Optimizing an Auto Body Shop Search Engine Listing

Search engine optimization is a difficult thing, especially for local businesses with a market as competitive as auto body shops.  Getting your shop listed high on Google or Bing would be a tough task, which is one of the reasons we've never really advocated for it here on this blog to our customers.  But alas, there are some ways to get more out of the search engine rankings for local businesses.

Blogging your way to success

One of the advantages that auto body shops have when marketing online is that they have a lot of knowledge that is interesting and useful to customers. Many customers want advice on how they can perform preventative maintenance on their vehicles. A blog is an efficient way to answer questions commonly asked by customers, reducing the amount of work that technicians must perform when offering customer service. But most importantly, a blog will potentially be picked up by a major search engine, leading to traffic and potential customers.  Blogs take alot of time and work.  Its wise to create a plan for what you want to write about, research it, and put it out there on your website.  Otherwise, it'll sit dormant and your busy life will prevent you from writing using it for marketing.

Include Local Keywords

When users type words into a search engine, the results that the search engine returns to the user are based on different factors, including the words that are contained in the text found on the website. For that reason, websites want to include words on their websites that contain the types of keywords that people would type into the search engine to find them.

Customers are beginning to include local towns or cities into their searches. This is very useful, since local customers are much more likely to find a specific local business that they will bring their car into. However, auto body repair shops will be competing with other local repair shops that also engage in information marketing. One way to overcome this is to include a town or city next to relevant keywords. For example, instead of including "auto body repair," include "Newhaven auto body repair."

Information marketing is highly useful for auto repair shops because repair shops need to convince customers that they are the best at what they do. In addition to attracting the attention of new customers, auto body shops can become the first place that customers think of when they visit an auto repair shop. Blog posts and useful social media content will help build up the auto body shop as one of the most trustworthy brands.

Research and Respond to Reviews

While reviews don't weigh as significant on search engine rankings as other factors, they still get weighed.  More importantly, it has an incredible ability to immediately create a negative image to your business if you don't watch them like a hawk.  Most of these reviews can be found on search engines.  Auto body shops must make sure to research reviews that have been written for their auto body shop. The reviews have a powerful effect on how willing customers are to trust the business. Whenever possible, the auto body shop should respond to the negative review. A professional response is more likely to minimize the effects of the negative review. Poor reviews also help auto body shops determine what they should be doing differently to attract more customers.

There are many websites that display reviews of businesses, including Yelp, Google Places and Yahoo Local.

Ask Customers to Leave Positive Reviews

When an auto body shop has a collection of emails from their customers, they should occasionally send out email asking their customers to provide reviews for their services. Customers who are satisfied with the auto body shop are not likely to leave a positive review because they have less of an incentive to do so. However, satisfied customers are much more likely to leave a positive review if they receive a direct link to a review website.

Use Local Directories

While global search engines are effective at drawing in traffic to local businesses, the online content produced by auto body repair shops will be competing with content from other auto body shops throughout the world. Auto body repair shops will want to get their businesses listed in local search engines. The best way to get a business listed in a local search engine is to add the business to local directories. Most local directories are free for businesses. Some of the best local directories to be listed in are Yahoo! Local, Local.com, SuperPages and Yellow Pages.  The other good thing about getting listed in local directories is that it helps you get ranked higher in search engines.