a graphic with "10 of the biggest dealership mistakes" written on it along with the site for the blog laid on top of a cracked background

There are a lot of mistakes that car dealerships make and they have been doing these things for so long it is just second nature. We are going to list 10 of the biggest dealership mistakes so you can make a conscious decision to fix anything that is on this list.

  1. Duplicated content or default page text. This is something that happens all the time, and it is important to understand that the quality of your content matters more than the quality. One example of this is the car warranty page. It is the same across all dealerships in all cities and towns.
  2. Only having two sentences on a page. Again, dealerships love to do this. Just because the page is there with a couple of words on it doesn’t make the site valuable. Search Engines are smarter than you think they are; they know that this isn’t a page that a user would want to stay on for very long.
    A screenshot of a dealership's website outlining a section of the page that only has three sentences.
  3. Blatant stuffing of keywords. Just because you need the “magical number” of keywords on your page doesn’t mean that you can just shove as many keywords into any body of text as you see fit. In actuality, no magical number of keywords guarantee that you will show up on the top 10 of search engine result pages (SERPs).
  4. Stuffing keywords into your Meta keywords. This is the same concept as the previous point. Stuffing keywords is a terrible business practice, and you should stop doing it now. Right this second, go to your website and remove all the unnecessary and repetitive keywords! The Google Nerds know better. They can and will penalize you for doing over-optimization.
  5. Terrible title tags. You know the ones I’m talking about. You open a window, and the entire page is full of the name of their business, and every single make of car that they sell followed by their city and state. In fact, their title is so long that it cuts off at the end of the page because it can’t possibly fit in the space allotted.
  6. Optimize your content for local. This just makes sense. With smartphones becoming the new laptop, you need to optimize your page for local searches. This mean you should have your City and State in the title tag. Put your City and State in the H1 Heading element. Put the City/State in your content. In your alt text, in your URL, in your meta description, embed it into the Google Map. You get the point.A screenshot of a dealership's website where a vehicle only have four pictures
  7. Only a few pictures of a car. This one seems obvious, but it just doesn’t click. The number of car dealerships who think that only three pictures of the outside and two pictures of the inside is enough to sell a car is astronomical. You need at least 40 pictures of a car to get anyone even to come and look at your car.
  8. Awful auto-generated vehicle descriptions. You know the ones I’m talking about. The list of standard features with a couple of basic comments that someone entered into a robot’s system ten years ago. This is just terrible and not a single person will read through that list. It is not compelling, emotional, or engaging. Just awful.
  9. Never update their social media accounts. Nobody at a car dealership wants to update Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, let alone on a consistent schedule. This needs to be done for people to see your content or even know you exist. According to Statista, the daily time spent on social networks is 118 minutes. That is almost two hours each and every day that a prospective client spends scanning their social media feed. If you aren’t getting at least a small piece of that pie, you are doing something wrong.A screenshot of a car dealership who hasn't posted to Facebook since May of this year, the date is circled in red.
  10. No content on the home page. There is no reason only to have images on your home page. There should be words there. Every business has its history. Tell your customers how you started, what you pride yourself in when you sell cars. This is the time where you show your unique side. And no, “we treat our customers like family” is not unique. So you’ll have to come up with something else.

Now that you know what the top 10 dealership mistakes, you should have a list in mind of all the things that your dealership does that needs to be fixed. Luckily for you, Dealer Assist Now can help. Follow our blog posts about Search Engine Optimization, and you’ll be able to learn some of the best practices for your site.