The Best SEO Tools for DIY Car Dealers

Before we get into this, can you just take a quick minute to bask in the glory of that dude's manliness? I mean, that is one heck of a beard... It would make Travis Lindenmoyer proud enough to sing "I will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston at the top of his lungs...

Okay, moving on...

When it comes to optimizing your car dealer website, having the right tools in your SEO toolkit can make the difference between pulling your hair out with frustration or winning by design.

In this post, I'm going to share some of my favorite DIY car dealer SEO tools so that you can get a head start on doing SEO the right way.

Before I do, here's the caution. SEO requires strategy. Don't just jump in thinking that these tools are the magic bullet to ranking your website. Without a clearly defined SEO strategy, these SEO tools could be the last nail in the coffin of a never-ending wormhole of digital problems. 

That's enough doom and gloom for one post, I think. With all of that in mind, let's move on to my top picks for the best SEO tools for the DIY car dealer.

Local SEO

1. Local SEO Checklist

You will immediately know what's up when you visit this site. It's what you'd expect by reading its name: A Local SEO Checklist chock-full of useful things that you can do to ensure your website is firing on all pistons.

2. Schema Creator

Created by Raven Tools (a software we also use), schema-creator.org is a simple website that helps you create structured data snippets for your site. Google (and other search engines) use schema to help make sense of all the content in your HTML code.

3. Moz' Local SEO Quick Check

This simple SEO tool lets you type in your business name and zip/postal code and checks a few sources for your NAP information. It notifies you of the listings that aren't complete or ones that you're not even using yet, such as Yelp, Bing, Google and more.

4. Whitespark Local Citation Finder

Whitespark, along with the others are LOCAL SEO tools that have been designed to help you discover and clean up your local citations. 

Whitespark helps you find where you should be listing your business online and also adds in the competitive analysis as well.

5. Free Review Monitoring

This is a cool review monitoring site that allows you to enter your information to get up-to-date notifications about new reviews of your business. This is particularly useful when managing multiple locations, that is, if knowing what your customers are saying is important to you...

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Keyword Analysis

1. SEM Rush

Though SEM Rush isn't free (if you want the real goods), it provides a slew of helpful information not just on keywords, but about PPC, competitors keywords, and PPC. It's a great way to hack competitor keywords and see what's performing well for them. 

2. KW Finder

The fastest and easiest ways to do keyword research. Trust me, just go check it out and follow the prompts. You'll be addicted.

3. Keyword Tool Dot IO

Another really simple website for keyword ideas. Keyword Tool leverages the data contained inside of search engines' auto-complete functionality to deliver you raw data on what people are searching.

4. Über Suggest

Über Suggest is another service similar to Keyword Tool. All you have to do is type in your keyword, and it will come up with loads of keyword suggestions for you. They even have a Google Chrome extension called KeywordEverywhere that will help you get search volume and CPC for free.

SEO Tracking

1. Google Analytics (obvi)

If you're not using Google Analytics by now, uhhh, whaaa?

2.) Raven Tools

I mentioned Raven Tools earlier. They provide a robust view of your website data so that you can learn more about where you're winning and losing online.

In closing let me just say this. There are hundreds upon hundreds of SEO tools out there. I've included a few of my favorites here, but that's only because I didn't want this post to be 80,000 words.

My encouragement would be to check these tools out (no I'm not an affiliate for any of them, but even if I was, they are still tools that I use), and get familiar with what they do.

Ultimately I encourage you to work through a strategy. If you're having trouble, hit up our live chat or send us an email and we'd be happy to provide a complimentary strategy session. It's something we normally charge for, but 'what the hey', let's do this! 

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