Last time I was here, I wrote about the importance of putting a plan in place before you jump into social media marketing for your dealership. Now that you have that plan in place, let’s take a look at some ways you can supplement those activities with your dealership website.

A great place to begin is with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the primary underlying principle, keywords.

First off, what is SEO?

Any online marketing website worth its salt is going to start out by talking about SEO. These are the “rules” you can use to structure and tweak your dealership website in order to make it appear near the top of search results for any of the top search engines.

I say “rules” because to quote Captain Barbossa: “they’re really more guidelines than rules.”  They’re fluid, and you have to keep up with the changes — SEO is never really complete.

There are several websites out there that can help you with that, and my favorite is Hubspot. They make their money from helping people “Get Found” online using their software, but they are also a great resource for getting a general grasp on the concepts behind SEO and its parent concept, Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Full disclosure: we’re not clients. I just like their content because they know what they’re doing.

What’s great about these two acronyms – SEO and SEM -  is that they represent a way to get some free advertising  for your dealership if you’re willing to put in the time. Many dealers outsource this activity when they outsource their website development – which means it’s technically no longer “free” -  but this is an activity you can do in-house. It can be spectacularly time-consuming to do it correctly and stay on top of it, but it can be done.

If  you don’t have a website yet and you’re interested in building one, check out our sister companies at Dominion Dealer Solutions. They’ve got you covered, up to and including SEO.

So where do keywords come in?

Keywords are important because they are what make your website visible to the car buyers you’re trying to reach when they’re using search engines on the web.

Take for example our auto finance lead generation site, Carloan.com. Because of the way the site was built and the density of the auto-finance-related keywords on it, a Google search for “car loan” in most parts of the country will bring it up first in the organic search results. This is great because consumers are more likely to trust the organic search results than the paid placements that line the top and the right side of the results page.

Again, it can take a lot of work to get the mix just right on your own, but it can be done.

How do I find the keywords for my site?

Depending on what your strategy is (again, see my previous post), you’ll identify keywords based on geography, your business focus, even your lot inventory to bring more people in to your website via a web search.

For example, if you’re the truck specialist in your area, focus on highlighting the makes and models that you know are popular on your lot. Emphasize your location to make sure that folks searching for “Ford F-150 in Alpharetta, GA” find your website first.

Another way to tackle it is to check out your local competitors’ websites to see how they’re featuring their inventory. If you’ve got someone who’s coming in ahead of you in search results for your area, definitely check them out.

All web browsers have a “View Source” capability where you can look under the hood and see what keywords they’re using. Copying and pasting theirs won’t get you to the top of the results, but you can at least see what’s working for them.

You can also create a Google account and use their Webmaster Tools to find ways to tweak and update your site to be more competitive on the search results pages and drive more traffic to your store. Go to Hubspot and search for “keywords” for their tips on finding and using keywords.

Believe me, it’s worth checking out.

It’s not enough to just have a dealership site anymore, you have to put some thought into how it’s structured, what it focuses on and how it brings in web traffic that you can turn into lot traffic. Taking a good look at what keywords your site uses is a great place to start.