How Car Buyers Use Search Engines

If you want to know whether or not SEO will work for your dealership, you must first understand how your target audience interacts with search engines.

The purpose of search engines is to help users find what they are looking for within the billions of web pages that are available. They use complex algorithms to determine how relevant each web page is to each query typed into the search box.

Search Engine Usage

The following statistics show just how important the internet is to your consumers:

• Around 3.5 billion searches per day are made on Google alone worldwide
• Google has a market share of 82.85% in the UK
• Only 3% of people say that they have never searched for a local business online

These statistics confirm what you probably already know: the internet is a very popular place! The fact that Google dominates so much of the search market means that when you are optimising your website, you should base your techniques on this search engine’s algorithm. This is why in our previous articles about SEO tips, we tend to mention Google more than any other engine.

Getting Noticed on SERPs

Most car buyers will use search engines to help them find a vehicle, but how likely is it that they will find your website? Below are the average organic click-through rates for results on the first page of Google in June 2018:

• 1^st result = 35.56%
• 2^nd result = 17.22%
• 3^rd result = 10.55%
• 4^th result = 6.95%
• 5^th result = 4.88%
• 6^th result = 3.63%
• 7^th result = 2.75%
• 8^th result = 2.17%
• 9^th result = 1.75%
• 10^th result = 1.51%

The first two web pages to appear on Google’s results page in June received more than half of all clicks on average and the top five results claimed 75% of the clicks. This just goes to show how huge the difference is in the number of visitors your site receives if you appear at a high ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Local Searches

If you are still only advertising your business in the yellow pages, you need to modernise because if a measly 3% of people don’t search for local businesses online, that means the vast majority do, and if your customers are looking for you on the internet, you need to make sure they find you!

Search terms like ‘used cars near me’ have increased drastically in the past five years. If your website is optimised for local targeting, it will climb the rankings for keywords like this to become one of the first search results, which, as we have seen can have a powerful impact on your visibility, and more visibility means more leads!

In short, SEO will put you in front of your customers where they are actively looking to buy cars, so there should be no doubt as to whether or not it will work for your dealership.

To find out more about our in-house automotive SEO services, email marketing@clickdealer.co.uk, call us on 01782 904 715 or alternatively, you can message us via our contact page.