Visibility in low-volume search markets
Search engine visibility is not difficult to accomplish in today’s Automotive Search Marketing. Unless you are targeting something as universal and vague as “used cars”, most automotive search markets can be penetrated with relative ease. By “automotive” we are referring specifically to the active online auto shopper markets in this case; by “relative ease” we mean that with the right approach, time, and managed expectations, dealer sites can penetrate highly competitive markets.
While it is a challenge for dealer sites to attain search engine visibility in vehicle-specific markets such as “Ford F-150″, attaining it at the geo-targeted level is more feasible, e.g. “Ford F-150 Indiana”. Effective SEO can get most dealer websites to appear in the top results of geo-centric + brand- or vehicle-specific search markets. Brand + dealer, e.g. “Ford dealer” is of course more attainable for dealer sites than brand + style, e.g. “Ford F-150″.
There are literally thousands of geo+brand+vehicle search markets for every metropolitan area, regional area, OEM brand, and general car markets, and dealer websites can not be dominant in every single one of them. Analytics suggest that there is a finite number of people interested at any given time to visit a dealership website. What this means is that even with all the advertising and exposure in the world, only so many people will purposefully visit your site. Therefore, which search markets to penetrate and saturate must be carefully selected.
If you target just the high-volume markets then you will spend a lot of time and money to face tougher competition and appear less dominant. However, with the same budget you could target more low-volume search markets and appear dominant because there is less competition. Naturally, it is good to have short-term and long-term strategies in place that make you a player in carefully selected low- and high-volume search markets.
[tags]Automotive Marketing, Search Marketing, Car Dealer Marketing, Organic Search, Search Engine Marketing, Geo Targeting, [/tags]
