Driving Qualified Car Buyers to a Local Dealership’s VDPs
Client: A car dealership with a large inventory of new and used vehicles.
Challenges We Faced
The dealership relied heavily on paid ads and 3rd-party sites, with almost no organic traffic:
Poor Inventory Page SEO
Their Vehicle Detail Pages (VDPs) and Vehicle Listing Pages (VLPs) were thin, duplicate content and not indexed correctly.
No “New/Used” Rankings
They were invisible for high-value “used cars [city]” or “new [brand] dealer” (commercial) keywords.
No “Top-of-Funnel” Content
The site was missing informational content (e.g., “Ford F-150 vs. Ram 1500”), losing all research-phase buyers.
Weak Local Authority
Their GMB profiles (for Sales, Service, and Parts) were poorly managed and competing with each other.
High Reliance on Paid Ads
Their cost-per-lead was unsustainably high due to a lack of organic traffic.
Sell More Cars, Organically
“Want your dealership to rank higher for ‘used cars’ and ‘new [brand]’? Explore our car dealership SEO services and drive qualified buyers to your lot!”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Car Dealership SEO Strategy
Our Customized SEO Strategy focused on VLP and VDP optimization, building out unique, keyword-rich content for each model and category (e.g., “Used Trucks in [City]”).
Local SEO & GMB Optimization
We restructured their GMB profiles, creating distinct profiles for “Sales” and “Service” to capture both types of local searches without keyword cannibalization.
SEO-Optimized Content Creation
We launched a “Car Research” blog to target informational and commercial-intent keywords (e.g., “best family SUVs,” “test drive [new model]”).
Technical SEO
We worked with their dealer CMS provider to fix indexing issues, generate dynamic sitemaps for their inventory, and implement Vehicle schema.
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organic Traffic to VDPs/VLPs | 1,500/mo | 9,500/mo | +533% |
| Organic “Test Drive” Leads | 8/mo | 52/mo | +550% |
| Rankings for “Used Cars [City]” | Page 3 | Position #2 | +20+ spots |
Free Dealership SEO Analysis
“Not getting enough organic leads? Book a Free Dealership SEO Analysis and let us find your high-value keyword opportunities!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- Your VDPs are your money pages. Every VDP needs unique content, not just the manufacturer’s spec sheet.
- Separate your GMB profiles. A user looking for “car sales” has different intent than one looking for an “oil change.” Use separate GMBs for each department.
- Capture buyers in the research phase. Create “vs.” and “best of” content to build trust before they are ready to buy.
- Implement Vehicle schema. It’s a technical but critical step to help Google understand your inventory.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- A deep Competitor Analysis of other dealerships’ content strategies.
- Close collaboration with the client’s CMS provider to resolve technical indexing problems.
- A new content strategy that successfully funneled “research” traffic to “inventory” pages.
