact information, and even popular times to visit.
By claiming your free Google Business Profile (GBP) which only takes a few minutes you can create your giant colorful box.
Next, have your web developer or an automotive SEO expert apply schema markup to your website’s most popular pages.
Google uses schema markup code to organize and display information found on your sites, such as photos, street locations, business hours, and rich text snippets (see Technique 1 above).
Make sure to include the Auto Dealer schema, which Google will combine with your Google business profile to generate a display box that will attract attention at the top of potential consumers’ search results.
Remember to ask every happy customer for a good review once you’ve completed your Google Business Profile.
Positive reviews will improve your local search ranking, add valuable social evidence to your profile on search engines, and raise the like hood of your business appearing in Google Maps and other GPS apps.
Link Building through Strategic Relationships
The more third-party sites connect to your pages, the more trustworthy and relevant your company appears to Google, especially if those inbound links are from relevant terms.
Inbound links, often known as “backlinks,” are the cornerstones of a successful link-building plan, and if done correctly, they may generate a torrent of organic search traffic to your site.
The idea is simple: contact the owners of businesses and other organizations with whom you collaborate and request that they link to specific pages on your website.
For example, if you want to increase traffic to a page labeled “Miami Florida BMW Dealership,” you could approach a local auto parts wholesaler and explain why they would profit from doing so.
Link building requires some finesse.
Begin by asking for inbound links from local businesses and groups whose opinions Google places a premium on when it comes to backlinks.
Consider requesting inbound links from local charities and sports teams you support, as well as suppliers with whom you do business.
In short, updating your automobile SEO plan for 2022 doesn’t require much simply some original content, video and mobile optimization, Google Business Profile management, Auto Dealer schema, and link building are all that is required.
Master these strategies, and you’ll own the majority of the automobile market in your area.
