The Dealerships Winning on Google All Start with the Same Foundation
This hub connects every SEO resource specific to car dealerships — local search, GBP optimization, reputation, cost benchmarks, and more. Find the guide that matches where you are right now.
Browse every deep-dive in this cluster
Quick answer
What SEO resources do car dealerships actually need?
Car dealership SEO spans local search optimization, Car dealership SEO spans local search optimization, Google Business Profile setup, Google Business Profile setup, Reputation management, and content targeting buyers at each stage., and content targeting, Google Business Profile setup, reputation management, and content targeting buyers at each stage. This hub organizes those topics by goal — whether you're This hub organizes those topics by goal — whether you're diagnosing a traffic problem, building a local presence, or evaluating, building a local presence, or evaluating evaluating what SEO should cost your store..
Key Takeaways
1Dealership SEO is primarily a local search discipline — rankings in the Map Pack drive more lot traffic than most drive more lot traffic than most [paid channels](/resources/car-dealership/seo-vs-paid-ads-car-dealerships), in our experience., in our experience.
2Google Business Profile is the highest-use starting point for dealerships with little or no existing SEO foundation.
3Reputation signals — review volume, recency, and response rate — directly influence local pack rankings.
4Multi-location dealers face distinct challenges around duplicate content and location page authority that single-point stores don't encounter.
5Cost and ROI benchmarks vary significantly by market size, OEM competition, and whether your inventory is new, used, or both.
6Use the topic index below to navigate directly to the resource that matches your current goal — auditing, building, comparing, or scaling.
Start with the SEO Checklist — it gives you a prioritized action list organized by impact. Then read the GBP Optimization guide, since Google Business Profile is typically the fastest path to measurable local visibility for a dealership starting from scratch. Those two resources together cover the highest-use starting points.
Yes. The Multi-Location Dealership SEO guide addresses the specific challenges dealer groups face — location page architecture, preventing one rooftop from cannibalizing another in search, and managing GBP at scale. The general dealership SEO guides are written for single-point stores and the strategies differ enough to warrant a separate resource.
The Cost Guide covers what SEO services typically cost for dealerships and the scope differences that drive price variation. Read it alongside the ROI Analysis guide, which explains how to measure return in a dealership context. Together they give you the framework to evaluate any proposal you receive.
The Audit Guide. Traffic without lead conversion is usually a targeting, landing page, or attribution problem — not a rankings problem. The audit guide walks through diagnostics for all three, including how to identify whether organic is actually underperforming or whether your attribution model is just making it look that way.
Yes. The Audit Guide and the Checklist are both written in a way that lets you assess the work an existing agency is doing. The Hiring guide covers what to look for in a dealership SEO vendor specifically — including the questions to ask and the deliverables that distinguish a serious program from a retainer that produces reports but not rankings.
Both, because they are connected. Review signals influence local Map Pack rankings directly. The Reputation Management guide covers review generation, response practices, and monitoring — but it also explains how those actions feed back into your local search visibility. There is a standalone GBP Optimization guide that covers the profile-side implementation in detail.