In this day and age, it’s inevitable that most automobile customers do their research on automotive parts, makes, and models online. Both digital marketing and SEO have grown rapidly and become necessary for automotive businesses to succeed. As the automotive market becomes more competitive over time, implementing local SEO services over time can help your business succeed and stand strong within the automotive industry. Below are some of the best automotive SEO tips that can help drive growth and success for your automotive business. Start your engines and let’s get started!
8 Automotive SEO Tips to Help Grow Your Local SEO Rankings
1) Create a User-Friendly Website
One of the most important things you should do for your automotive business is to create and optimize a website. Doing so helps keep all of your business information in one place and helps build your online presence. If you choose not to create a website, this gives room for your competitors in your industry to outrank you. Having a user-friendly website is incremental in having successful SEO over time. It helps you stand out against your competitors and help new and local customers find you online.
Along with having a website for your automotive business, it’s important to keep up with it and make it the best that it can be for your customers. Whether that’s making your website easy and accessible, having your services and products accessible and available, or having information present that your customers might be interested in knowing. All of these factors can be incorporated into the content and optimization of your automotive website.
2) Create or Claim Your Google Business Profile
Along with having information on your automotive website, there are additional profiles your business can make for customers to find information. Creating or claiming a Google Business Profile is one of the most important ways in which your business can be seen in your local area. Claiming or creating a GBP is simple and easy to do and set up. It also helps:
- Find your business online
- Improve search and user intent
- Help your business be found on Google Maps
- Provide a place for customers to review your business
When you create a business listing on Google for your automotive business, it allows customers to find your information quickly. It also helps build your online presence and credibility with customers and search engines. While that might not always be the most important factor on your mind, doing these efforts help build your rankings over time.
Especially with a local perspective in mind, creating a GBP will help you stand out against your competitors in your area. One of the best ways to help your automotive business stand out is by being active on your GBP. What we mean by this is to constantly make sure your business information is correct and up to date, add photos and videos about your business, respond to reviews when they are submitted, enhance the services and products you offer, etc. There are lots of ways to stay active on your GBP. Be sure to always be active, especially in your local area.
3) Get Your Automotive Business Listed in Relevant Directories
It’s important to keep your automotive customers at the forefront of your mind. Sometimes one of the best perspectives you can have in digital marketing and automotive SEO is through the customer’s thoughts and actions. Where do your customers go to find your business? Do they go right to search engines? WOM? Google Maps? Or it could be through local and relevant directories. Claiming your automotive business through directories is a great way to expand your PR and reach out to new customers.
There are lots of different types of directories your automotive business can list themselves in to be found. It could be through local directories, specific niche directories, industry directories, or relevant directories based on trends or topics relevant to your business. Most directories don’t cost a cent when it comes to adding your information. With this in mind, there’s really nothing to lose! Being listed in other relevant directories gives your business valuable exposure and can bring in more business than you expected. Especially in relevant and industry directories, it builds on your online relevance and authority which can then earn your business higher rankings. Overall, there’s usually no harm in adding your information to directories that can help benefit your automotive business more than you know. Give it a shot!
4) Ask for Authentic and Positive Reviews
Receiving and managing reviews can be one of the most influential digital marketing tasks your automotive business needs to seek out. With people relying more on reviews about your automotive business, it’s important to be wary and responsive to the reviews you receive. Negative reviews are never fun to receive. However, it’s important to respond to them and follow up with ways to improve their situation or issue. It helps build credibility and shows that your business cares about its customers. From a local perspective, this can be extremely helpful.
While it’s important to respond to the reviews you receive, your automotive business should always be asking for and promoting reviews. You can ask them about their experience of your business, feedback that could be helpful to improve on or highlight a positive team member on the assistance they received. All of these experiences can be reflected in an online review for potential customers to see and have a reason for choosing your business. You should also ask for detailed feedback if they decide to leave a review. The reason for this is, Google reviews directly impact your local rankings and when a 4-5 star review is left with an empty response, these types of reviews aren’t as beneficial to your rankings as they used to be in the past. Quality reviews are what help build your rankings along with the number of reviews.
5) Provide Useful Content
One of the best ways for your automotive business to gain organic traffic is through the original content your automotive business could produce. Now more than ever, individuals are searching online for resources and credible information to help them learn or understand certain topics.
Within the automotive industry, there are countless opportunities for your business to take action and create different types of content for your audience. You could create a step-by-step guide or how-to tutorials on automotive topics. These topics could be patching a tire, fixing a flat tire, or how to change your car’s oil. Providing this useful information helps customers fix an issue they might have while also looking to your automotive business for more information. You can choose to create videos, blog posts, or informative guides to help create useful content for your customers.
You can also use content to showcase your products and services. Having descriptive details or a video that gives more light on your automotive products and services helps customers choose and find what they’re looking for. People are more likely to engage and stay with your automotive business when these different types of content are resourceful to them.
6) Increase Local Organizations Ties
While it’s important to stand out against other competitors, it’s also important to strengthen local connections within your industry. While this may seem hypocritical, having a beneficial local automotive SEO strategy can help improve your local SEO efforts. Working with other local automotive businesses by supporting each other can help create community ties that can help your rankings. Working on these efforts helps create trust and authority within your community as well as your industry. When customers know your automotive business supports the community and other local businesses, it can help improve your reputation and help you become an industry leader. You can do things such as linking to other local businesses on a blog post or joining in on community events. The more opportunities you have to create local links and ties back to your automotive business, the more your rankings can improve over time.
7) Check Automotive Analytics
One valuable asset that your automotive business should capitalize on is your analytics. Your analytics can help give you the direction you’re looking for in your content, media, and maybe even operations. Your analytics can help you see what’s trending on your website or within your industry. You can find the things your customers enjoy and capitalize on it! For example, if your customers are enjoying a step-by-step video on how to fix a flat tire, that could motivate your small business to create more step-by-step guides. You should find what your customers are drawn to and provide resources to them.
8) Automotive Keyword Strategy with Specific Product Numbers
Your automotive business can improve your local automotive SEO strategy through keywords, especially with your specific products or services. With the specific automotive parts your business sells, you should learn to optimize the specific product numbers by making them keywords. When someone types in the specific automotive product number, you should want your business to show up in SERPs for them to buy it from you. It also lets customers know the specific products your business has available for them. Optimizing your specific products into keywords can help your automotive business gain more traffic and revenue over time when your products are able to appear high in SERPs.
Shift Your SEO Into High Gear
There are lots of local automotive SEO strategies out there. These 8 tips can help give your automotive business a good starting place to build an online presence and start ranking higher online. Even with all of these tips, sometimes it can be hard to know where to turn next. At greatinflux, we believe in helping our customers succeed online whether it be through digital marketing, local listings, or SEO. Learn more today about how your automotive business can succeed with our affordable small-business SEO services.
