Your car dealership has a lot going for it: auto company brand recognition, a big sign visible from a main road, and a critical mass of inventory.
But that’s true for your competitors, too. So how do you stand out? How do you get locals who are ready to buy cars onto YOUR lot and not your competitor’s lot?
SEO. More specifically, link building.
Link building is the cornerstone of automotive SEO, and link building for car dealerships is HARD.
But I’m going to show you how to get it done. And get it done right. Like this:
Let’s dive in.
I touched on this a second ago:
Link building is the backbone of SEO. All search engines rely on backlinks — links on other sites pointing to YOUR site — as the strongest signal for their ranking systems.
Still with me? It’s simpler than it sounds:
Backlinks tell search engines like Google that your car dealership’s website is worth ranking for relevant local keywords. Keywords like:
And many more.
See, search engines look at backlinks as votes of confidence. If other sites find your website worthy of linking to, your site must be worthy of ranking well.
It’s more complicated than that, of course, but that’s what you need to know to start. And let me tell you:
This is no joke. You will NOT outrank your competitors without backlinks. Period.
And not just any backlinks — backlinks from websites that get real web traffic of their own. Backlinks from sites that are relevant to the auto industry. And backlinks that come with relevant, keyword-rich anchor text (the clickable text that accompanies the links).
You’re not going to take your dealership to the next level without backlinks. That’s the why. But the how of getting car dealership backlinks is a little more complicated.
If there’s one thing I know about car dealership owners and managers, it’s that they have TONS of spare time on their hands.
Just kidding. I know you’re busy as hell. All the time. I know that because I’ve worked with your peers and competitors.
Why do I bring up how busy you are? Because I’m telling you that you do NOT have time to build backlinks for your car dealership website at any sort of scale that is viable over the long term.
Technically, any business owner can build their own backlinks. There’s a learning curve, but you’re smart enough to figure out the basics.
It’s the time problem that’s harder to solve.
See, you have to reach out to thousands of individual websites every month to arrange consistent backlinks. You have to write guest posts and engineer digital PR stunts. You have to get used to rejection — you might send 150 emails before you get your first “yes.”
If you’re telling me you have time for that every single month, I’m telling you that you have bigger business problems than backlinks right now.
So, what’s the alternative to building your own automotive backlinks? Outsourcing.
Within that approach, you have a few options:
UppercutSEO — my automotive link building agency whose website you’re on right now — is a link building agency. That’s that third option I mentioned above.
One more thing to know:
We’re the right choice as you outsource your link building efforts.
Why? Because I built this business to solve YOUR problems and the problems that plague the SEO and link building industries. Let me explain:
Business owners like yourself get burned by SEO and link building providers a lot. I was in this industry for a decade and saw it all. And I got SICK of it.
So I exited my successful SEO agency to start UppercutSEO.
UppercutSEO is all about transparency and cutting through the — excuse my French — bullsh*t.
If you’ve ever paid for SEO, you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the smoke and mirrors, the lack of transparency, the terrible results, the blame shifting.
Instead, we’re front and center. I’ve hand-made an SEO dashboard for you where you can order exactly the types and numbers of backlinks you want for your car dealership website. And you get them.
Try to find that anywhere else in this industry. You won’t.
Then I put together the absolute best link building team and systems in the business. I’ve built out a network of thousands of websites that I’ve vetted and connected with, and they’re relevant to automotive topics.
That means we can turn on the flow of backlinks for you like a faucet.
Try to find THAT anywhere else in this industry. Again, you won’t.
Let’s talk about exactly HOW to build backlinks for car dealerships.
This will give you a window into how my team builds the backlinks you buy from us. And it’ll give you a starting point if you want to try your own hand at link building before you try us.
Here are some of the most common auto link building methods in 2024:
Guest posts are articles that you write. But they don’t publish on your site. They publish on another website. And they contain a link pointing to your website.
For example, you reach out to a popular car blog in your state. You ask them if you can write an article for their blog.
They say yes. Then, you write an article their audience will actually want to read.
You insert a link to one of your webpages in that article.
The blog publishes your guest post. And you get a backlink.
It’s simple and effective. But it also takes work to actually find good automotive websites, reach out to them, and write the content. A lot of work, actually.
Still, there’s a reason this is one of the most popular link building methods in history. It works. You just have to work at it.
Link insertions happen when a website inserts a link to your website into a piece of content they already had published on their site.
Let’s go back to the car blog example.
You reach out to them and mention that this great article about the most reliable hybrid cars for 2024 would be even better if it contained a link to a particularly helpful (and relevant) piece of content on your website.
They see the value in the content you’re referencing. And they insert the link to your content into their own existing content.
Bang. You’ve got another backlink.
This is really similar to guest posting in terms of the outreach and planning required, as well as the number of rejections you’re likely to get. But there’s a key difference:
The content your link gets inserted into isn’t new. It’s already “seasoned” in Google — meaning it’s getting traffic and will likely be more powerful for you more quickly.
Digital PR is a new-ish link building method that actually encompasses a few link building methods.
Basically, it’s about getting other websites to link to yours based on the value you’re bringing to your niche — in this case, the automotive niche.
For example, say you have some data about car sales at your dealership that might be of interest to automotive blogs. Maybe electric car sales plummeted after electricity costs increased in your state.
That’s YOUR data. You just have to give it to the world. So you write an article about it and publish it on your site and share it with other websites.
They find it interesting, so they pick up the story and run with it. And they link back to your original story to give you credit.
Each time that happens, that’s a backlink.
Sometimes, websites link to other websites and then forget about those links. Over time, those links break.
That means they go away or the destination URL changes. In either case, you’re presented with a backlink opportunity for your car dealership website.
For example, say a local auto blog linked to your competitor’s blog post about Ferraris. Then, your competitor changed the URL of that blog post, so the link on the auto blog’s website no longer pointed to a valid URL.
You’d use an SEO tool — like Ahrefs, Semrush, or similar — to detect that issue. And once you identify the issue, that’s your chance to strike.
You send an email to the auto blog kindly informing them of the broken link on their webpage. And you suggest a simple swap to fix it — a link to a blog post on YOUR site instead.
If successful, that effort earned you a backlink.
The internet is filled with directory websites. These are simply websites that list businesses and their information.
They often charge a fee for businesses to have a “premium” listing. And that usually entails getting to add your contact information and, importantly, a link back to your website.
Each link from a business directory is a backlink. And while these links aren’t as powerful as natural “earned” links from more relevant and higher-traffic websites, they still matter.
So, compile a list of directory websites that are either:
Then, check out what it will cost you on each one to optimize your business listing and add a backlink to your site.
This may feel expensive. But I can promise you it will be more expensive in lost business if you fail to obtain the directory links your competitors already have.
You run a fantastic auto business. That’s not in question. What IS in question is whether people are going to find your business online.
SEO is how you guarantee that people will find you. And backlinks are how you do SEO.
(Yes, there are other aspects, but link building is the most important at the end of the day.)
Car dealership link building isn’t something you can ignore. But it is something you can outsource, given that you outsource it to the right team.
UppercutSEO is the right team. We’ll prove it to you right away — and keep proving it to you until you’ve dominated your market.
Let’s do this. Claim your free SEO dashboard or schedule a time to speak with me about your strategy, free of charge.
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