The Expert-Reviewed Guide to Automotive SEO (Updated for 2027)

If they hadn't shown up when I was looking, I never would have known they existed. That got me thinking about how crucial search visibility really is for auto businesses.

This article isn't just my take on automotive SEO. It's been reviewed, enriched, and inspired by eight experts with hands-on experience in this niche. Their insights helped me keep this guide grounded in real-world experience.

The automotive industry covers a lot of ground: dealerships, repair shops, auto parts sellers, manufacturers, and more. While I’ve focused on SEO tactics that apply universally across most automotive businesses, I’ll call out specific strategies where needed. If you’re looking for in-depth guidance tailored to your business type, I’ll point you to more focused resources along the way.

Think of automotive SEO as making sure you show up when people search for cars or auto services online. It's different from regular SEO because car shopping is... well, it's pretty unique.

Here's what makes it special:

Every page you optimize adds to your ability to attract customers. The results work for you 24/7, and build on each other over time. But that’s not all:

Local SEO gets you into Google Maps and those local results that show up before the regular website listings. Even if searchers don’t include location names in their searches, Google might still interpret them as local search intent and prioritize the best results in the nearby area.

Google sees each of your locations as its own separate business, so each one needs to be optimized individually. That means creating a dedicated page for every location, complete with unique content, local reviews, contact details, and photos of that specific spot and team.

Take Christian Brothers Automotive, for example. They have dozens of locations, each with its own optimized landing page and Google Business Profile.

Dealerships get one extra option most businesses don’t. Google lets car dealers create separate profiles for the dealership and for each department, like sales, service, or parts. New-car dealers can also have a profile for each brand of new cars they sell. Used-car dealers can’t do this, because the brands they stock change too often.

Ben Poulton recommends making use of it: a service department with its own profile, hours, and reviews can show up for “brake repair near me” in its own right.

The catch is that profiles add up fast. A single dealership with sales, service, and parts, plus a profile per new-car brand, can easily run five or more, and a dealer group multiplies that by every rooftop. Keeping hours, categories, and phone numbers right across all of them by hand is where mistakes creep in.

That’s the problem Ahrefs’ GBP Monitor is built for. You see all your profiles in one dashboard, spot missing info or inconsistencies between locations, and bulk-edit fields like hours and categories. So when a public holiday comes up, you update special hours for every department in one go instead of profile by profile.

Get listed in automotive directories like Edmunds and Cars.com, as well as general local directories like Yellow Pages and your Chamber of Commerce. Keep your branding and services consistent across these listings.

This has a direct and indirect benefit.

Direct benefit: referral traffic and lead generation. Many of these directories rank highly in search results themselves and are used by shoppers during the research phase. Being featured there can send highly qualified traffic your way.

Indirect benefit: stronger local SEO signals. Google and other search engines rely on data from third-party sites to validate your business’s legitimacy and location (the so-called NAP citations). When your business details are accurate and consistent across multiple reputable sources, it strengthens your local ranking signals, especially in map pack and “near me” searches.

Regular updates to your Google Business Profile (new photos, responding to reviews, posting announcements) show Google and customers that you're actively managing your business.

When the competition is tough, even small things, like regularly updating your Google Business Profile or responding to reviews, can be what sets you apart and helps customers choose you over others.

Staying active also means watching for changes you didn’t make. Anyone can suggest edits to your profile, and Google sometimes applies changes on its own. A wrong phone number on your service department’s profile or incorrect weekend hours can quietly cost you bookings before anyone notices.

Ahrefs' GBP Monitor sends you an email alert whenever a profile changes, whether the edit came from you, your team, a competitor, or Google. You can reject an unwanted change and restore the previous version with one click, and see a full history of edits across all your profiles. (The tool is currently in beta and available on all paid Ahrefs plans.)

Until recently, dealers could push their inventory into Google for free through the Vehicle Listings program. Google has shut down the organic auto listings feature and stopped processing vehicle feeds, so your inventory pages now have to do that work on their own (more on that below).

If you want your cars shown directly in Google’s results, the paid route is Vehicle Ads, a separate program. I cover how ads and SEO fit together later in this guide. Thanks to Ben Poulton for flagging this change.

In the automotive world, trust is a dealbreaker. Shoppers want to know they’re dealing with a business that’s honest, responsive, and delivers on its promises. And guess what, Google always looks at online reviews to determine the best local search result (see prominence).

Buyers act on it, too. In Trade Me’s 2025 survey, 64% of New Zealand car buyers said negative dealer reviews or reputation would be a dealbreaker.

So here’s what you can do:

Keyword targeting connects your website with people who are actively searching for what you offer. It's how you show up for a buyer typing in “used Honda Civic near me” instead of disappearing behind a wall of irrelevant traffic.

I'm going to walk you through the types of keywords (with examples) you'll likely need to reach potential customers at every stage of their journey—from early research to purchase and beyond. Each keyword type plays a different role in your overall strategy.

But before we dive in, I want to show you how easily you can find your own keywords.

Start by opening Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, and ask the built-in AI to suggest keywords relevant to your business.

Then simply use one of the intent filters in the Matching terms report.

Commercial keywords capture people who are comparing options and making decisions. Ranking here helps you position your offerings as the better choice, even if they're not yet ready to buy.

Examples:

Transactional keywords are your conversion drivers. These are the high-intent searches from people ready to take action, whether that’s booking a test drive, scheduling a service, or calling your dealership.

Examples:

Informational keywords attract early-stage searchers. They might not convert right away, but they build trust, brand awareness, and long-term visibility in your niche.

They’re also a smart way to expand your reach beyond your immediate area or build national awareness, since they usually address broader problems that apply everywhere. And because of that wide relevance, they have the potential to drive significant traffic to your site.

Examples:

Local keywords are essential for showing up in map packs and nearby searches—especially important for dealers, service centers, and repair shops that serve specific geographic areas.

Besides using your keyword research tool, Michelle Tansey also suggested tapping into your team's insights. Ask your staff what customers are often asking about or what tends to work well in your local area. Their firsthand experience can be a goldmine for content ideas.

Examples:

To prioritize which keywords to go after, balance these four factors:

To win at automotive SEO, your site needs to support what customers are actually looking for, which depends on your business type. That said, most successful automotive sites tend to focus on these three functional areas:

Each requires its own SEO strategy, and depending on your business model, you’ll emphasize some more than others.

Let’s break it down.

These are the digital equivalent of your car lot. They power transactional searches like “used Mazda CX-5 under 20k.”

What to focus on:

These bring in high-margin, high-frequency traffic—brake repair, inspections, tire rotation, etc. Most visitors come with a clear intent to act.

Below is an example of repair shops ranking with optimized location pages.

What to focus on:

This is where local SEO and trust-building collide. Done right, these pages help you rank for “Toyota dealer San Diego” and convert cold traffic into walk-ins or leads.

Here’s a great example by Sheen group: a landing page listing all locations and a dedicated landing page for each location.

What to focus on:

Manufacturers often lose search traffic for their own model names. Queries like “rav4 price,” “rav4 dimensions,” or “rav4 fuel economy” have clear intent and a factual answer. But the answer often comes from review and car sales sites, not the brand, because the brand’s specs sit in PDF brochures or behind a JavaScript configurator.

Ben Poulton showed me what that looks like for Tesla. Search “tesla model y price” in Australia, and the AI Overview takes every number from Chasing Cars and CarsGuide. Tesla’s own site isn’t cited:

This isn’t limited to price searches, either. In Ben’s study of 400 Australian car searches, every one of the 80 model comparisons he tested (like “forester vs rav4”) returned an AI Overview, compared with about half of searches for just a model name. And the answers weren’t always right: he found a UK-only Mazda grade in an Australian answer and a Hyundai Kona answer with the wrong safety rating.

That matters more in markets outside the US, where AI Overviews pull together pricing from third-party sources and you have no control over whether it’s current or correct. So:

This part of SEO is about making sure your website works the way it should—fast, easy to load, and simple for both people and Google to navigate.

I always give the same advice here: use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Audit, fix the problems it finds, and keep it running regularly.

Ahrefs gives you an overall Health Score, showing how many pages on your site have serious issues—these are called errors. If you click on the error count, you'll see exactly what the problems are, which pages are affected, and get tips on how to fix them.

You don’t need to be a tech expert to handle most of these. Site audit tools will flag the most common issues that hurt your rankings, like:

Once you fix what’s broken, this becomes a simple maintenance task. Site Audit performs regular checks on autopilot. Bigger sites with ecommerce inventory could benefit from an always-on audit that scans 24/7.

By the way, you’ll also get email alerts after each scan, so you don’t really need to remember to open the tool and check.

People head to YouTube when they want to see how something works, what a car looks like, or whether a mechanic knows their stuff. That’s a huge opportunity.

Video builds trust faster than text. A quick walkaround of a car, a before-and-after repair job, or a mechanic explaining a common problem can do more to convince a potential customer than a thousand words ever could.

And it doesn’t have to be fancy. A simple, honest video shot on your phone can work just fine, as long as it’s useful and answers real questions your customers have.

Plus, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. If you’re not showing up there, you’re missing a ton of traffic from people actively researching, comparing, or getting ready to book.

And here’s the kicker: some people find your videos on YouTube, but many find them on Google. Google often pulls YouTube videos directly into its search results (right on the front page). That means a helpful video can give you visibility on two of the biggest search engines at once.

YouTube matters for AI search too, especially Google’s own. In our study of AI Overview citations, YouTube was the most cited domain in AI Overviews, and its citations grew 34% in six months. Among cited pages that didn’t rank in Google’s top 100 for the query, 18.2% were YouTube videos. So a video can earn a spot in the AI answer without ranking your website at all.

Perplexity leans on YouTube as well. In our study of the most-cited domains in AI assistants, YouTube made up 16.1% of Perplexity’s citations.

The pattern holds for car searches specifically. When Ben Poulton analyzed 116 automotive questions in Ahrefs Brand Radar, YouTube was cited in 61% of Google’s AI Mode answers and 29% of AI Overviews.

ChatGPT can embed videos in its answers, too, though YouTube isn’t among the domains it cites most:

The effect goes beyond individual citations. When we looked at 75,000 brands, YouTube mentions correlated with AI visibility more strongly than any other factor (~0.737 across ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews). That count includes videos other people make about you, like reviews and walkarounds. Your own channel isn’t the only thing that counts.

So, here are some ideas for videos you can make:

We’ve got an entire YouTube SEO course right here, so don’t miss it:

Before we wrap this section up, I wanted to show you how to find the aforementioned videos showing up on both Google and YouTube.

Head out to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, paste in your seed keywords, and in the Matching terms report, turn on this SERP features filter:

The results will be all keywords where Google shows videos in the SERPs, just like this one:

Finally, here’s a good tip from Michelle: don’t just post to YouTube. Include videos on blog pages or make/model pages to boost engagement and time on page.

Car buyers already use ChatGPT to shop. In a carsales survey of more than 2,000 Australians, 35% said they plan to use, or already use, AI to help find their next car. Of those, more than 70% prefer ChatGPT.

From the evidence I’ve collected, good SEO is a solid foundation for showing up in ChatGPT. ChatGPT runs searches on Bing and Google before answering, and in our study of 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts, 88% of cited URLs came from its general search index. If search engines can’t find and rank your pages, ChatGPT is unlikely to cite them.

But being good at SEO doesn’t guarantee a spot in the answer. Only 12% of the links ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot cite appear in Google’s top 10 for the same prompt. A few things seem to make a bigger difference in ChatGPT than in Google.

ChatGPT rewards specifics. In an experiment where we fed AI tools a fake brand, when the official information was vague, and a made-up source was specific, the AI went with the specific fiction almost every time. And when prices are hidden behind JavaScript, ChatGPT falls back to third-party sites for the numbers.

Buyers expect that detail, and AI assistants go looking for it. In Trade Me’s 2025 survey of New Zealand car buyers, 64% said insufficient vehicle history or condition details was a dealbreaker. And when Ben Poulton ran 40 car-buying conversations in Google’s AI Mode, 24 of the opening answers asked about budget. If price is the first thing the AI asks about, your prices need to be somewhere it can find them.

So publish more than feels necessary, and put it in plain text: stock, trims, prices or price ranges, finance terms, service menu prices, part lead times, warranty details, and opening hours for each department. If you don’t answer those questions, a listing site or a forum thread will.

Answer engine optimization forces a new kind of perspective on content. With SEO, we typically created pages to rank for specific search queries. With AEO, a page can still be valuable even if it never ranks in search, as long as it gives AI systems a reliable source of truth to reference.

What gets a business recommended is mostly what others say about it. Across 75,000 brands, branded web mentions correlated strongly with AI visibility (0.66 to 0.71 depending on the platform), while ChatGPT’s correlation with Domain Rating was weak (0.27).

For a dealership or repair shop, that means local news sites, regional magazines, community blogs, sponsorship pages, and “best mechanics in Austin” roundups. Reddit and Quora are among the top cited domains in AI Overviews, too, and that’s where a lot of honest “is this dealer any good?” conversations happen. Local PR is AI visibility work now.

ChatGPT pulls local information from review platforms. In July 2026, Yelp agreed to license its reviews, ratings, photos, and business details to OpenAI, so ChatGPT can use them in answers to local queries. Before that deal, BrightLocal already found Yelp was used as a source in 33% of the AI local searches it studied.

So keep your Yelp profile complete, keep your rating healthy, and reply to reviews there as carefully as you do on Google.

Bing Places is Bing’s version of Google Business Profile, and most dealers never touch it. Because ChatGPT relies on Bing’s index, an accurate Bing listing is one more consistent source ChatGPT can check your name, address, hours, and phone number against. It takes an afternoon to set up, and you can import your details from Google Business Profile.

One thing I noticed while testing: when I asked ChatGPT about local repair shops, it didn’t show a Google or Bing business profile. It put together its own card for each business from whatever sources it found, like the website, reviews, and directories.

So there’s no single profile you can polish and be done. What ChatGPT says about you is only as accurate as the least accurate source it finds, which is why consistent details everywhere matter even more here.

SEO and Google Ads work better together than apart. Instead of seeing them as competing strategies, think of them as complementary approaches that can amplify each other.

Use ads to test keywords before committing to SEO. SEO takes months to show results, but you can test keyword performance with ads in days. If a keyword converts well in paid search, it's probably worth targeting with SEO content too.

Cover all your bases. Use ads for competitive keywords where you're not ranking yet, seasonal promotions, and new inventory that needs immediate visibility.

For this, I’d recommend setting up the following filter in Keywords Explorer: bottom of funnel preset, KD from 50 and the cost per click you feel comfortable with as the maximum.

Track these six key metrics to understand your SEO performance:

Keep an eye on competitors, too by monitoring their keyword rankings, tracking their content output, and setting up alerts for new rankings, backlink changes, and web mentions.

You can track all of the above using Ahrefs, and this guide will show you how to set it all up: SEO Tracking For Beginners: All You Need to Know. That includes form completions, custom events, and even funnels, all in the same tool.

And if you work for an agency, you can set up a report that updates on autopilot for each of your clients using Ahrefs’ Report Builder.

My colleague Despina made me realize that ranking on Google is still important, but it’s not the only thing that matters anymore. People want real, honest opinions—from Reddit threads to TikTok videos (don’t miss our new TikTok SEO guide), forum discussions, YouTube reviews, and even AI tools like ChatGPT.

I’ve done it myself. It’s not that Google didn’t have answers—it had too many. So, I turned to ChatGPT and Gemini to help compare car sizes, safety ratings, reliability, warranty nitty gritty details and even wait time for spare parts on imported brands before I made the final decision.

The point is: real buying decisions are happening everywhere, not just on search engines. SEO is still the base, but if you want to stand out, your brand needs to show up wherever people are searching, scrolling, and asking for advice. In other words, your next move is “search everywhere optimization”.

Got questions or comments? Let me know on LinkedIn.