SEO for Car Dealerships
Every month you pay a portal to sit your stock next to your competitors' stock. This builds something you keep instead: your forecourt, found on Google, in the towns you actually sell to.
Almost nobody buys a car entirely online. They research for weeks, build a shortlist of two or three places worth driving to, then come and look. SEO is how you get onto that shortlist without paying for the privilege every single month. You get found. They visit. You sell the car.
You are renting your own customers
Nobody needs convincing that portal fees hurt. What is less obvious is what that money actually buys, plus what it does not. Here is the honest comparison, because the answer is not that you should cancel everything tomorrow.
- Visibility on a platform somebody else owns
- Your stock listed beside competing stock
- Buyers comparing you on price, side by side
- A cost that recurs every month, forever
- Stop paying and it vanishes the same day
- Ten years in, you own nothing
- Rankings and pages you own outright
- Buyers arriving at you, not at a comparison
- Reviews and reputation that compound
- No cost per lead, ever
- Pause it and the rankings do not evaporate
- Ten years in, it is an asset
To be straight with you: most dealers run both for a while. The portals fill the diary while the organic side builds underneath, then the dependence drops. That is the realistic path rather than a clean break.
The pages that keep earning after the car has gone
This is the structural problem no other trade has. Your stock turns over completely several times a year, so a strategy built on vehicle pages is running up a down escalator. We rank you on the things that stay put.
Used cars
By a distance the dominant search area in this sector. Used car searches with a town attached are where most local buying intent actually sits.
Vans and commercials
Its own search, its own buyer and far less contested than cars. If you carry commercial stock and have no page for it, you are invisible for all of it.
Car finance
People search finance separately from cars, often before they have picked a vehicle. Catch them at that stage and you frame the whole purchase.
Servicing and MOT
The revenue line dealers forget to market. It brings the same customer back every year and it is how a one-off buyer becomes a repeat one.
Part exchange and selling
Somebody searching to sell their car is also somebody about to buy one. Rank for the first half and you get first refusal on the second.
Your town
Dealership, showroom and car sales searches with your town attached. Least glamorous, most valuable, plus the page most dealership sites never had.
Sold stock, redirected
Several hundred vehicles a year come off your site. Deleted, each one is a dead end and wasted authority. Redirected properly, the value stays with you.
The complete guide
How Google ranks dealerships, why most dealership sites are built badly, what it costs and how long it takes. The whole picture in one place.
The full explanation of the stock problem is in the complete guide to SEO for car dealerships.
How many people search for a dealership near you
These are real monthly search numbers for dealership and used car terms across the UK. Every one is somebody with a budget and a weekend free. The only question is whose forecourt they find first. Right now in most towns it is a portal.
Figures are rounded monthly UK search volumes for generic dealership and used car searches in each area. National brand searches are excluded, so these show open local demand rather than somebody else's brand recognition. Want your own town pulled? We will do it free.
Searches you are not showing up for yet
What is included
You do not need to buy SEO, a website person, a maps person and a social person separately. It is all one job to us, on one monthly fee. Tap through to see what each part does for a dealership.
Local SEO
The core of it. Permanent pages for the categories you consistently stock, your town properly stated and the services around the sale covered, all linked into a structure Google can follow. These are the pages your template never included.
Google Maps
The map pack sits above the normal results and it is the one place a portal genuinely cannot beat you, because it is not a local business. We set up and work your Google Business Profile properly, including opening hours, which matter a lot when people search at weekends.
Website management
Your site looked after rather than left to the stock feed. Real pages built, your town and services made visible and clear routes to enquire or visit. If your provider restricts what can be added, we will tell you upfront.
Stock redirects
The unglamorous one that matters most. Hundreds of vehicles come off your site every year and each deleted page is a dead end plus wasted authority. We handle the redirects as an ongoing job rather than a one-off cleanup.
AI optimisation
People now ask AI assistants which dealership to use or where to find a particular type of car locally. We structure your content and data so those tools can read your business and recommend it. Very few dealers are doing this yet.
Facebook and social
Regular posts of new arrivals, sold cars and the team. Local car buying still travels a long way on Facebook, so it keeps you visible between visits.
Reporting
Monthly reporting on what moved, written so you can compare it directly against what the portals are costing you and what they are returning.
Four steps, then we keep going
We audit the site and the feed
What your template will and will not let us do, where the stock feed is causing problems and which searches in your area are winnable.
We fix the foundations
Google Business Profile sorted, the redirect problem brought under control and your town made visible on the site.
We build the permanent pages
Used cars, vans, finance, servicing, part exchange and your town. The pages that keep earning after the stock has gone.
We keep at it
An update every three weeks and a full audit every quarter, including handling redirects as stock continues to turn over.
What would it take to cover the fee
Drag the sliders using gross profit per unit, including finance and warranty income rather than metal margin alone. For most dealerships one extra unit a month covers it. This is a rough illustration to think with, not a promise of results.
Illustration only. Real results depend on your area, your stock and your competition. We do not guarantee figures.
Three ways dealerships handle this
Portals only
- Predictable, immediate, expensive
- Your stock beside your competitors' stock
- Compared on price before you meet them
- The cost never stops and tends to rise
The supplied template
- A stock feed with a homepage attached
- Manufacturer copy duplicated across the trade
- Your town often never mentioned
- Ranks for your business name and little else
Building it with Lillian Purge
- Permanent pages you own and keep
- Enquiries and visits straight to you
- One monthly fee with no cost per lead
- The map pack, where portals cannot follow
One clear monthly fee
No setup fee and no cost per lead. Worth setting the number below against what you currently pay the portals every month.
- One service area
- Permanent category and service pages
- Local SEO and Google Maps
- Stock redirects handled
- Website management and AI optimisation
- Quarterly audits and monthly reporting
- Everything in Local SEO
- Several areas covered
- More competitive stock categories
- Wider content programme
- For dealerships widening their catchment
- Everything in Growth
- National reach
- For multi-site groups
- Larger used car retailers
- Priority support
Worth comparing against what local SEO typically costs before you decide.
Stop renting your visibility.
We get your forecourt found in the towns you actually sell to, on the searches that bring people through the door, then keep it there. One plan. One fee. No cost per lead.
Everything included in your plan:
One clear retainer. No setup fee.
