If you are looking to get your car dealership online, you need to do much more than have an awesome website. Search engine optimization plays an important role in digital marketing. Read on to find out how to optimize your online efforts to reach the top of Google search results in order to achieve a higher return on investment from your online marketing efforts. 

Get Your Google My Business Listing Registered

Wondering if you need a Google My Business account to achieve a better ranking on Google SERPs? The answer is a resounding YES. Google My Business has a direct correlation to local SEO. It enables your website to appear in search results when someone enters a search query related to your product or service. Having said that, you must ensure the correctness and accuracy of information in your Google My Business account profile. For example, be sure to fill out the complete business name of your company, phone number, exact location, opening and closing hours and the right set of categories. To take it a step further, be sure to update the latest business photos and create listings on Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, Yellowpages, etc. (more on that in a bit.). Setting up a Google My Business account is the best way to get efficient results in search rankings. And what’s more, it’s free!

Submit Your Website to Online Automotive Directories

Looking for the perfect solution to improve your dealership’s SEO and backlink profile? Online automotive directories are the best places to get started. Submitting your website to an online automotive directory or to a directory with an automotive category helps to build your backlink profile (backlinking is a term used when other websites link to your website which gives Google an indication that you are the go-to source in your field). It builds the credibility of your business and demonstrates authority in your field.There are several free online automotive directories – Automobile Web Directory, DirectoryCar.com, Car and Auto Link Directory – to name a few. Yelp, Bing, YellowPages, etc. are some larger online directories with a dedicated automotive category you can avail of for free.

Optimize Top Website Pages for Keywords

All your search engine marketing efforts can be boiled down to just a few keywords. That's what makes keyword research so valuable and unavoidable part of search marketing. Searchers type in just a few words in a search query and get the ball rolling for marketers to present themselves. Hence, it is very important for marketers to choose the right keywords which have direct relevance to website content. Creating long-tailed keywords e.g. 2017 Ford Mustang Toronto product features has a better chance of ranking higher in Google search results than a short-tailed and generic keyword such as ‘Ford cars’. Also, the long tailed keywords must speak the 'natural language' of the searcher and not something complex which nobody would really enter.

List Your Dealership on Yelp, YellowPages etc.

As mentioned earlier, building citations on popular online directories is a great way to attract the eyeballs of Google search crawlers. A citation mainly includes a full business name, complete address and a phone number. It is important that all the information included in the citation matches exactly with the corresponding details on the website. Google relies heavily on citation to determine the order in which to rank businesses and also to verify the correctness and accuracy of contact details. Yelp, Bing, YellowPages,etc. are obviously some direct places to build a citation; however, question and answer sites, press releases, online forums are also some great sources to create a citation.

Make Sure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

In the ‘always-on’ world that we live in, it goes without saying that any website must be responsive on mobile. If you compare Google search results on desktop and mobile, you will notice that due to the small real estate of mobile, very few (mostly only one) organic results emerge above the fold. Making your website mobile friendly can increase the findability and usability of your website on mobile and thereby increase your odds of staying above the fold.

A good SEO strategy is a sure-shot way of getting the best results for your car dealership business from digital marketing. Creating useful content regularly, being active on social media and keeping up with Google’s ever-changing algorithms for SEO will definitely help your car dealership fare well in the digital space.