What is search engine optimization? Also known as SEO, this is the process of optimizing your online footprint so that you’re found in search. In other words, someone wants to buy a car, they go to Google, they type in used car dealer or Ford dealer or car dealer or used cars, and they hit the search button and they find you. That is the goal of search engine optimization.
There are two main segments of SEO. One is on-page optimization and the other one is off-page optimization. Both are important but one requires a lot more work than the other. Before we get into the differences, let me stress the importance of ranking high on the first page of Google.
- 92% of people don’t ever go to page 2
- According to various studies, after doing a search, approximately 62-73% of people click on one of the top three ranked websites.
- Some studies say that the number one ranked website gets clicked on 50% after a given search
The point is – if you are ranked #4 on the first page of Google, there is plenty of room for growth.
On-page optimization is everything you do on the website itself to increase the chances of your dealership being found online when someone does a search for a vehicle. The primary things to consider are title tags, keywords, content, and the way the website is structured so that the Google bots can scour the website to know what it’s about. These are digital robots surfing the website so it has nothing to do with the appearance of your dealer website.
Much of the techy material visible to the bots are not necessarily visible to someone when they visit the website unless they go looking for it. The on-page optimization also includes all of the content that you add to the website…the part that you actually read…and the content matters. In other words, the text on your about page, what you say and add to your location page, your contact us page, all of that, plays a role for on-page SEO. Google and other search engines like a lot of content so if you have a teeny-little website with hardly any information on it, it will be very difficult to rank high in the search engines. As a rule of thumb, the more content, the better, as long as it’s good, relevant content. Continually adding content is also good which I will address in a moment.
You want the website to have keywords that people type in to Google when looking for a vehicle. You also want to answer questions that people actually type into Google. Someone might go to Google and type in,
Are all prices the same with every Ford dealership or
What’s the difference between subprime and Buy Here Pay Here
You can continually add content with a blog. It’s not a blog like 16 year-old girls write so their girlfriends can find out what boy they spoke to today. Blogging is a prime method dealers can use to improve their search engine rankings and improve conversion on the website by building relationships through content sharing.
If you can’t think of anything to write about, list your customer’s most common questions and answer them. It can and should be in a conversational tone. Articles don’t have to be Steven King or Shakespeare and they don’t have to be perfect. They should sound a bit like you are just sitting there having a cup of coffee or a beer with someone and answering their questions…and NOT speaking in dealereze.
Here is what I mean by dealereze. A Buy Here Pay Here dealer may highlight the term buy here pay here on their website. Most people don’t know what buy-here-pay-here means. Your customer may go to Google and type in “bad credit car dealers” so this is just one of the ways to word it on your website or blog. Everything should be written in customer language before dealereze.
There is more to on-page SEO but let’s move on to off-page SEO.
Off-page SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is everything that happens off of the website. Off-page SEO can include things like backlinks, social signals and mentions.
We will focus on backlinks because this is the one some dealers have heard of. A backlink is a link from another website to your website. Explained a different way, when another website has a live link on their website, that when clicked on, it takes the visitor to your website. Google looks views backlinks as if they were a vote for your website.
Not all backlinks are created equal. For example, if you had a website that was about civil rights and you had backlinks from 20 individual blogs pointing web visitors to your website, that could be important to your search engine ranking. However, if you had 1 backlink from Martin Luther King Jr’s website, that would be truly powerful. In addition to having credibility with the visitor that came from MLK’s website, Google would smile upon your website also. This “vote” could count for more than 20 links from random blogs.
There are a variety of ways to build backlinks to your website but the best backlink is “earned.” Offer great content on your website, build relationships, offer a variety of content on your website, and “earn” backlinks from reliable, credible, websites.
There are hundreds of ways for you to improve your on-page and off-page optimization but the two important points to remember are:
- There is a difference between on-page and off-page optimization. Not including content creation, off-page optimization requires much more work and an ongoing commitment.
- The best optimization happens somewhat naturally and that is because you have great, relevant, and timely content that viewers want to read, comment on, and link to.
This article was not meant to be a complete course on search engine optimization. The purpose was to alert dealers that there is a BIG difference between on-page optimization and off-page optimization. I’ve had dealers tell me they are paying for SEO services by their website developer and that is typically, on-page optimization only.