SEO for car dealers and garages: The way to pole position on Google

Are you looking for the key to digital success for your car dealership or garage? Then it’s time to familiarize yourself with the powerful tool of search engine optimization, better known as SEO.

In a world where almost every buying process starts online, being at the top of search results is essential. This is the only way to gain more visibility, more customers and ultimately more sales.

In this article, we’ll dive deep into the world of SEO for car dealerships and auto repair shops, offering practical tips and strategies to help you strengthen your online presence.

Unlike other sectors of the economy, the automotive industry has become increasingly reliant on online portals in recent years.
According to a study, 90% of car buyers search online for information and offers
. Therefore, visibility on your dealership’s network, as well as that of your auto repair shop, is crucial to attracting the interest of potential customers.

As a dealership or auto repair shop owner, you want people looking for a new car or repair to come across your website. Through
a strong SEO strategy
you can optimize your website so that it appears in the top positions of the search results and thus generates more traffic.

1. Improve online presence: With a good SEO strategy, you can improve the visibility of your dealership or auto repair shop in the search results of search engines like Google. This means that more potential customers will find your website and become aware of your cars or services.
2. Attract local customers: Many people use search engines to find local businesses. Through local SEO, you can make sure your dealership and auto repair shop appear in search results when someone searches for a car or repair shop in your area.
3. Securing competitive advantages: The automotive industry is extremely competitive. To stay ahead of the competition, car dealerships and garages must do everything they can to remain visible. An effective SEO strategy helps to stay ahead of the competition.
4. Generate higher traffic and sales: Better positioning in search results usually leads to more website traffic. If your website is well designed and vehicles as well as services are well presented, this can lead to more sales and a higher turnover.
5. Build trust and credibility: Websites that appear on the first page of search results are usually perceived as more trustworthy. This can help increase the trust and credibility of your dealership or auto repair shop with potential customers.
6. Increase user experience: SEO also includes improving the user experience on your website. A website that is easy to navigate and user-friendly can help keep potential customers on the site longer and encourage them to make a purchase or book a service.

We have compiled the most important OnPage SEO measures for your car dealership or auto repair shop website that will help you increase your reach in organic search.

Each page of your website should be optimized for specific keywords that are relevant to your business. This includes the placement of keywords in strategically important places, as well as the use of keywords in the texts of your website.

We have compiled some keyword examples here for you to use for optimization:

Car dealership:

1. “[Stadt] Autohaus” (e.g. “Berlin Autohaus”)
2. “Buy a new car [Stadt]”
3. “Used cars [Stadt]”
4. “Best Car Dealership [Stadt]”
5. “[Automarke] Dealer [Stadt]” (e.g. “BMW Dealer Munich”)
6. “Car Financing [Stadt]”
7. “Car Leasing [Stadt]”

Car repair shop:

1. “Car repair shop in [Stadt]” (e.g. “Car repair shop in Hamburg”)
2. “Car Repair [Stadt]”
3. “Car repair shop [Stadt]”
4. “Car inspection [Stadt]”
5. “Car oil change [Stadt]”
6. “[Automarke] Service [Stadt]” (e.g. “Mercedes Service Frankfurt”)
7. “Best auto repair shop [Stadt]”

Use internal links to direct visitors to relevant pages on your site for easy navigation. This can also help increase the amount of time visitors spend on your website, which can have a positive impact on your search engine rankings.

Each page of your website should have a unique meta title and description that briefly summarizes the content of the page and includes the relevant keywords. Both appear in search results and can encourage potential customers to click on your site.

10 ideas for the meta titles of your home page

Car dealership:

1. “Your trusted car dealership in [Stadt] – [Autohausname] Autohaus”
2. “High quality new & used cars – car dealership [Autohausname], [Stadt]”
3. “Car dealership [Autohausname] in [Stadt] – top offers & first-class service”
4. “New cars, used cars & top service – Autohaus [Autohausname], [Stadt]”
5. “Your friendly car dealer in [Stadt] – Autohaus [Autohausname]”

Car repair shop:

1. “Top auto repair shop in [Stadt] – [Werkstattname] auto repair shop”
2. “Your reliable auto repair shop in [Stadt] – Workshop [Werkstattname]”
3. “Fast and professional car repair – [Werkstattname] workshop, [Stadt]”
4. “Car repair shop [Werkstattname] in [Stadt] – quality and service in the first place”.
5. “Car service, inspection & more – your auto repair shop in [Stadt], workshop [Werkstattname]”

Images can be an important part of your SEO strategy, especially for car dealerships where visual representations of vehicles are crucial. Make sure all images on your site are optimized by using descriptive file names and alt tags, and minimizing file size to reduce load time.

Each page of your website should have an easily understandable and descriptive URL that reflects the content of the page. Avoid unclear or generic URLs and make sure relevant keywords are included in the URL.

By implementing these OnPage SEO measures, your car dealership or auto repair shop can improve the visibility of your website and reach more potential customers.

1. Optimize website speed: Long loading times can discourage visitors and affect your website’s ranking. Optimize your images, minimize code, and use browser caching to improve your website speed.
2. Ensure mobile-friendliness: Your website should work smoothly on all devices, especially smartphones. This is especially important because Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means that the mobile version of your website has priority in indexing and ranking.
3. Use secure protocol (HTTPS): If your website is not yet running over HTTPS, you should change this as soon as possible. HTTPS is more secure than HTTP and is used by Google as a ranking factor.
4. Create XML sitemap: An XML sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your website and crawl all pages efficiently. Make sure your sitemap is up-to-date and contains all the important pages of your website.
5. Optimize Robots.txt: With the robots.txt file you can control which areas of your website may be crawled by search engines and which may not. It is important that this file is properly configured to prevent important pages from being blocked.
6. Use 301 redirects: When deleting or moving pages, you should always set up a 301 forwarding. This ensures that visitors and search engines are redirected to the new page instead of encountering an error page.
7. Structured data: Implement structured data (schema markup) to give search engines additional information about your site. For car dealerships and workshops, this can include information on opening hours, location, contact information and vehicle details.

Here are ten types of structured data that are relevant to car dealerships and repair shops:

• LocalBusiness: Defines your company as a local business and allows you to provide important information such as name, address and contact information.
• AutomotiveBusiness: A more specific type that can be used for companies in the automotive sector.
• AutoDealer: Even more specifically, defines your company as a car dealer.
• AutoRepair: Defines your business as an auto repair shop.
• OpeningHours: Specifies your opening hours.
• AggregateRating: Shows the overall rating of your company based on customer reviews.
• Review: Displays individual customer reviews.
• Product: Used for specific vehicles that you sell. You can provide information such as the name, description, price and condition of the vehicle.
• Offer: Indicates specific offers you have for a vehicle, including price, availability, and applicable terms.
• BreadcrumbList: Displays the path or navigation on your website, which is especially helpful if you have many different pages and categories.

By implementing these technical SEO measures, you can ensure for your car dealerships or auto repair shops that your associated website is optimized for search engines and realizes your full potential in terms of search engine ranking.

Create useful and relevant content for your customers. This can include detailed descriptions and photos of cars, guides to buying and selling cars, information on workshop services and blog posts with tips on car care.

Attractive and relevant content is a key element in attracting visitors to your website and getting them to become customers.

Here are ten unique content ideas for your dealership or auto repair shop:

1. Compare car models: Create detailed articles that compare different car models to help potential customers make purchasing decisions.
2. Car care tips: Share helpful tips and tricks on car care, such as proper cleaning, oil changes, and tire pressure checks.
3. Vehicle reviews: Create detailed reviews for the vehicles you sell, including photos, videos, and customer opinions.
4. “Behind the scenes” insights: share stories and photos of your team and your behind-the-scenes work to build trust and connect with your customers on a personal level.
5. Car buying guides: create helpful guides for car buying, such as financing, leasing, and comparing new vs. used cars.
6. Interviews with professionals: Conduct interviews with your mechanics or sales staff where you answer frequently asked questions or provide valuable insights into your work.
7. Explaining car technologies: create articles that explain new or complex car technologies, such as hybrid drive systems, assistance systems, or infotainment systems.
8. Local events: Report on local events you participate in or sponsor, such as car shows, charity runs or community events.
9. Driving safety tips: Give your customers valuable tips on driving safety, such as driving in bad weather, child safety or dealing with breakdowns.
10. History and development of car brands: write interesting articles about the history and development of car brands that you sell.

These content ideas can help you connect with your customers, demonstrate your expertise, and drive more traffic to your website.

As in all areas, there are always new trends and developments in SEO that need to be taken into account.

The use of voice search has become much more important for car dealerships and garages in recent years. More and more potential car buyers and vehicle owners are using their smartphones and voice assistants like Siri or Alexa to search for car dealerships, new vehicles, used cars or auto repair shops.

Therefore, it is essential for car dealerships and auto repair shops to optimize their websites for voice search by including questions and answers that specifically target the automotive and service industries in their content.

Local SEO for car dealerships and garages is essential, as the majority of customers look for local offers and services. Therefore, it is crucial that you optimize your website so that it appears for local search queries. This includes clearly displaying their address, phone number and opening hours on their website and integrating local keywords into their content.

Visual content such as vehicle tours and repair demonstrations are gaining in importance, as they can give potential customers a realistic impression of the vehicles and services offered by a car dealership or garage.

Therefore, you should use expressive images and meaningful videos on your car dealership or auto repair shop website to vividly present their vehicle models, repair and maintenance services.

Backlinks and social media signals play a crucial role in the visibility and ranking of automotive websites. Car dealerships and auto repair shops should therefore pursue targeted strategies to obtain high-quality backlinks from credible and industry-relevant websites.

In addition, an active presence on social media platforms is essential to increase brand awareness, foster customer loyalty and ultimately increase influence on potential car buyers and workshop customers.

SEO for car dealerships and auto dealers can present several challenges. Some of the most common are:

1. Strong competition: The automotive industry is very competitive, and many car dealers and dealerships compete for the same keywords and search queries. This makes it more difficult to achieve a high ranking in search results.
2. Local SEO: Car dealerships and repair shops often need to target their SEO strategy to a specific geographic region. This can be complicated, especially if they have a presence in multiple regions or if they compete with other companies in the same region.
3. Dynamic Inventory: Unlike many other businesses, a dealership or car dealer’s inventory is constantly changing. This means they need to regularly update their website and SEO strategy to ensure they remain relevant to the current vehicles and services available.
4. Technical SEO: Car dealership websites can often be complex, with many different pages and elements. This can complicate technical SEO, as they need to ensure that all pages are indexed correctly, that load times are optimized, and that there are no dead links or other technical issues.
5. Content creation: In order to rank well in search results, car dealerships and garages must regularly create high-quality, relevant content. This can be a challenge, especially if they don’t have the resources to focus on content creation.
6. Reviews and reputation management: Positive online reviews can help improve rankings in search results, especially for local searches. Car dealerships and garages must therefore find a way to encourage positive reviews and respond to negative reviews.

Despite these challenges, SEO is a crucial marketing strategy for car dealerships and auto repair shops, as it can help significantly improve their online visibility and attract more customers.