Automotive SEO is a whole different approach when it comes to strategizing SEO for the automotive industry. The sole purpose of doing SEO is to rank your website higher for terms that define your product or services and solve your customers’ problems. From helping them find vehicle-related solutions to generic maintenance service, often through local searches such as “car repair near me” or “used sedan cars under 25k in California,” etc.
Doing SEO for the automotive industry comes with a unique set of challenges. Not only is the industry competitive, but you also have to consider the best practices within more specific SEO areas, such as local SEO, ecommerce SEO, and more.
While many branches of the automotive industry fall under the YMYL bracket (which means ‘Your Money’ or ‘Your Life’), such as insurance companies and financial service providers, there are many considerations to be aware of.
So, how do you succeed in such competition? Well, there are some major points that you should take into consideration when forming your automotive SEO strategy.
Best SEO Practices for Your Automotive Business
1. E-E-A-T is the new King
E-E-A-T is the new ‘most important factor’ for all businesses online. E-E-A-T stands for ‘Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness’, a concept from Google’s published Search Rater Guidelines.
This is the document that Google’s search raters (real people, not bots) use to measure their algorithms’ effectiveness. The major part of this document requires these raters to check the E-E-A-T of a website, and it considers:
- What the website or business says about itself
- What others (e.g, content creators) say about the website or business
- What is visible on a page, including the content and reviews section
2. Start with targeted keyword strategy
Whilst automotive SEO certainly has its nuances and challenges, that’s not to say the SEO basics aren’t applicable here. An important foundation of your SEO strategy is its keyword strategy – and it must be curated carefully.
A solid keyword strategy considers viability, competition, assignment, and intent.
Competition
The automotive industry is a competitive field; make sure that the keywords you target are realistic enough for your business. You don’t have to go after famous keywords with the highest search volume. You can use SEO tools to research keyword competition and monthly search volume. However, simply checking the SERPs yourself isn’t enough to figure out the competition level – so if in doubt, simply search your keyword!
Local keywords
If your automotive business is focused on the local market, you should consider keywords with your target location. For instance, go after keywords with areas in the name, such as [car service near me], [oil change in Boston], etc. If you only service particular areas and have no intention of changing this, then there’s no point trying to rank for a term that isn’t localised, say ‘[car service]’.
However, depending solely on the keyword tracking tool you use, you should also consider having an additional property set up to track your ranking positions within your target area. You can use tools like Advanced Web Ranking to do this.
This means you can track keyword searches like ‘[car service] near me’ and see how your website is ranking in your local area.
Keyword Intent
You need to consider the relevancy and competition when doing initial keyword research. But do you truly understand the intent of the keywords you’re gonna target?
Here are some quick examples to understand keyword intent and what the best outcomes would be in the search results:
‘Ford Mustang 1965 front bumper’ – this person is looking for a specific product = rank your product page
‘Land cruiser oil change’ – this person is looking for a service = build a service page
‘best tyres for Mercedes’ – this person is looking for information = publish an unbiased information-based article
3. Build Content that Attracts Links
For Google to better trust your website and rank it higher in the search results, you need to create a reason. Building quality organic links can be a great way to build trust. However, this is a time-consuming task, which requires dedication. You might think of outsourcing this or using spammy link-building malpractices. A big red flag. Such practices will harm your website more than doing any good.
But why would these high-reputation websites link to your content? You have to produce something of worth. Create content that’s shareable and useful for users. Whether it comes from your own data research, a heatmap, a useful tool, or a detailed infographic.
4. Combine Organic & Paid SEO Strategies
Combining SEO and paid strategy (PPC channels) to form an integrated strategy has several benefits, especially for automotive businesses. From greater efficiencies to better ROI, gaining top positions for high-volume product-based keywords.
Depending on where your business stands in its online journey, combining both SEO and PPC can benefit you in many ways. Where you have lesser visibility, use PPC ads to support with traffic and leads whilst you build and grow your SEO presence. We know SEO isn’t an overnight job.
Alternatively, if you have good search rankings and want to maximize your visibility. You can run PPC ads to target high competition keywords. Such an integrated SEO practice protects your brand name from being leveraged by your competitors. Using both strategies simultaneously can be a great step.
Conclusion
Understanding Google’s mission eases the SEO process for you. The easier you make things for Google, the more it’s gonna love your website. Google wants to provide the best results to its users. These major points we mentioned work as the backbone of every successful SEO strategy.
From targeted keyword research, building quality content, and an integrated SEO strategy, these things pretty much wrap up your SEO for the automotive business. On top of that, E-E-A-T is the key player in this. Make E-E-A-T the focus of your SEO strategy, and a lot of things will become easy for you.