The question that most automotive SEO vendors hate answering is, "How much traffic will I get?" In PPC, estimates are easy. In SEO, they are often harder to find and more importantly they're misunderstood.

Vendors often point to the Google Keyword Tool or other tools that allow dealers to see how many searches are done per month on a given keyword. This can be an extremely misleading number as multiple keywords are actually included in the results and the traffic does not translate properly.

In other words, if you check the tool for "Minneapolis Toyota" you'll see that it shows there are 3,600 searches a month for the keyword. One would expect that being ranked #1 would yield half of those, right? Maybe a quarter?

No.

In reality, it yields around 100-150 extra visitors to month for ranking #1 organically and 25-40 per month when at the top for PPC.

As a result, most vendors avoid the traffic question. The true key to making an impact on traffic through SEO is in getting the highest possible rankings for as many keywords as possible. This may seem like a "no-brainer" but all too often I see vendors focusing on 5 or 10 keywords and missing out on the hundreds, even thousands that should be sending traffic to their clients.

We discuss the first and second "R" on other automotive social networks. The goal is to go around the whole circle of the three major automotive social networks to provide real understanding to dealers around the nation. This video talks about all three: