Search Engine Optimization isn’t just for us computer geeks anymore. You could be the most ambitious dealership on the planet when it comes to creating a website with all the bells and whistles that people will love. However, unless your visitors can find your site when they search specific and local terms, your efforts are just going to be wasted. 

Search engine optimization is simply a term used to describe the process where you work to improve your dealership website to make it found quickly by the search engines and put higher in their organic (non-paid) ranks.  

SEO is a great way to help establish your dealership online. The higher up your site is in organic search results, the more visibility you will have to potential customers. Keep in mind that the algorithms that all search engines use to rank websites are constantly changing. Remember to stay updated about search engine optimization so your dealership website’s rank will stay high. 

SEO requires a finely tuned balance of on-site (content, for example) and off-site optimization (backlinks, as an example). While the two concepts are actually considered separate techniques, the most effective and keyword-optimized sites combine the best aspects of each of the two processes. When well-researched and done correctly, the two sides create a site that is greater than the sum of its parts for dealerships.  

One of the most important parts of SEO is making sure your site has unique and fresh content. If the content on your dealership site does not appear elsewhere on the web, the search engines will weigh it more highly than duplicate content. At the same time, newer content is weighted more highly than aging site content. Obviously dealerships have similar content when with similar website vendors, with content that is provided with the site. So keep the content fresh and make custom internal adjustments based on your dealership and local market.  

Always work on getting more inbound links directed to your dealership site. If you only make an effort to get inbound links once, you will see a quick boost in your rankings but it won’t last. Having links coming in over time gives you higher credibility with the search engine sites and improves your search standing results. 

In search engine optimization, a website with many links leading to it from other sites, will receive a big boost to its position on the results page. Search engines give great weight to exterior links that mention search terms when evaluating the relevance of a particular website. Cultivating these links is an effective SEO strategy. 

Use outside website resources to track your dealership site ranks — there are a few services that help track closely. This may seem like a simple thing to do on your own, but your rankings on the search engines change constantly. Using an outside resource usually means they will keep track of your rankings for a few hours or days, and report back to you where your average sits. 

Of course your dealership is looking to get your site to the top of the local search results, then you should make sure that you analyze the SEO tactics that your competitor dealerships use. There are reasons that other dealer sites are successful in their market and if you figure out what they are doing, you can get your site there too. 

Though your site might be really great, it will never be perfect. Understand this, and you will want to improve your site on a daily basis. You should always be seeking to improve visitor numbers to the dealership site. 

By following the tips and advice in this post you can generate more web traffic to your website by driving traffic through search engine results. A high percentage of dealership web traffic is currently being filtered through various search engines, which makes search engine optimization a vital and important part of your dealership digital marketing.