Content marketing has become more important than ever for car dealerships as the search habits of your potential customers evolve. Google results and consumer research strategies rely on fishing certain keywords out of the mass of information on the internet. Therefore, you’ll need to target your content so that potential customers will see it, and that starts by knowing what your customers are searching for.
Keyword research is crucial for modern content marketing. There are a lot of words you could use to describe the product you’re selling, after all. If you use a basic industry keyword generator like WordStream’s free trial, you’ll get a lot of synonyms for “car.” However, targeting a keyword like “car,” or “auto,” supposedly the top two searched terms relating to the automotive industry, won’t get you far. Such a generic search term brings in all kinds of results from Tesla news to the “Car” Wikipedia page. Luckily, Google itself has a few handy tools you can use to pick out some good keywords.
Your target audience won’t just be searching for “cars.” Instead of using that, you can use Google Trends to focus on more relevant terms that people are searching for right now. You’ll be able to see rising and falling trends on search terms surrounding your brand, which can point you to certain models you should focus on. Be sure to check out the “Related Queries” part of Google Trends; this is where you can see breakout terms and popular searches. For example, you can start by searching the keyword “Chevrolet” in Google Trends. That’s still a little too wide of a net, but you’ll be able to see which specific Chevrolet models people are searching for. If a term is up by a large percentage, it’s time to write a blog about it!
You can also get idea for content based on Google Predictive Search. Often this lets you start with a wider search term, like the make you sell, and gradually narrow the search term until you hit on a popular term you can write about. Here’s another example: start by typing the search term “Ford” into the Google search bar. Predictive search offers up “ranger” first, telling that it’s a popular model and other people are currently searching for it. From there, it can also tell you the model years people are searching for, as well as other specifics. These are things people are actively searching for, which means it’s a good time to write about them! If you’re going to be selling the 2019 Ford Ranger, write up a news blog about it while it’s a hot topic. If prospective customers can find the information they want on your site, they’re more likely to stick around, check out your inventory, and eventually become a sale.
More about keyword performance and analytics
These Google tools are great ones to use because they’re the same ones your potential customers will probably be using without really noticing. Once you’ve chosen your keywords and generated some content, you’ll want to keep an eye on things to see how well it’s working! Here are some tips on creating content for your dealership website, plus some important things to keep track of going forward.