SEO Terms Every Dealer Needs To Know

What’s your VDP’s SERP CTA and CRT? No Habla SEO?

Every business has unique terminology and nomenclature. Search Engine Optimization definitely has one of the most confusing sets of vocabulary. Here is SEO dictionary or glossary every internet manager at a car dealership should know.

ALT Text: This is HTML code that defines how Google reads images. The ALT text should describe what the image is. For example if there is an image on your website of a car, good ALT text for this image could be: “2014 Honda Civic for Sale in Boston”.

Analytics: This is a program that displays how well your website is performing. The most popular program for this is Google Analytics.

Black Hat Tactics: This is a SEO strategy that abuses Google’s algorithms to essentially cheat to achieve higher search results. Once Google fixes this bug in there algorithm, often websites get black listed or loose a lot in ranking.

Bounce Rate: A bounce is when someone visits a webpage and then leaves the website without going to any other page. The higher the bounce rate is the worse.

CTA: Call To Action, meaning enticing the user to interact.

CTR: Click Through Rate, the percentage of users that click on a specific link.

Content / Content Marketing: This is when webpages are created to add both SEO value and provide researching car shoppers with information on your website(s).

Heading / Header Tags: These are HTML elements that define the main topics for each webpage. These elements look like: <h1>…</h1> or <h2>…</h2>. The Search Engines know the lower the h number is, the more important it is. Example, if you have a page on your website about service a good H1 tag would be: “<h1>Buick GMC Service Center in Seattle, WA</h1>”.

Inbound Links: these are links that come from other websites to your website, like: if you have a blog or links from yelp, cars.com, Dealer Rater, Yellow Pages, etc. In general, the more inbound links to your website, the better your ranking will be in search engines.

Indexed Pages: If a page is indexed, that means Google or other search engines have a link to that page in their databases. If a page is not indexed, that would mean it will not show up in search results.

KPI: Key Performance Indicators. Being able to look at data and know which metrics are most important.

Link Building: This is an SEO strategy you may reach out to other websites and ask them to link to your website. Again, in general the more links to your website the better. If your website offers for example: “custom car interiors,” you may trade links with the company’s that provide the materials, or other third party companies that may be involved.

Long Tailed Searches: A search is what someone may type into a search engine. Long Tailed would mean what they typed is more that 3 or 4 words, more detailed or more specific. A common long tailed search may be: “New Toyota Prius for Sale in Seattle”.

Meta Keywords: This is hidden HTML codes that defines what the most relevant keywords on the page. This is no longer used by any major search engines.

Meta Description: This is hidden HTML codes that defines what text displays under the search results in SERPs (see SERP). A good meta description should summarize what the page is about.

PageRank: This is a number a from 0 to 10 assigned by Google that tells the overall value of a webpage. The higher the number the better. Google determines this number through their complex algorithm.

PPC: Pay Per Click. This is a method of online advertising that cost money every time an advertised link is clicked.

Redirect: this is a hidden server script that tells a browser when one page is visited to send that visitor to a different page.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing. These are advertisements that show on SERPs (see SERP).

SEO: Search Engine Optimization. The act of attempting to make a website perform as well as possible in search engine results.

SERP: Search Engine Results Page. This is the list of results someone is shown after typing something into a search engine.

Sitemap: This a a file or webpage that lists links to every webpage on the website.

Spider / Bot: This is a robot (or computer software) that crawls and looks at all content and on the internet. Each search engine has it’s own robot.

SRP: Inventory Pages or Search Results Pages within your dealer website.

Title Tags: The title tag is hidden HTML code that defines the title of the page <title>…</title>.

VDP: Vehicle Details Page. This is an unique page created for each car you have in inventory. The VDP should be a major source of your online leads.

If you can think of any other dealer SEO terms that we may have missed in this article, please let us know.