Fill Your Website Content Gaps & Give Customers What They Are Searching For
What the Digital Evaluation's SERP quadrant can reveal about your website opportunities
According to Think with Google, nearly 25% of all automotive searches are parts, services, and maintenance related. These service search keywords make it clear that customers are looking for trusted information about servicing their vehicle—something national chains, independent shops, and other third-party sources are providing while dealers, on the whole, are not.
A 3 Birds Marketing survey of nearly 1,000 dealership sites showed that many dealerships fall short of national chains when it comes to creating content focused on these common services, missing out on a valuable chance to provide the answers your customers are seeking.
In fact, it found that 6 out of 10 dealerships have fewer than 5 pages of service-related content on their website and 82% do not offer a “Why Service Here” message touting their dealership amenities—something that can often set the dealership far apart from national chains and independents.
A similar opportunity exists for product-related content. Customers typically turn to OEM websites or sites such as Cars.com or Autotrader to learn more about the latest models. In these situations, your dealership may appear in a competitive position alongside other stores — if it appears at all.
Why the geo-located search terms matter
To provide more insights into how your dealership compares with your competitors for this valuable content, we score search results for geo-located terms such as "Nissan Altima [city]" and "Nissan service [city]." These terms are reflective of customers searching for product and service related terms in your local area, and provide insight into how and where your dealer appears for these higher funnel searches.
Creating website content around these sorts of search terms means your dealership is better serving your local customers’ needs–and that’s a great way to build lasting customer relationships and positive word-of-mouth. Ranking for these higher-funnel searches also broadens your prospective customer base and gives you the chance to start engaging customers before they've even submitted a lead. Additionally, building strong local content will also bolster your dealer's ability to surface for location driven, and Google suggested, "near me" terms as well.
How does your Website Experience stack up?
As with the search results for your branded search term, your optimization of your website plays a large role in your rankings for these new terms. If you're not where you want to be in the rankings, the culprit could be a content gap around that particular topic. Think about new ways to share information about popular services or new models on your website:
- Informative news articles
- Embedded video content
- FAQs about basic services
- Dedicated landing pages for new models
Make sure that your site also includes an easy-to-use online appointment scheduler as well as your latest specials to keep customers informed about your dealership’s unique advantages and encourage conversion.
For more information on scoring for the new SERP terms, contact nrmsupport@jdpa.com.