The competitive landscape
The automotive industry in Sweden is quite competitive same as in other countries. Car dealerships in general were early adopters of digital marketing. Many businesses in this industry noticed the change in consumer behaviour – customers started to use internet to find their local car dealership.
The Client
Gävle BilOutlet is a well established car dealership in Sweden that sells used cars. They have a great reputation but didn’t know how to get more customers through digital channels. If you didn’t know already, Sweden has a few well known car brands under their belt. Most famous ones are probably SAAB and Volvo.
Market research
We quickly realised that car buyers are using internet for research and to read what other people are saying about the car they want to buy. Customer that visit their local dealership already knows what car they want to buy, they just need help with finalising the purchase.
The Strategy
The first thing we did was to identify the keywords people are typing into Google in their local area (Gävle). Som of the most common search terms was bilhandlare i Gävle, begagnade bilar and bilfirmor. We mainly use Google Keyword Planner for this.
After conducting keyword research we optimised the site by changing everything from page titles to meta descriptions and headings throughout the site. We also cleaned up broken pages (404s) using redirects and no index tags.
We also adopted a local marketing strategy since most people in Gävle were looking for a car in their own area. Some of the things we did was to optimise the current site for location specific keywords. This helped the search engines to understand what the site was about.
The Results
Before launching the SEO campaign our client had almost no ranking positions in the search engines. Most of the keywords was ranking outside of top 100. After 3 weeks we saw an increase in visibility for the website with several top 50 positions.
After 2 months we manage to get the first first-page rankings for several important keywords. This has really helped and increased the organic traffic over time.
The Next Steps
To further increase website visits we could set up a campaign in Adwords. We haven’t done it yet but it might be something to look into in the near future.
Bio – James is a marketing consultant with more than 10 years of experience in the digital marketing industry. He worked with big brands in the car industry but also with companies in the finance. You can get in touch with him via email. James has also worked with other automotive businesses like SGS Sweden to improve their bottom lines.