A local listing typically includes valuable business information: business name, address, phone number, hours of operation, product descriptions, services provided, and interior photos of your business. Local listings directories such as, Yelp and Google My Business are critical in getting your dealership’s name in front of the consumers in your market.
Google My Business is one of the top local listing directories around. Every dealership should have a presence here. With Google being the top search engine, it provides incentives to automotive dealerships to get listed on Google My Business with up to date and accurate information.
Local listings provide a large boost towards your automotive dealership’s SEO and online presence, but only if the information posted reflects accurately. Your business information needs to be consistent across your local listings and your website. If you are changing your location, phone number, or business hours this new information must be updated accordingly across your online presence.
Not only does this help boost your SEO ranking, but it also keeps customers from being frustrated with receiving incorrect information when looking up your dealership.
The majority of consumers now use search engines and online directories to do research into businesses when it comes to making a purchase. Accurate and relevant local listings are important to maintaining your company’s reputation and drawing in new business.
Listing your business in these online directories allows you to list your website URL, which helps your overall SEO efforts and boosts your search engine rankings. The higher you rank, the more traffic your website will see. As mobile search continually increases and considering mobile search has local search, having your business listed locally will also increase the amount of mobile traffic your store sees.
Having content that is optimized based on the location of your dealership also helps to draw in more customers and bring more leads onto your showroom floor. If this content is not optimized correctly, it will lead to a significant drop in your ranking which makes it harder for potential customers to find your dealership’s site. This localized content ranks higher and draws more potential customers by showing up in the top search results.
Structured local listing citations can be incredibly comprehensive performing the same job and giving out the same information as many different mediums of advertising:
Print: The attributes of local listings such as taglines, driving directions, coupons, reviews, owner responses, and descriptions perform the tasks of most traditional print marketing. From just one complete local listing, a consumer can discover a new dealership, learn the directions to get there, what they sell, any special offers they currently have, what other customers think about their services, and how the dealership takes care of its customers. All of this is information that could be included in your local newspaper or a brochure but is much more accessible in a digital format.
Yellow Pages: Potential customers no longer need to sift through pages of a dense Yellow Pages book, when looking for an automotive dealership. A consumer has instant connection to any business through their local listings on platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp. Many dealers may be seeing good ROI from Yellow Pages directories, it can be costly whereas setting up and maintaining accounts on these platforms is free of charge. Another advantage is that the online audience is vast and diverse. The basic data and information on local listings is a huge driving force of traffic and revenue.
Radio/TV Advertising: Many local listings support images, videos, virtual tours, call buttons, and links to various social media profiles. Potential customers can see all of this when deciding on which dealership to make their purchase at, all from the comfort of home via their cell phone or computer. They can also follow one of those social media links to begin interacting directly with your dealership to receive answers to any questions they may have in real-time. This gives the customer a connection to your dealership they cannot get from a radio or tv advertisement.
Bake More Pies’ automotive department manages all of your local listings and Google My Business information keeping them up to date with relevant information to keep you ahead of your competitors.
