Top 5 Automotive SEO Best Practices For Driving Business In 2022

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Top 5 Automotive SEO Best Practices For Driving Business In 2022 Check out the latest automotive SEO trends that will help your dealership or auto brand get found in search this year and beyond.

Whether you run an auto and truck dealership, a tire shop, or any other type of automotive business, search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of any effective marketing campaign.

In fact, in many industries, including the automotive industry, spending on digital marketing exceeds traditional advertising.

Since 2015, automotive marketers have significantly increased their SEO budgets, while spending on traditional channels like TV has remained flat or even decreased across the automotive industry.

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

Also, 53% of mobile and desktop users click on organic search results instead of paid ads.

All of these stats make one fact very clear: SEO is a bunch of tactics you can’t afford in 2022. However,

Automotive SEO is not a “set it and forget it” solution. Google changes its algorithm between 500 and 600 times a year.

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

Ready to get started?

Let’s dive into the top-performing SEO techniques for car dealerships and other automotive businesses in 2022 and explore how you can drive new prospects straight to your website by making these practices a part of your SEO strategy.

Develop Original Automotive SEO Content And Incorporate Rich Text Snippets

Although a website can be a powerful tool for reaching customers outside of a retailer’s Designated Market Area (DMA), it can be difficult to determine exactly how much content to include on each page of your website.

You may have heard that Google prefers pages of 1600 words or more, and while that’s true for longer content like blog posts, most visitors won’t read more than a few hundred words per page.

However, Google prefers longer word counts for detailed content, such as a Blog posts about cars.

While estimates vary, most experts put the ideal blog post length at 1,500 to 2,400 words. As a general rule of thumb, marketers agree that you’re safe with a post length of around 1600 words, plus or minus a few hundred words.

Posts of this length will generally outperform shorter posts as long as they’re original, unique, and relevant (more on that in Technique #2 below).

And surprisingly, this result holds true for all types of businesses, including dealerships and other automotive companies, and for all geographic locations around the world.

When you publish blogs and set up websites, you should make sure that your web developer or SEO expert adds rich snippets. Rich snippets are snippets of code that tell Google what text to show when summarizing a page in search results.

Combined with schema markup (described in Technique #4 below), rich snippets ensure your pages stand out from the crowd with visually striking messages that encourage customers to click.

Incorporate Video SEO Into Your Marketing Strategy

If you’re in the automotive industry, you know that video SEO is essential to reach potential customers. Finally, car dealerships are one of the most popular categories on YouTube. And since 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 much 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.

Additionally, videos are more likely to be shared on social media, meaning they have the potential to reach an even larger audience.

Luckily, you can follow a few simple tips to improve your dealership video’s SEO.

First, make sure your videos are keyword rich. Use relevant keywords in your title and description to help your videos rank higher in search results.

Second, keep your videos short and engaging. Nobody wants to watch a long, boring car commercial. Aim for two minutes or less.

Make Sure Your Entire Site Loads Beautifully On Mobile Devices

As of 2022, more than 57% of all online traffic (over 12 billion searches) will come 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 doesn’t load properly on your device and most of those customers never come back for a second look.

In other words, among the more than 18,000 auto dealerships and other automotive companies in the US, those who don’t take mobile search seriously are sacrificing more than half of their potential customer base.

That’s a lot of markup 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 skilled web developer can ensure that their website automatically detects mobile browsers, understands the dimensions of each user’s screen, and adjusts each page to fit that person’s screen. As more mobile users spend time on your site, your search rank will soon rise.

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Add Autodealer Schema And Claim Your Google Business Profile

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

These business profiles automatically pull information from a business’s Google Business Profile and display color photos of the business, a map with driving directions, and details like hours of operation, contact information, and even popular times to visit.

You can set up your own big colorful box by creating your free Google business profile (GBP) – which only takes a few minutes.

Schema markup code tells Google how to organize and display information found on your site, such as images, street addresses, opening times, and rich text snippets (explained in technique #1 above).

In particular, make sure to add the AutoDealer schema that Google uses in conjunction with your Google Business Profile to create an attention-grabbing ad box at the top of potential customers’ search results.

Next, ask your web developer or auto SEO expert to add schema markup to the most visited pages on your site.

After you set up your Google Business Profile, remember to ask every satisfied customer for a positive review.

Positive reviews will improve your local search ranking, add valuable social proof to your profile on search sites, and significantly increase the likelihood of your business appearing in Google Maps and other GPS application search results.

Leverage Strategic Relationships For Link Building

The more third-party websites link to your pages, the more trustworthy and relevant your business appears to Google, especially when those inbound links come from relevant keywords.

Inbound links, also known as “backlinks,” serve as the cornerstone of an effective link building strategy that, if executed skillfully, can generate a flood of organic search traffic to your site.

The principle is simple: contact the owners of the companies 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 titled “Miami, Florida BMW Dealer,” you can ask a local auto parts dealer to add a link to their website and explain how it would benefit you. Obviously, link building may require some refinement.

Start soliciting inbound links from local businesses and organizations whose opinions Google values ​​when it comes to backlinks.

For example, consider soliciting inbound links from local sports teams and charities you support and from vendors you work with.

In short, it doesn’t take much to update your automotive SEO strategy for 2022: just some original content, video and mobile optimization, Google Business Profile management, AutoDealer scheme and link building.

Master these techniques and capture the largest share of the automotive market in your area.