SEO for Used Car Dealers

<title> tags

This is the 'title' your web-browser shows at the top of the screen

Just so you are familiar with <title> tags, please look at the top of your computer screen, see the words "Car Dealer SEO Best Practices, how we do it at Auto Corner. Your Turnkey Dealership Management System" that is the <title> tag for this page. A <title> tag is just a piece of computer instructions in the web page's HTML source code that tells the browser what the name of the page is.

There are actually multiple purposes of a <title> tag, and, at the moment, we are only interested in how search engines use them. Most websites mistakenly put their company name as the first part of the <title> tag, but the problem with this strategy is your company name isn't what the customer is searching for. In the case of this website, most people that come here via a search result were probably looking for 'SEO optimization for their website', not necessarily how AutoCorner does it better. That is why our <title> tag is not 'AutoCorner: How we do SEO'. Making this a little more relevant to car dealers, take a look at the following two search engine results.

~ vs. ~

Notice how the company name is second to the actual item for sale in the <title> tag. This is not by accident, it is by design. But don't just take my word for it, here is Matt Cutts from Google:

(images from Advice for a Newbie to SEO: Used Car Dealership website review)

Meta Description & Keyword Tags

Proper, page relevant, description and keywords are essential

This is really a continuing thought from the previous section, but I thought it deserved its own write-up. Looking again at the previous two images of search results (above), you will notice the pages from Ultimate Automotive Group (an AutoCorner customer) have a description beginning with your used vehicle's year, make, model, then continuing into a well written description of the specific vehicle. This is because our system takes what you enter into the vehicle's comments & description section and uses this for the page's meta description tag.

Look closely again at those two images, you notice how the other site's description is, "Used Cars Prospect Park PA,Kennett Square PA,Buy Here Pay Here Autos...] The reason for this is in how the webmaster made his meta description tag.

The Wrong Way:

<meta name="description" content="Used Cars Prospect Park PA,Kennett Square PA,Buy Here Pay Here Autos,Philadelphia,Used Cars Philly,Buy Here Pay Here Dealership Chester County PA,In House Auto Financing,Used Cars,Used Trucks, Used SUVs,Bad Credit Delco,Buy Here Pay Here Cars Delaware County PA,Buy Here Pay Here Car Loans,Auto Finance Delaware County,BHPH Car Lot Wilmington PA,Buy Here Pay Here Car Loans PA,Used Car Lots PA">


(First off please do not think I am picking on another dealer's site. I was asked by them to give my opinion, so that is what I am doing. )

I do not expect you to understand that line of code, just pay attention to what is in-between quotes. . . a massive list of spammed keywords. This is not a description, it is spam. The webmaster also copied the same block of keywords and placed it on each and every page on their website, which gives each page the same useless description. You must think of your site from the perspective of your potential customer. Which link do you think they are going to click on?

You can compare this to the description tag for one of the pages on the Ultimate Automotive Group's site.

The Right Way:

<meta name="description" content="2005 Mercedes Benz CLK 320 - This Mercedes Benz CLK 320 is waiting for you to take it home today. This is one of the cleanest, low mileage Mercedes Benzs we have had in a long time and it definitely won't last at this price. Whether hauling a heavy load or accelerating up to highway speeds, the 6 cyl engine is more than up to the task.">


Additionally, we also take the features and accessories for the vehicle and place them in the meta keywords tag. While we are taking about keyword tags, if your 'SEO Expert' says he needs to optimize your meta keywords for top placement in Google, he is selling you a line of ****. The reason for this is Google completely ignores the keywords tag (see Matt Cutts video below). The only reason we put the meta keywords in the web page is for the other search engines that still use this legacy tag.

How do I get started?