Search Engine Visibility & Performance For Your Website

As a dealership owner or manager, you must consider the performance of your dealership website. In 2016, your website is your #1 salesman. It's where your future customers go to check out your inventory and decide whether or not they are interested in making a purchase, far before they ever step foot in your physical store.

There are two crucially important elements to consider in terms of your site's performance. One – how easy is it for prospective customers to find you online? Two - What kind of experience do these people have when visiting your site?

Question #1 comes down to Search Engine Optimization, or your website's organic placement in search engine results like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and more. Keywords and written content on your site allows it to show up when Internet users search for businesses like yours.

The second question is largely related to whether or not your website is responsively designed, or built in such a way that it responds to the screen size and dimensions of any device that a given Internet user has. In responsive design the elements of your website expand, retract, and stack to create the same visual experience for all website visitors - whether they are using a large desktop computer, a small smartphone, or anything in between.

Both of these components become even more important because of Google's ranking system. Search engine algorithms rank your website based on the relevance and quality of its content. When someone searches for a business like yours, these are specific things that Google looks for. Another consideration for Google is the ease of navigation and usability on your site. When a mobile Internet user attempts to view inventory on a website designed for desktop users, they are very likely to have a difficult and negative experience. In addition to losing that potential lead, Google now also has a reason to rank your site lower in search results.

You may have heard of a “mobile site or app for your website, which is often a quicker and cheaper method to accommodate mobile device users, but this is not a solution. One major drawback to this Band-Aid fix is that it creates two separate URLs to be indexed by search engines. It's harder to rank in a high position when Google has to sort through multiple URLs. A responsive website with a single URL that operates correctly for all devices saves time for search engine ranking systems, and helps bring traffic to that single URL. Along with two separate URLs to be indexed, the mobile site or app would also create separate versions of content, which presents the same issue. Google's preference is the implementation of responsive design, which serves the same content to all users, and the ranking system will reward your website for it.

If your dealership website isn't yet responsive, perform a quick Google search to see where it shows up in search engine results. You may find that it is much lower than you'd prefer, or maybe it doesn't show up on the first page of results at all. The majority of people never look on the second page of results, and most of them don't even look past the top five or six. Consider how long you could expect future customers to look through search engine results before moving on to a competitor's store that appears in a higher spot. Responsive web design isn't just recommended, it's vital in order to keep your business visible in the hugely competitive arena of search engine results.