dealership-SEO

Local SEO – Demystifying What SEO Really Means For Your Dealership

by with No Comment Digital MarketingSearch Engine Optimization

This article originally appeared in the March 2022 issue of OPE Business.

I once had a dealer tell me that the “S” in SEO, stood for snake oil. I chuckled at the sentiment. Mostly because I knew where he was coming from. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has gotten a bad rap over the years due to unscrupulous marketing providers selling back links and blog and well, snake oil. And it’s difficult not to understand how SEO got that rap. Results can be hard to quantify. Customers don’t always give it the time required to start working. Positive results can be written off as the seasonality of the market. And Google changes their algorithm ALL THE TIME. What used to work 5 years ago and drove tons of traffic to your site, may now be considered spammy and the Google will swiftly devalue your site to the depths of – gasp – page 2 or worse of the search results, never to be seen again. But SEO doesn’t have to be this mythical bag of tricks that nobody understands. The concept of SEO is actually quite simple. How can we optimize your web presence so that the people who are looking for your products can actually find you? How we do it though, is the most important thing to understand. The first thing we need to do is differentiate between Local and National SEO. Understanding the difference will make all the difference in the tactics you use to optimize your business.

National SEO

National SEO means you are trying to rank as highly as possible for keywords or phrases that relate to your product or service on a national level. Simple right? Well, yes and no. Go Google a product you sell, something simple like Cub Cadet XT1 and note the results that pop up. The first few results are going to be dominated by links to cubcadet.com, followed by large national retail outlets like Home Depot and others. It certainly makes sense that Cub Cadet would show up at the top for searches that relate to “cub cadet”.

There are many factors that go into their position at the top of the search results. Important aspects include

  • Domain authority
  • Number of quality back links
  • Rich catalog data
  • Quality of on-site unique content

It takes a lot of time and effort (and money) to make sure all of the ingredients for Google’s secret sauce are accounted for and the truth is, it’s a large investment that most dealers simply don’t need to make. Because you’re trying to reach ready-to-buy local customers, not try to outrank cubcadet.com. If Cub Cadet is doing a great job with their national SEO, that’s going to help brand awareness and local searches that lead customers to your doorstep. If you are a national brand, an e-commerce store or a very large chain dealership that has a wide net to cast for eyeballs, national SEO is extremely important, but for smaller dealerships, it’s neither realistic or necessary.

Local SEO

Local SEO means that you are trying to make sure your business shows up as high as possible when potential customers are looking for the product you sell. In the previous example, someone searching for “cub cadet XT1” should expect to find the product page at cubcadet.com rank near the top of search results. The important thing to remember with SEO is that you have to consider the intent of search. Think about how a search for “cub cadet XT1” vs “cub cadet XT1 near me” or “cub cadet dealership” changes how Google interprets the searcher’s intent. When a searcher adds a local qualifier like “near me” or your local city/state to their original search, Google understands that the searcher is looking for a business in their local area and returns results. So go google something like “cub cadet dealership near me” and note the results. At the top of the page you’ll like see what we call the “map pack”. The map pack displays the top three businesses in your general area that match your original search term.

Think about the importance of a local search and local search intent. If you search for a “cub cadet dealership near me” or “lawnmower repair near me”, it stands to reason that you’re looking for a business near you that sells Cub Cadet mowers or can repair your lawnmower. So if you can optimize your business to appear at the top of that list, research indicates that a whopping 75% of local-intent searches result in a store visit within 24 hours, ready to buy what you’re selling.

So how do you optimize for local-intent searches? Your Google Business Profile holds the key to dominating local search results. I’ve spoken at length about Google Business Profiles (formerly known as Google My Business) in the past, but understanding how to properly optimize your profile leads to dominance in the Google map pack.

SEO doesn’t have to be the black magic tactic that many think it is. It’s perfectly valid and extremely powerful when done correctly. But when done poorly, it can also have a negative effect on your business. So as with any task you outsource, it’s important to seek validation, ask the right questions and work with a vendor that you know you can trust.

blog-featured-inventory-shortage

How Smart Dealers Can Market Themselves in an Inventory Crisis

by with No Comment Business ListingsSearch Engine Optimization

This article originally appeared in the July edition of OPE Business

Do you remember last year when the pandemic hit, how much fear swept across small retail businesses? Nobody knew how the pandemic would affect sales and ultimately their livelihoods, causing many of our dealers to pause their marketing and advertising efforts. And while COVID was certainly unkind to many small businesses, many of the dealerships we work with reported better than expected sales volumes. The smart dealers who continued to advertise in the early stages of the pandemic, reaped the benefits of being proactive in their messaging.

Fast forward to 2021 and the lasting effects of the pandemic are starting to manifest in inventory scarcity, resulting in a different type of crisis. Again faced with uncertainty, we’ve heard from many dealers who are pausing advertising programs, which is understandable if there is no inventory to sell, but the most proactive dealers can still position themselves to be top of mind when supply finally catches up with demand.

Here are three ways you can keep your dealership visible to potential customers.

Utilize Google My Business
If you’ve sat in any marketing webinar in the past two years, every dealership marketing consultant has likely driven home the importance of utilizing your Google My Business (GMB) profile and I am certainly no different. Why? Because it’s free and it’s extremely powerful. Here’s are two new features that will hep you make the most of your GMB profile:

  • Turn on GMB Messaging: Google recently turned on the ability for customers to message you directly from your GMB profile. Make sure you go into your GMB settings and turn on this functionality. Eliminating any friction between you and your potential customer is important, especially in this competitive space.
  • Add products to your profile: In 2020, Google gave businesses the ability to manually add products directly to their profiles, complete with photos and pricing information. So if a potential customer is searching for “Cub Cadet Ultima ZT1 42” and you’ve added that product to your local profile, you’ll boost your chances of being discovered for that product.

Engage Your Existing Customer List
In the OPE industry we find that dealers will spend tens of thousands of dollars per year to acquire new customers and ignore (or just take for granted) their existing customer base. According to Marketing Metrics, the probability of converting an existing customer is between 60 – 70%, but the probability of converting a new prospect is only between 5 – 20%.

The way our industry is structured, especially with how co-op ad dollars from OEMs work, the majority of our focus tends to be on new customer acquisition. And while acquisition is extremely important, think about where your business really makes its money and its margins. Most would say it’s in service and repeat purchases.

Every dealership has a customer list, but do you have contact information for your customers? An email address? A cell phone number? Maybe buried in your DMS somewhere? Smart dealers can take control of their data but utilizing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). If you don’t have a CRM or a DMS capable of exporting your customer list, making this a priority for the second half of 2021 is a good move. When coupled with an email marketing and text automation tool, creating and maintaining a robust CRM pays dividends multiple times over by allowing you to communicate with existing customers in real time, informing them of service promotions or other incentives. And if you DO happen to have good inventory on a particular model, you may be in a unique position to sell quickly to a captive audience.

Once you have a system in place to capture and nurture those contacts, consider driving more people to sign up to join your list. Be creative by creating a “wait list” for customers to sign up to be informed when new inventory arrives you can have them sold by the time they hit the floor.

Don’t Stop Spending
If you decide to completely stop your advertising programs during slow times, remember that there is always a competitor out there who is maintaining some level of spend to make sure that their name is the first one found when customers are searching. You should definitely cut down your ad programs from your usual peak spending highs, but make sure you maintain a presence to keep your dealership in the spotlight. You can stop video ads, banner ads and even social ads during this time, but consider keeping some budget in the Google network, either utilizing Search ads or Local ads. These ad types appear when someone is specifically searching for you or products you provide so this tactic allows you to be present when a potential customer is showing some intent to find you. Best of all, if they don’t click, you don’t pay.

It is important to spend any “down time” preparing for when inventory starts to arrive because this forced shift in seasons won’t last forever. If you are proactive now, you won’t be scrambling to move late-arriving inventory before selling season is completely over.

seobanner

3 SEO Tips to Improve Your Keyword Optimization

by with No Comment Search Engine Optimization

Keyword Optimization is an essential part of SEO!

Improving SEO can help your site get found more easily, but you do have to go after it the right way.

Although you may not always notice them, keywords play an integral role when it comes to helping a small business get found online. You’ve probably heard that implementing keywords into the content on your website, blog, and URL are key strategies for improving your SEO ranking. 

 However, including the wrong keywords or too many keywords can be just as detrimental. Long gone are the days where you can fill up a hidden box with thousands of popular keywords to pop up in searches everywhere. Now, we have to be purposeful. 

So let’s get to it by breaking down the long and short (tail) of it. 

Do Your Own Keyword Research

Keyword research should never be a one-time commitment, but rather an ever-changing process that involves a strategy and a comprehensive understanding of your business and your industry. Including keywords that are specific to your business and industry will help to ensure that the right customers are being driven to your door rather than just any customer. Although we want to increase our customer base, we don’t want to target consumers that may not find the value in our business.

So, if you’re trying to attract customers who are in the business of commercial farming, you probably don’t want to use keywords that appeal to Grandma Daisy down the road.  They’re both interested in lawn and garden tools, but proper keywords can help you pick out the right person.

 

Using the Right Keywords

Short-tail keywords, or keywords composed of very generic keywords, might seem appealing because they’re searched more often than long-tail keywords, however, they’re also a lot more competitive. So, unless you’re writing content for a large organization, like Apple or Macy’s, and consumers are likely searching specifically for your product, you don’t want to enter into a sea of competitors with big brands that have even bigger pockets.

Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, may not be as frequently typed into a search engine—think, “Egg” vs. “Poached Egg with Avocado and Bechemel”. By including more long-tail keywords into the content on your page, you’ll attract a larger number of customers who are likely to search for any combination of those long-tail keywords. People who already know EXACTLY what they want, and are ready to take action. 

Location-based keywords 

Are directly related to your business’s physical location. For example, if your business is a bakery in a popular neighborhood in Lexington, KY, you’ll want to include not only Lexington, but also the name of that specific neighborhood. By doing so, you’re more likely to target visitors in your area rather than across town who may or may not ever make it to your location. This is a great way to elevate your keyword optimization.

location based keywords local marketing

 Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Speaking of misleading customers that may not find value in your business, adding practically any keyword under the sun is referred to as keyword stuffing and is largely considered a taboo in the digital marketing world. Like with any other digital marketing rule of thumb, less is more and quality will always conquer quantity. Ideally, a website’s content should include keywords in a natural way, through product descriptions, blog articles, and generally having public content available that appeals to their targeted audience. 

However, by inputting keywords into a few sentences and repeating them over and over, you’re stuffing your content. Even if you think they’re good keywords, it’s still too much, and your ranking will suffer.

Creating genuine content that is naturally appealing to your targeted customer base is a good place to start. Giving headlines and subheads that accurately describe what the article is about will also help. 

There’s more that goes into it, but that’s just a few tips to improve keyword use in your quest for Search Engine Optimization.

Liked this article? Read more about SEO, Local Business Listings, and more on our blog!