5 Automotive SEO Best Practices For Driving Business In 2022

Whether you’re running a car and truck dealership, a tire shop, or any other type of automotive business, search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial ingredient in any successful marketing campaign.

In fact, spending on digital marketing now outperforms conventional advertising in many industries, including automotive.

Since 2015, automotive marketing experts have significantly increased their SEO budgets, while spending on traditional channels such as television has remained flat or even declined throughout the automotive industry.

Many shoppers start serious automatic searches on websites like EveryCarListed.com or TrueCar and spend about 14 hours researching dealers, prices and reviews before contacting a company like yours.

In addition, 53% of mobile and computer users click on organic search results instead of paid ads.

All these statistics make one thing very clear: SEO is a set of tactics that you can’t afford not to master in 2022.

However, car SEO is not a “set it up and forget” solution.

Google changes its algorithm 500 to 600 times a year.

To stay up to date with these changes, and at the top of Google search results, you need to know what factors are important.

We delve into the most powerful SEO techniques for car dealers and other automotive businesses in 2022 and explore how you can attract new leads directly to your website by making these practices part of your SEO strategy.

1. Develop Original Automotive SEO Content And Incorporate Rich Text Snippets

While a website can be a powerful tool for reaching customers outside of a dealer’s designated market area (DMA), it can be tricky to find out exactly how much content to include on each page of your website.

You may have heard that Google prefers pages with 1,600 words or more, and while this may be true for longer content, such as blog posts, most visitors won’t read more than a few hundred words per page.

However, Google prefers a longer word count for in-depth content such as automotive blog posts.

Although estimates differ, most experts place the ideal blog post length between 1,500 and 2,400 words.

As a general rule, marketers agree that you will be safe with an extension of about 1,600 words per post, give or take a few hundred words.

Publications of this length usually exceed the shortest publications as long as they are original, unique and relevant (more information on this in Technique No. 2 below).

And surprisingly, this result is true in all types of businesses, including car dealerships and other automotive companies, and in every geographic location in the world.

When you publish blogs and set up web pages, you want to make sure that your web developer or SEO expert adds rich snippets.

Rich snippets are code snippets that tell Google what text to show when it summarizes a page in search results.

In combination with outline tagging (described in Technique No. 4 below), rich snippets will ensure that your pages stand out from the crowd, with visually striking messages that drive customers to click.

2. Incorporate Video SEO Into Your Marketing Strategy

If you are in the car business, you know that video SEO is essential to reach potential customers.

After all, car dealerships are one of the most popular categories on YouTube.

And because YouTube is the second largest search engine, it’s important to make sure your videos are properly optimized to appear in search results.

Studies have shown that Internet users are more likely to watch a video than to read a block of text. By optimizing your videos for search engines, you can dramatically increase your chances of being seen by potential customers.

In addition, videos are also more likely to be shared on social media, which means they have the potential to reach an even wider audience.

Fortunately, you can follow a few simple tips to improve the video SEO of your car dealership.

3. Make Sure Your Entire Site Loads Beautifully On Mobile Devices

As of 2022, more than 57% of all online traffic (more than 12 billion searches) comes from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

However, the average bounce rate is 51.6% for mobile users. This can happen when a page does not load properly on your device, and most of these customers never return for a second look.

In other words, among the more than 18,000 car dealerships and other automotive businesses in the U.S., those who don’t take mobile searches seriously are sacrificing more than half of their potential customer base.

That’s a lot of profit to leave on the table.

The good news is that you can capture that market share for your own automotive business by implementing a great mobile version of your website.

A reasonably qualified web developer can ensure that your site automatically detects mobile browsers, recognizes each user’s screen size, and adapts each page so that it appears tailored to that individual’s display.

As more mobile users spend time on your site, your search ranking will soon increase.

4. Add Autodealer Schema And Claim Your Google Business Profile

Lately, you may have noticed large boxes of detailed information about local businesses that appear at the top of Google search results.

These business profiles automatically extract information from a business’s Google business profile and show color photos of the business, a map with directions and details such as opening hours, contact information, and more. and all the popular schedules to visit them.

You can set up your own large color box by claiming your free Google Business Profile (GBP), which only takes a few minutes.

Then ask your web developer or car SEO expert to add outline markup to the most visited pages on your website.

The outline markup code tells Google how to organize and display information on your site, such as images, addresses, opening hours, and snippets of rich text (explained in technique # 1 above).

In particular, be sure to add the AutoDealer scheme, which Google will use in combination with your Google business profile, to create a display box that captures attention at the top of customer search results. potentials.

Once you’ve set up your Google business profile, remember to ask all happy customers for a positive review.

Positive reviews will increase your local search ranking, provide valuable social evidence to your profile on search pages, and measurably increase the likelihood of your business appearing in search results on Google Maps and other GPS applications.

5. Leverage Strategic Relationships For Link Building

The more third-party sites link to your pages, the more reliable and relevant your business will seem to Google, especially when those inbound links come from relevant keywords.

Inbound links, also known as “inbound links,” serve as pillars of an effective link building strategy, which can drive a lot of organic search traffic to your site if done skillfully.

The principle is simple: contact the business owners and other organizations you work with and ask them to link to specific pages on your site.

For example, if you want to drive traffic to a page called “Miami Florida BMW Dealership,” you can ask a local auto parts dealer to add a link to your website and explain how they will benefit from doing so.

Obviously, link building can take some perfection.

Start by requesting inbound links from businesses and organizations in your local area whose opinions are highly valued by Google when it comes to inbound links.

For example, consider asking for inbound links to local charities and sports teams you support and the providers you work with.

In short, it doesn’t take much to update your in-car SEO strategy for 2022 – only original content, video and mobile optimization, Google business profile management, AutoDealer layout, and link building.

Master these techniques and get the lion’s share of the car market in your local area.

Featured image: iQoncept / Shutterstock