Automotive SEO: How Dealerships Can Improve Google Rankings

Dealer web platforms for dealers is the reason dealerships are unable to improve Google rankings.  Automotive SEO is meant to improve Google traffic for dealerships; however, your OEM approved vendors use an outdated and generic approach.  Their large scale SEO approach for dealerships typically hurts dealers more than they help.  MarketPage, now an automotive SEO company, puts their dealers first.  They are drastically increasing organic traffic growth for dealerships with a focus on content and used car SEO.

This week on the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, Sean V Bradley dives deep into SEO for automotive dealerships.  In today’s market, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, car buyers are doing all of their research online.  It doesn’t matter how good your product or website is if they can not find you.  Simply put, it is critical that dealerships have a solid SEO game plan.

Joining Sean is Wayland Myers, the CEO of MarketPage, a macro SEO company.  Wayland is the subject matter expert on search engine optimization and how to increase organic traffic.  With giant success in other industries, Wayland and MarketPage wants to help automotive dealerships with marketing pages and SEO landing pages to drive more traffic to dealership web pages.

About Wayland Myers & MarketPage

Wayland Myers has dedicated his professional career to advancing digital marketing technology and tactics for the largest online brands in the toughest digital markets.  As the CEO of MarketPage for over 14 years, formerly known as the Myers Media Group, Wayland is far from the typical CEO.  He is the subject matter expert of search engine optimization at MarketPage.  Not only does he do all of the product design and research, but Wayland also works closely with his clients to develop new features and capabilities.

Show Notes: Automotive SEO: How Dealerships Can Improve Google Rankings

MarketPage Is Now An Automotive SEO Company

MarketPage works with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies.  Additionally, they work with multibillion dollar organizations.  Some of their clients include Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Advance Auto Parts, Airbnb, and many more.  Now, MarketPage is also an automotive SEO company.  MarketPage’s scalable SEO strategy that has been proven successful with some of the largest brands is now available to automotive car dealerships.  They have already worked with a handful of dealerships, including an automotive group in Philadelphia.  The results have been astounding.  The dealerships utilizing MarketPage have seen a significant increase in organic traffic.  Increases in organic traffic is important, as it has long been proven to be one of the highest converting types of traffic.  More so, they convert better than paid search.

The MarketPage Case Study

MarketPage launched over a thousand new premium marketing pages for a Hyundai Dealership in Philadelphia. The goal was to significantly expand & improve their SEO content with enterprise-grade technology in order to better compete against other local dealerships and nationwide aggregators (i.e. Truecar.com) for local traffic on Google.

The Organic Traffic Growth For Dealerships From MarketPage

In the first 30 days post-launch, MarketPage pages increased the total number of ranking keywords by over 6,000 terms.  Additionally, they increased impressions by over 10,978 per day.  They also brought 567 users, a 21% increase in average daily visitors.  Furthermore, all this was done without disruption to their existing Dealer.com Platform.  However, this is only the first month of data.  Eventually, as pages mature in Google, their performance will continue to improve.

SEO For Dealerships & Where Things Go Wrong

OEMs & Automotive SEO

One of the problems with dealer web platforms and SEO lies with the bigger companies.  More so, the biggest issue is with the OEMs.  They have relationships that they have created with certain web development, SEO, and SEM companies.  Sometimes, the manufacturer is somehow financially benefiting from this relationship.  With that in mind, who’s best interest does the OEM have in mind?  Even better, who’s best interest does the OEM approved company have in mind?

OEM Approved SEO Companies

Think about that.  Do you think an approved vendor that has 3,000 dealerships for a single manufacturer will be able to deliver the value and level of SEO for a single point store?  They can’t.  In fact, it is not even in their business model.  Their business model is to have a product to serve thousands of dealerships.  It is a generic approach which eliminates the detail and level of service for a single dealership.  More importantly, it means that they are likely doing the same exact thing for your competitors.

There Should Not Be A One Size Fits All Approach To SEO

Most automotive dealerships are using the same web platforms.  In Wayland’s research, approximately 90% of automotive dealerships are using the same three or four web platforms.  These platforms, though, are the problem.  They are older and typically outdated.  Furthering the damage, they are genericized so they work for any and all dealerships.  There should not be a one size fits all approach to SEO.  The one size fits all approach hurts dealers on customizing for a local audience or different types of customers.

How Are Large Auto Sites Affecting Your Google Rankings?

If you were to do a search in your local market for a year, make, or a model in a certain place, look at who is ranking. It is not the dealerships, rather it is the aggregators. These aggregators include CarGurus, Cars.com, and AutoTrader. While dealers may use these aggregators’ services, they are also advertising your competitors at the same time. Further, all dealerships are giving these national aggregators their inventory – which is exactly what these big sites use to take over your local rankings. You’re giving them the ammunition they need, and they are turning around using the latest large-scale SEO technology to beat you.

Dealership Websites, Automotive SEM, Pay Per Click, & Dealer Web Platforms

The Problem With OEM Sanctioned Websites For Dealerships

The majority of OEM sanctioned websites have low time on site.  Adding to the problem is the high bounce rate, which can be as high as 40%.  In addition to the high bounce rate, another problem with these websites occurs when you are out of inventory on a certain vehicle or year, make and model.  When that happens, that page just disappears.  That doesn’t work for Google if the page is gone.  As a result, Google will just drop you out of search results.  As this continues to happen it lowers your site’s value in Google’s eyes because it isn’t persistent, reliable content for their users.  Additionally, that means you can’t just put that page back and get those rankings back.  Essentially, this means that you just lost all of the power that you built up for months, or even years, of customers visiting and clicking on that page.

How High Bounce Rates Affect Your PPC Budget

Now, try to manage that you are spending $10,000 on your pay per click campaign and you have a 40% bounce rate.  You would literally waste $4,000.  This is what is happening to dealerships all over with OEM approved website providers.  They then upsell the dealer on their subpar SEO and SEM programs for their antiquated website platforms.

The Larger Problem With Pay Per Click For Automotive Dealerships

The problem with pay per click is your competition.  Look at who is competing for PPC ad space.  It is the manufacturers and the aggregators, and now the dealers are competing with companies with endless budgets, and they are playing all over the country.  They are competing in every town, big or small, all over the country.  This means that dealers are competing against their own manufacturer, competing manufacturers, aggregators, and other dealerships.  Not only does this drive up the cost per click, but it is also consuming unnecessary budget space from the dealer.

Dealer Web Platforms Approach To Pay Per Click

This is further compounded by the campaigns the web platforms are offering.  Wayland has seen that these companies focus on only one geographical area.  This means that if your dealership is located in Philadelphia, then your PPC campaign is just for Philadelphia.  They don’t buy any other geographical areas.  This means that dealers are missing out on a huge market share that is nearby.

Automotive SEO: Basic Tips To Improve SEO

Improve Your Automotive SEO Through Content

It is important to understand Google on a basic level.  Think of your website as a spider web.  It’s job is to capture traffic.  More specifically, it’s job is to capture traffic on Google. In order to do that, your web(site) can’t be full of holes, or loosely woven, or outdated and slow to respond. The key is for your website to cover all the ways people are looking for your offerings, in all the places, for all the cars you sell. The goal is for you to show up on Google the first time someone searches for something, however they search. If you don’t, you’ll miss out and a competitor or big national auto site will grab that lead. In order to show up, you need the right content, and to cover all your content gaps.

The Size Of The Website Will Improve Google Traffic For Dealerships

While having the right content is important, it is not the only piece of the puzzle.  You also need a lot of content.  People are searching many different ways, and the way they search changes each year.  Every year Google says that 15% of the keywords that are searched on Google are completely brand new and never been searched before.  It could be model based, new or used vehicle, or feature based.  If your website is not large enough to capture all of the ways people are searching, you are missing traffic.  Coincidently, this is how Google works.  So it is important that dealerships have a website that is not only up to date, but is also big enough and complete enough.

Organic Traffic Growth For Dealerships: Keep Old Pages & Content

To build your content and the size of your website, you cannot delete any content or webpages that have good SEO content.  Most websites and dealer web platforms have approximately 200 pages.  Additionally, they have the tendency to drop web pages when those vehicles are not in your inventory.  They also don’t keep the used inventory that you used to sell.  Think about that.  They are deleting this content.

How To Improve Used Car SEO

With the inventory shortages in today’s market, people are looking for used vehicles.  While you don’t have any new 2017 models in stock, you need to keep that content.  This is because people are searching for used 2017 models.  But you are not going to be found on Google for those searches because you won’t have pages on that content.  But, you know who will?  CarGurus, AutoTrader, and the many other aggregators that advertise your competitors.

Automotive SEO: The Dealership Organic Search Strategy

Overcoming The Challenges Of SEO For Dealerships

One of the challenges with automotive SEO sometimes revolves around Co-Op dollars.  Sometimes dealers don’t have a lot of choices.  In order to receive those co-op dollars you have to use certain providers or platforms. For many dealerships, it’s important to ensure those co-op dollars can still be used, so don’t just rush out and replace your current platform. What you’re looking to do is greatly expand your content. To that end, you have two choices, either a) hire a traditional marketing agency to manually write new content for new pages and add them one at a time to your platform, or b) find a solution that can put thousands of pages up quickly, all surrounding your website, without disrupting your platform. Both options are “SEO” work, and can often be claimed in Co-Op programs.

Keywords Will Improve Google Traffic For Dealerships

You have to also think about the other ways people are searching for what you offer.  They are going to search for years, makes, and models. Additionally, they are going to search for used cars and types of cars, such as trucks, SUVs, etc.  They are also looking for price ranges, certified, and combinations of many different types of keywords.  Simply put, there are tens of thousands of combinations unique to your dealership and the makes and models you sell.  If you don’t have a page on your website for these different keywords and their combinations, then you are not going to rank for it.  However, the aggregators will, and they will capture the traffic.

Creating Content For Organic Traffic Growth For Dealerships

With an understanding of what you are missing, you then have to figure out how to achieve getting these pages built.  This can be a daunting task.  Essentially, There are two different ways to build this content.  The first is to begin to build this content manually.  Over time you can begin to write new articles, posts, and vehicle comparisons.  But this is going to take you years to build out these pages manually because it is thousands of pages that are needed to fill in all of the gaps.

The MarketPage Approach On How To Improve SEO For Dealerships

In the enterprise space, this needs to be done programmatically.  It is what MarketPage and Wayland Myers have been doing for over a decade.  With the challenges that automotive dealerships face with SEO, Wayland saw opportunity.  Not only an opportunity for MarketPage, but also an opportunity to help improve google traffic for dealerships.

What Content Should Dealers Create To Improve Google Rankings

The first thing you need to look at is the models that you sell.  Then, you need to look at what years are the most popular that people are interested in buying.  These years are not just the current model year, but also how many years back for your used opportunities.  Next, you need to research how people are looking for that particular page, along with all of the keyword variations they are using.  With this information, you need to create optimized pages for each of these wide varieties of searches.

This is a very long and daunting task, as it can be thousands of pages to be created.  However, this is where MarketPage comes in.  They do a full assessment, all of the research, and then create all of the pages.  They also create vehicle comparison pages, comparing your vehicles to competing makes and models.

Automotive SEO: Where Should Dealers Start?

What is your current level of organic traffic?  Where are you starting from?  If you know that, then any SEO company you talk to can be measured against that base line.  Additionally, you want to do is to understand how many keywords you are currently ranking for.  A tool such as SEMRush will help you easily get this information.  This is the other benchmark you want to use as a baseline.  You will be able to judge how many more keywords you rank for on the first page of Google.

Automotive SEO: The Most Important Item To Track

The most important thing for dealers to track is the traffic, or the unknown visitors to your website, to a sale.  Can you have this lead tracked in your CRM as an organic lead?  This is vital, as it is important to know where your sold units are coming from.  It will also help you understand the value of Google.

Free Automotive Sales Training & Automotive SEO Resources 

Dealer Synergy & Bradley On Demand are the Automotive Industry’s #1 Training, Tracking, Testing, and Certification Platform and Consulting & Accountability Firm.  Additionally, The Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast is the #1 Resource for Automotive Sales Professionals, Managers, and Owners.  Also, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today!  Also, be sure to join The Millionaire Car Salesman Club on Clubhouse.

In addition to the free resources, pick up the book Win the Game of Googleopoly: Unlocking the Secret Strategy of Search Engines

AutoWeb: Visit AutoWeb.com/dealers for help in revolutionizing your business to help you sell more cars.

CallRevu: The industry leader for call tracking, lead management, and business analytic solutions.

CarNow: Sell more cars now!  Not only is CarNow.com. the market leader in tailored digital solutions, but they are built to help dealers sell more cars.