Many times when I’m in meetings with automotive dealerships I’m asked, “What do you recommend: PPC or SEO?”  It seems like a valid question because after all, no dealership has an unlimited budget to spend on marketing its website, right?  Spending all this money on a website seems silly; can’t they just do one or the other?

Without getting too detailed in to the pros and cons of using search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC), I thought I would briefly explain why SEO is important to maintaining your website.  SEO should not be considered an advertising expense, but rather maintenance of one of your most important assets: your virtual dealership.



Let’s discuss a dealership showroom.



An automotive dealership showroom receives plenty of traffic on a daily basis and the dealership owner acts accordingly.  He or she hires a receptionist to greet the customers.  There is a general manager along with many sales associates to ensure that guests are greeted correctly and transactions are handled properly.  Don’t forget about the service manager and team of specialized service technicians that help guide your customers through their service requests in a positive manner.  There is likely a cleaning crew visiting the dealership every evening ensuring that you put on a great first impression for potential or returning customers that walk through your doors.  Plenty of money is spent to maintain this significant asset or the brick and mortar portion of your dealership.



Now what about your website or your virtual dealership?



I believe that all dealers should remember that your website is your virtual dealership.  An average dealership website can receive anywhere from 100 to 400 visits a day.  Let me reiterate: 100 to 400 visits a day.  Do you have a manager managing your website?  Do you have someone on your website greeting those visitors in a timely manner?  How about a service technician that can answer consumers’ questions about servicing their vehicles?  Imagine a dealer investing in many of the same things that I mentioned above within a virtual dealership.



Now there are costs that go into building and maintaining any website.  You pay a website company to host and maintain your site.  Likely you have an Internet Manager that oversees changes to the site and updates specials occasionally.  You may even have a BDC to answer any leads in a prompt manner.



But what else do you do about regular maintenance of your virtual dealership? You clean and renovate your building; you should clean and optimize your website.  If you have your website optimized properly, it will create an overall better user experience and will have a much better chance of getting picked up by the search engines once you start a targeted SEO campaign. Of course, your site should be completely user friendly so once you start driving quality traffic, the users are more likely to find what they are searching for and convert to leads. Getting users to your virtual dealership only counts if they are compelled to act.



In essence, rather than thinking of SEO as an advertising expense, why not think of it as maintenance of your virtual dealership? Naturally there are many other factors that go into creating a successful SEO marketing campaign, but creating a well-crafted website will help you to optimize your site in the long run and to convert online visitors in to buyers.