These days, quality website content is more important than ever. But without relevant keywords, that content is little more than reading material for your visitors.
With the right keywords incorporated naturally into that content, though, you’ll see dramatically more organic traffic coming from Google search over time. With the wrong keywords or no keywords at all, your local competition will gain a serious advantage over you – regardless of how well-written or informative your content is.
Keywords are one of the most important parts of search engine optimization (SEO). Since 39% of total purchases start with a specific search, properly utilizing keywords is critical for ensuring you win more sales each year. As long as you know the right keywords for your website content, you’ll edge out the competition and become a local leader in the auto repair business.
While it’s true that some locals may search for the name of your business specifically, many will simply search for the specific services they’re looking for at the time. If you aren’t taking advantage of keywords associated with those services, you could lose a lot of business to your competitors.
Based on our research, the top performing keywords for auto repair industry websites include:
And remember, your auto repair shop’s main competition is other auto repair shops near you. In order to dominate local search results, you should include your location (city and state) along with your keywords. For instance, if your shop is located in Denton, Texas, you could use: affordable body shop in Denton, Texas as a long-tail keyword.
When optimizing your website, you may be tempted to focus solely on singular keywords like mechanic, brakes, transmission,
etc. Most of these words have a high search volume and can be easily incorporated into your content.
However, these singular keywords are highly competitive and somewhat vague. There are plenty of other reasons why someone might search for them on Google that have nothing to do with your specific services.
That’s why long-tail keywords are so important – they have a clearly defined intent. If you use auto repair near me instead of just mechanic, your potential customers have a better chance of finding your website. In fact, 69.7% of search queries contain four or more words.
Perhaps the most important element of keywords for your auto repair shop website is how often you use them. While you may think more is always better, Google’s algorithms are pretty savvy when it comes to recognizing keyword stuffing. The key here is to always write your content for people -- not Google.
Long gone are the days when you could jam 1000 keywords into your content and make it to the top of search results. Your website could actually be penalized by Google for overuse of keywords and never make it to that important first page of results.
That’s why you should focus on unique keywords on each page of your site in areas that both Google’s bots and your visitors will find them. Try to include them in your title tags as well as the body of your content as often as possible. Ensure they’re worked into your URL, headers, the meta description for the page, as well as the alt tags for any images on the page.
Interested in learning more about search engine optimization, content marketing, and other elements of an effective online presence for your auto repair business? Check out the Castrol Insider resource hub!