How will I market my auto dealership after Google encrypts keywords?

If you haven’t heard yet, I’m sorry to break the bad news to you: Google has decided to encrypt all keyword searches.  As a business owner who is doing everything you can to effectively market your auto dealership online, this will no doubt come as a huge disappointment.  At Stratosphere Studio, we definitely share your concerns with this new development.  Analyzing keyword searches for our automotive clients, as well as our own business, is an important part of our process.  Without the aid of keyword analytics, our roles as marketers will become quite a bit more challenging.

However, with all that said, there is still plenty that you can do through your auto repair shop or auto dealership marketing to maintain a healthy online presence—even without knowing which keywords people are using to find your website. 

To help you through this process, here is what we recommend:

Focus on the quality of your content. 
At Stratosphere Studio, we’ve always emphasized that great content is more important than stuffing your website with the right keywords.  Now, more than ever, this is true.  Instead of putting all your energy into getting your keywords right, take a step back and determine how much of a resource your website is for your visitors and potential customers.  We’re not saying that you should abandon a strategic keyword-per-page focus, but you may need to get more creative in how you interpret your data.

Simply targeting a keyword is going to be like playing darts in an unlit room, so writing strong, enjoyable content is vital.  You will generate both traffic and leads if you demonstrate a solid knowledge of your customer and make use of the best metrics tools that are available to you. 

Maintain an active auto repair or auto dealership blog.
This is another strategy we’re big fans of at Stratosphere.  When you blog for your auto dealership or auto repair shop, you accomplish many goals: you put useful, quality content on your website; you provide yourself with many opportunities for lead acquisition; and you layer numerous keywords and keyword phrases on your site.  Now that you won’t be able to see exactly which keywords people are using to find you, you’ll need to include a range of similar keywords on your site.  With your blogging, you’ll be able to test how effective certain keywords are, based on how much traffic your posts generate. 

Run a Google AdWords campaign.
It might be part of Google’s strategy to encourage marketers to turn to Google AdWords in order to see which keywords are most effective.  Whether this is the case or not, it might be a good idea to go ahead and try running a small AdWords campaign, if for no other reason than to buy your own data back from Google.  If this proves to be helpful for you, you can always increase the size of your campaign.

Need help with your auto dealership marketing?  Call in the experts.
If you’re looking for a marketing agency to take your website to the next level, at Stratosphere Studio we can develop the perfect strategy for your auto repair shop or car dealership. We can produce a comprehensive digital marketing proposal for you or provide individual services, such as website design, blogging, search engine optimization and more.  As a digital marketing firm, we specialize in the automotive industry and can help increase your business dramatically.