Automotive Dealership Link Building for SEO

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Search engines often use hyperlinks to find content for users that is both relevant and related to what they’re searching for. Building links helps to optimize your site for both search engines and users.

Link building has been and still is a vital practice of SEO (search engine optimization). Want to improve your car dealership’s website ranking and your overall brand, building links is a great way to do just that.

There are two distinct advantages of linking building for SEO. 

1. Crawling – Interlinking pages help search engine spiders find and crawl pages.
2. Assurance – Google takes into account the number of quality visits to your website. Often referred to as “votes of confidence”, backlinks verify your page has relevant content that is worth sharing. Backlinks from sites that are relevant to your dealership establish your page’s relevance and usefulness. These link s show that your content is genuine and trustworthy, not created for the sole purpose of promoting your website.

Due to the ever-evolving search engine landscape, building links today should not be practice like it was five or even two years ago.  

Link building used to consist of people having to reach out to other local businesses via phone or email, asking for a link, and often offering something in return. This process could be incredibly time-consuming.

A link build practice you should avoid: Private Blog Networks. PBNs are groups of websites built to link to your website. Search engines know that these links are not earned or relevant, so your site may be punished.

Quality links need to be earned, and there is no better to receive them than by having quality content, and a strategy to win them.

Good public relations will help your dealership across all marketing channels; this includes SEO. Think about it; your PR team often organizes events, talking to local news outlets, and running your social media. They communicate directly with other organizations that might have a quality website. During discussions, if they could propose a link, it would go a long way!

Any content you create must be must be useful to a niche group at the very least. If you make something that no one is looking or asking for, you are wasting your time. 

If you do your research, have a strategy, create something useful, and share it, you should have no problem earning links. This applies to all inbound mediums from your blog to your YouTube channel and everything in-between.

Influencer marketing has taken the digital marketing world by a storm, and sometimes for a good reason. Getting a quote or collaborating with a local influencer is a valuable new avenue for your dealership to explore. 

Some dealerships are trending towards ‘micro-influencers,’ which are influencers with smaller followings that feature higher engagement rates and consistent brand loyalty. Working with an influencer can bring a fresh set of eyes to your content creation process and spark new ideas to improve the campaign as a whole.

You don’t always have to use your platform to promote your content. Another website will often entertain giving you a ‘shout out,’ which includes a mention of your dealership and any other relevant information on your platform. Shout outs can take place on social media, during a podcast, or video production. When these take place, make sure to ask for a link in the description of the podcast of video. 

You can also be a guest on someone else’s page or podcast. Guest posting has become an increasingly popular way for related brands to introduce themselves to each other’s audiences.

It’s essential to always be on the lookout for links to and from all high-quality websites your dealership may be associated with. These brands tend to have a higher page and domain authority. One example of this would be your manufacturer’s “find a local dealer” page. You will often have a link on these pages already, but it is important to be aware.

No matter what type of link building you are practicing, being able to monitor and quantify your link building progress is crucial. The following tools allow you to monitor backlinks and check for any spammy links before they have the opportunity to cause damage. Many tools do so, but here are some of my favorites:

For a quick (and free!) backlink checker try Ahrefs or Neil Patel.

SEMRush offers a backlink auditing tool if you want to get a more in-depth look.

Successful link building will ultimately allow your dealership to rank higher in Google! Establishing your dealership at the top of your potential customer’s Google Search is the primary goal, so why not do your best with every tactic available?