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3 Important SEO Trends for the Automotive Industry

Remember the good old days when digital marketing was referred to as “internet marketing” and the biggest thing marketers had to worry about were meta descriptions, header tags, and stuffing as many keywords as possible onto a your homepage? As technology has evolved and consumers have grown with it, automotive marketers have had to grow with them. It’s not enough to slap a contact form on your website and sit back and wait for the inquiries or foot traffic to roll in.

Automotive SEO is now all about creating a great customer experience during all phases of the customer cycle. You’ve heard the phrase “Content is King,” right? It’s so catchy because it’s true. These days SEO doesn’t mean “beating the algorithm”‒because there is no way to beat it. If you want to reach your audience, you need to be serving up quality content that people will genuinely want to consume. Sound overwhelming? Green Arrow Marketing & Media is making it easy by narrowing it down to these 3 important automotive SEO trends:

1. Nurture your prospects and customers through EVERY phase of their journey.

You’re probably already familiar with some version of a customer sales funnel or cycle. As consumers become more savvy, their journeys have evolved to look something like this:

Automotive SEO Customer Journey

Your goal as an automotive marketer is to be accessible to your consumers at ALL phases of this cycle and SEO tactics should be at the forefront of your arsenal. For example, at the problem recognition phase consumers will want to see information in a more broad sense. Perhaps they’re interested in the buying process or repair services. If you want to be including in that consumer’s awareness/discovery phase, you need to make sure you have relevant content on your website. Which brings us to the next topic…

2. Know what your customers are looking for, then HYPER-TARGET and FOCUS.

And when we say “hyper”-target, we really mean it. A benefit of being an automotive marketer is that you know where your target audience lives. Because they’re in your backyard. With this information, coupled with what we know about consumer needs during each phase of their journey, we know the kind of content they’re looking for and how to get in front of them.

Not sure exactly what your customers are looking for? A good starting point is keyword & market research to determine trends. Free tools, such as Google Trends, make this process a little easier. You can also use a third-party service to see search queries that lead directly to your site. With these tools, you might notice an uptick in searches for a particular car model in your area. Capitalize on that information by curating content specifically geared toward that car model AND people in your area. If your customers are in sunny South Florida, they really don’t care if an SUV is great for driving through snow. Skip that info and let your prospects know about the gas mileage or climate control features instead.

Once you have your topic, you probably have a good idea about the keywords that will generate traffic. At this point, what you do NOT want to do is cram those keywords into your content as many times as humanly possible. Not only will your consumers be really weirded out, but search engines will catch onto your tricks pretty quickly. Know your important keywords and let them appear organically, and the search engines will reward you.

3. TRACK your efforts and APPLY those learnings.

If you’re not measuring your efforts, then you’ll never know if you were successful. A measurement process doesn’t have to be detailed or time-consuming. In fact, we recommend taking a relaxed approach:

1. Identify your goal. Do you want to increase site traffic? Brand awareness? Leads? These goals will have an affect on how you choose to measure your progress, as well as how you model your content.

2. Identify your metrics. If you want to increase overall traffic, look at your organic traffic before and after your content was posted. If you’ve been successful, you should see an increase for your whole site, not just your content page.

3. Apply your findings to your next project. Did you generate leads? If not, maybe you should have included a contact form at the bottom of your content piece. Not reaching your goal doesn’t mean you failed as long as you apply your learnings next time.

Whatever your SEO goals are, contact the pros at Green Arrow Marketing to learn more about leveraging content to increase your organic search rankings and traffic. With so many options, it can be a daunting task to figure out which method and tactics are best to utilize. Our SEO team is poised and ready to help you achieve your goals. Give us a call today to learn more at 888-248-2134 or email us at: info@greenarrowmm.com