As you may already know, SEO plays a large role in helping customers find your dealership online. Having a strong search engine optimization strategy helps you rank higher on sites like Google, which will bring more potential customers to your website.
In this article, we’ll walk you through some of the ways that your dealership can stand out online and improve your SEO ranking.
What is SEO?
SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
The name SEO is similar to another search engine strategy called SEM, or Search Engine Marketing. SEM differs from SEO because it focuses on paid strategies to promote your business, while SEO should be organic.
Why should you focus on SEO?
In todays world, digital marketing is one of the most effective ways of building brand awareness and attracting new customers. Here are some of the reasons to consider focusing on it more:
- Reach more people: The majority of web traffic comes from organic searches, and most people only look at the top few results. Improving your ranking can have a huge impact on how many website visitors you get, which could lead to more customers and repairs.
- Build brand awareness: Even if potential customers don’t click through to your website, just by ranking towards the top of the search you are building brand awareness for your dealership.
- Gives you a competitive advantage: If other repair facilities aren’t focussing on SEO, you’ll have a competitive advantage. Anytime someone searches for somewhere to get their car fixed, you’ll be one of the first places they see.
- Improves your user experience: Google always takes user experience into account. That means you’ll need to focus on providing valuable information that your customers want to see. It’s also important to make sure your website is user friendly and optimized for mobile, so customers can easily access the information they’re looking for.
Ways to improve your dealership’s SEO:
While coming up with a full SEO strategy should involve outside help from a professional, there are a few easy improvements that you can make to improve your ranking.
Publish Relevant Content: Content is the number one way to improve your SEO and show up more consistently on searches. Publishing content on a regular bases helps keep you relevant and allows customers to find you easily.
For ideas on content that your customers might find interesting, you can check out our blog at: https://repairpal.com/blog
Use Keywords in your Content: Identifying and targeting keywords within your content will make sure you’re hitting the appropriate audience. It’s important to choose keywords that are relevant to the topic you’re posting about. For example, if you’re posting about “Winter Maintenance”, you could use keywords like “Snow Tires” or “Windshield Wiper Replacement.”
Optimize your Images: Search engines use a tool called “crawlers” to scan your website and get an understanding of your content so that they can rank it. The issue with this is that they can only read HTML, so they won’t be able to understand images on your site without alt text.
Alt text is used to describe images on your site, and appears when images can’t be explained. Including this with your sites images can help the crawlers get a better understanding of your content, leading to a higher search engine ranking.
Make sure your site is Mobile Friendly: Over 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, and those users expect your website to be as easy to navigate on a phone as it is on a computer. Google and other search engines also expect this, which is why it’s an important part of your SEO strategy.
Make sure your site uses a responsive design, and ensure images and video formats work on mobile. The last thing you want is your customers going elsewhere because they can’t easily use your website.
Update your Website on a Regular Basis: Search Engine Optimization isn’t a set it and forget it type of marketing strategy. In order to consistently rank towards the top, you’ll need to make updates and publish new content on a regular basis.
Using all of these strategies regularly with help you stay on top of your SEO and get more visitors to your website, and hopefully coming into your dealership for repairs!
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