Of all the digital marketing techniques available to the automotive industry, search engine optimization (SEO) gets misunderstood. For one, SEO does not sell anything directly to shoppers. Unlike classified ads, CPC campaigns, radio spots, or flashy banners, SEO works behind the scenes. This strategy aims not to advertise but to raise awareness of your store’s inventory and services. By increasing the digital visibility, better traffic and leads that convert into sales steadily increase so that your store’s profit grows. Unlike other forms of advertising, SEO is a game of inches rather than leaps and bounds.
There are many types of SEO techniques. However, they all boil down to one purpose: to increase a website’s visibility. This gets achieved by increasing a site’s page rank. Page rank gets determined by search engine bots as they crawl the web. For 24 hours a day, these bots work their way around the world wide web and scan everything they find. Every time they arrive on a website, they give it a quality score known as page rank. Search engines do not disclose how to get a perfect score, but SEO experts know that the breadth of content and overall quality contribute heavily to determining this number.
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The reason page rank is so important is that it determines the order of websites on a search engine results page. For example, if you search for “how to buy a car for the first time,” only relevant websites will appear. You won’t find a site that discusses the best vegan stir-fry recipes. Instead, all you will see are websites that offer helpful information for first-time auto buyers. Page rank comes into play because only the sites with the highest score appear on the first page. While some readers may remember the days when you had to go to the third, fourth, or fifth page of a result to find what you need, that hasn’t been the case for a while. Studies have shown that most shoppers do not visit the third page of a search, and many do not go beyond the first.
If you want to increase traffic and high-quality leads to your site, you need to appear on the first page of a result. The only way to make that happen is by incorporating an SEO strategy into your marketing toolkit. There are a few steps to that process. First, an expert will comb through your website to look for errors, typos, broken links, and issues with the user experience. A slow load time, grainy photos, or a confusing layout can severely impact your page rank. Once those issues get resolved, the next step is to add more relevant content.
Relevant content will look slightly different for every website and according to every vendor. A video SEO company, for example, may insist on better images and even short clips that showcase the sales team, vehicles, and so forth. Another SEO vendor will add articles to your store’s website that anticipate shoppers’ questions, such as tips for first-time buyers. The point is to increase the amount of relevant traffic and high-quality leads to your store by incorporating worthwhile material. If your vendor knows what they’re doing, you’ll quickly discover an uptick in sales that no one other digital marketing strategy can provide.
