SEO for B2B Automotive: How to Outrank Your Competitors in 2024

According to Google, 95% of automotive customers use digital sources before purchasing.

And twice as many people start their search online rather than offline.

That means your website must rank among the first so your B2B buyers can see it.

You must also rank high for profitable keywords so you can attract qualified leads who can easily become customers.

That’s why you need solid SEO for automotive.

This article will walk you through the process step by step.

We’ll show you: 

• Easy SEO wins you can implement right now
• Real case studies
• A schema markup code you can copy today (yes, you’ll also learn what that means)

Let’s dive in. 

TL;DR:

• Digital Dominance in Automotive Sales: 95% of automotive customers use digital sources before purchasing, highlighting the need for strong online visibility.
• Automotive SEO Basics: Tailor your SEO strategy to the automotive industry, focusing on aligning content with user intent and optimizing the website for search engines.
• B2B Focus: Specialize SEO efforts towards B2B clients like auto dealers and manufacturers, ensuring content is detailed and industry-specific.
• Case Study Insights: BorgWarner Inc. shows common SEO pitfalls such as poor keyword ranking and insufficient linking domains.
• SEO Benefits: Improved sales, enhanced online visibility, credibility, better user experience, and staying competitive.
• On-Page SEO: Recommendations include conducting SEO audits, optimizing meta descriptions, streamlining URLs, and using effective title and heading tags.
• Content Strategy: Develop high-quality, informative content tailored to B2B clients, including case studies, whitepapers, and product-focused blogs.
• Mobile and Speed Optimization: Essential for better user experience and improved SEO performance.
• Schema Markup: Implement AutoDealer schema to enhance listings and provide detailed business information directly in search results.
• Local SEO: Optimize for local search to attract nearby business and improve conversion rates.
• Link Building: Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable industry sources to boost site authority and rankings.
• Kickstart Your Campaign: Start with a thorough SEO audit, develop a tailored content strategy, and enhance user experience to improve overall SEO effectiveness.

What Is Automotive SEO?

Automotive SEO means optimizing your automotive business’s online presence to improve your visibility on search engines. 

Basically, you’ll align every piece of content with user intent so your products are easily discovered through relevant searches. 

Besides, you’ll make your website easier for search engines to crawl and understand.‍

That will help you get better indexing and higher rankings, which translates to improved visibility.

Insider tip: Automotive SEO is different than SEO for other industries because you’re dealing with an extensive number of product pages and specialized terminology.

That’s why you need a strategic approach tailored to these unique needs.

What Is SEO for B2B Automotive?

B2B automotive SEO focuses on optimizing your website so you can reach potential clients like auto dealers, manufacturers, and other industry professionals.

This means your SEO strategies must be tailored to a knowledgeable audience looking for detailed product details and specialized services.

You’re also dealing with a longer sales cycle and more expensive purchases. 

A solid automotive SEO company can help you optimize specific SEO elements to get a sustainable pipeline of qualified visitors.

For example, B2B content must demonstrate industry expertise and provide valuable insights because your target audience is doing thorough research.

High-quality content for business customers includes in-depth whitepapers, case studies, and detailed product specifications that help potential clients make informed decisions. 

Case Study Break: BorgWarner Inc.

BorgWarner Inc. is a notable B2B automotive company in the US.

They specialize in powertrain products for light vehicles, medium & heavy-duty vehicles, off-highway, and aftermarket. They focus on innovations in electrification and hybrid technology.

However, a quick look at their SEO strategy in Ahrefs shows us some potential problems:

As you can see, BorgWarner only ranks for 420 keywords in the top 3, although it targets 13,200 keywords total.

And it has only 5,800 linking domains for its 897,000 backlinks.

However, Google ranks you higher if you have more domains and not necessarily more backlinks.

That means BorgWarner may have invested a lot in an off-page strategy that could have been more profitable.

Besides, Ahrefs shows us that 71.2% of their pages have no visitors.

Another 26.7% of their pages bring below 100 visitors per month.

‍Just 1.9% of their pages have over 100 monthly visitors.

5 Reasons to Invest in SEO for Corporate Automotive

1. Increase Sales

Investing in SEO for your corporate automotive business can directly boost your product sales.

Optimizing for relevant keywords and creating valuable content helps you attract potential customers actively searching for automotive products and services. Improved search engine rankings lead to higher visibility, resulting in more qualified traffic to your site. 

For example, Blue Things increased B2B SQLs by 300% for client Arielle.

Their organic traffic also increased steadily from 9,000 to over 70,000 monthly visitors.

So, a solid SEO strategy makes your products more easily discoverable, increasing your conversion rates and driving more sales.

2. Enhance Online Visibility

A strong SEO strategy helps your business achieve better search rankings, making it easier for potential clients to find you.

With the right SEO content, your site can appear higher in search results.

This approach improves your organic traffic and, more importantly, establishes your brand as a leader in the automotive industry.

3. Build Credibility and Trust

High-quality content and a well-optimized website build credibility and trust with your audience.

Customer reviews and testimonials can also be integrated into your SEO efforts because they showcase your reliability.

And when you demonstrate your expertise in the field, you attract and retain more potential clients.

4. Improve User Experience

SEO isn't just about search engines; it's also about providing a great user experience.

Ensuring your website is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate keeps visitors engaged and reduces bounce rates. Internal links and a clear site structure help users find what they're looking for quickly.

These factors contribute to higher engagement rates and better overall performance of your site.

5. Stay Competitive

The automotive industry is very competitive, so it’s essential to stay ahead of similar companies. However, SEO helps you maintain and even improve your market share.

That’s because updating your SEO strategies helps you align with the latest search engine algorithms and digital marketing trends. 

Besides, you can analyze your competitors’ SEO strategies to find the opportunities they missed.

We’ll teach you how to do that in a second.

For now, let’s move on to this:

SEO for Corporate Automotive You Can Do Today: On-Page Optimizations

1. Conduct an SEO Audit

Start with a comprehensive SEO audit to identify areas for improvement.

This involves analyzing your website’s current performance, checking for broken links, and ensuring all pages are indexed correctly.

Case Study Break: BorgWarner

For example, in the case of BorgWarner, a quick SEO audit shows us a slew of mobile optimization issues:

2. Optimize Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are vital for improving click-through rates.

For each page, write concise, compelling meta descriptions that include relevant keywords and product details. 

For example, a page featuring suspension systems could have a meta description like, “Explore our extensive range of suspension systems designed for auto dealers and manufacturers. Enhance your inventory with reliable, performance-tested components.”

3. Streamline URLs

If you’re not an SEO, you don’t realize how important URLs are.

However, they’re essential for Google and other search engines to understand what each web page is about.

And we’ve seen many automotive companies having long, complicated URLs.

Our advice: Ensure your URLs are clean and descriptive, and include relevant keywords. Avoid long, complex URLs. 

For instance, a URL for a product page should look like this: “www.yourcompany.com/automotive-parts/brake-pads” rather than “www.yourcompany.com/products/item12345.”

4. Optimize Title Tags

Again, title tags help search engine indexing.

More importantly, they attract potential clients.

For example, questions have a 14.1% higher click-through rate. That’s why title tags should be specific, include primary keywords, and accurately reflect the page content. 

An effective title tag for an automotive B2B page might be “How to Pick Industrial-Grade Brake Pads | [Your Company Name].” 

5. Use Heading Tags Effectively

Organize your content with proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3) to make it easy for both search engines and users to navigate.

The H1 tag should include the main keyword and clearly define the page’s topic.

Subheadings (H2, H3) can break down sections, such as detailed product features or customer reviews, improving readability and SEO.

6. Implement Internal Links

Internal links help distribute page authority across your site and guide users to relevant content.

Link product pages to related blog posts, case studies, or other relevant sections of your site.

This enhances user experience, which is important, but it also helps search engines understand what your website is about.

7. Optimize Keywords with SEO Tools

Use SEO tools like Frase to identify and optimize your pages with relevant keywords without any keyword stuffing.

Integrate these keywords naturally into your content, title tags, and meta descriptions.

This ensures your content aligns with search queries and improves keyword rankings.

Key Elements of Automotive SEO 

Now that we’ve seen what SEO changes you can implement right away let’s focus on building a more sustainable automotive SEO strategy.

1. Competitor Gap Analysis

Conducting a competitor gap analysis is essential for understanding how your automotive business stacks up against the competition and identifying opportunities to improve your SEO strategies.

Here's how to perform a detailed competitor gap analysis specific to the automotive industry:

• Identify key competitors: These could be other automotive companies, auto dealers, or manufacturers that target the same potential customers as you. Use tools like Google Search to see which competitors rank for your target automotive keywords.
• Analyze competitor keywords: Use SEO tools to analyze the keywords your competitors are ranking for. This includes both short-tail and long-tail keywords related to the automotive industry. Note which keywords drive significant organic traffic to their sites.
• Examine their content strategy: Look at the type and quality of their content and identify gaps where your competitors may be excelling or areas where they might be lacking quality content. Pay attention to the user experience on their pages, noting how they engage their audience.
• Review their backlink profiles: Identify high-quality backlinks they have acquired from authoritative sources within the automotive industry. Tools like Ahrefs or Moz can help you see where their inbound links are coming from. You can connect with these websites as well to improve your own site's authority and search rankings.

Case Study Break: BorgWarner Inc.

Let’s return to BorgWarner Inc. to discover some missed opportunities in the keywords its competitors rank for:

Ahrefs is a solid SEO tool that helps us conduct content gap analysis.

We can see some profitable keywords for which Garrett Motion ranks among the top 10 positions. 

These keywords are missing from BorgWarner’s content strategy.

More interestingly, its direct competitor, AGP Turbo, isn’t using them either.

2. Keyword Research for Automotive

Keyword research is a foundational element of automotive SEO because you can find the search terms your potential customers are using when searching for your products. 

That means you can implement the same keywords to make your website more easy to find.

Here's a step-by-step guide to conducting effective keyword research specific to the automotive industry:

• Start by defining your target audience, which includes potential clients such as auto dealers, manufacturers, and B2B businesses within the automotive sector. Understanding your audience helps you choose keywords that are relevant to their search queries.
• Use SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to discover keywords related to the automotive industry. Analyze each term’s search volume, keyword difficulty, and related search queries. Focus on finding relevant keywords that have a good balance of search volume and competition.
• Examine your competitors’ keywords to sleuth out high-performing keywords that you may not be targeting yet. This analysis can reveal keyword opportunities and gaps in your current keyword strategy.

For example, a solid keyword is “powertrain products:”

With a medium ranking difficulty and a $6,800 monthly traffic potential, this keyword could help BorgWarner gain plenty of leads.

Side note: A potential issue could be that there is a company called Powertrain Products, so ranking for its brand name could be tough.

We have already tackled that issue at Blue Things.

We helped one of our clients, Tiddle.io, outrank a number of huge dictionaries for its brand name:

And the key was building backlinks from plenty of authoritative websites. 

We’ll discuss more about backlinks in a second.

For now, let’s hone your automotive content strategy.

Insider tips:

• Focus on transactional long-tail keywords: These are specific phrases that potential customers use when they are closer to making a purchase decision. For example, instead of targeting "brake pads," use long-tail keywords like "high-performance brake pads for sports cars." These keywords typically have lower competition and higher conversion rates.
• Incorporate automotive-specific terms and jargon into your keyword list: This can include technical specifications, industry-specific terms, and product names. 
• Understand the search intent behind each keyword: Determine whether the user is looking for informational content, product details, or purchasing options. Tailor your content strategy to match this intent. That way, you can provide valuable content that meets the needs of your audience and drives high-quality traffic.

3. Product Page Optimization

Optimizing product pages improves visibility and drives sales in the automotive industry because you attract and retain higher-quality traffic.

Here are five actionable steps that we’re also using at Blue Things and that are extremely easy to implement:

• Ensure your title tags are clear and descriptive and include relevant keywords: For instance, a title tag for a brake pad product could be “High-Performance Brake Pads for Sports Cars | [Your Company Name].”
• Write detailed product descriptions: Include relevant keywords and provide all necessary information a potential customer might need. Detail the product’s features, benefits, and specifications. For example, “These high-performance brake pads offer superior stopping power and durability, ideal for high-speed sports cars and performance vehicles.”
• Optimize images with Alt Text: Use high-quality images and optimize them with descriptive alt text that includes relevant keywords. For example, an image of brake pads should have alt text like “High-performance brake pads for sports cars.” This improves your page’s accessibility and helps search engines understand the content of your images.
• Implement schema markup: Schema markup helps search engines better understand the content and context of your products. Use product-specific schema to include details like price, availability, and reviews. This can enhance your search engine listings with rich snippets, making your products more attractive to potential customers.
• Enhance internal linking: Incorporate internal links to related products, categories, and relevant content within your site. For example, link from a product page for brake pads to related products like brake rotors or to informational content like a blog post on maintaining brake systems. This helps improve user experience and distributes page authority across your site.

4. Automotive SEO Content

SEO content for automotive is highly specialized.

As such, it engages your B2B audience, proves your industry expertise, and improves your search engine visibility.

The result is that you have a sustainable pipeline of qualified traffic to your automotive website.

Here’s what types of content pieces work well in the corporate automotive niche:

• Industry case studies: Create detailed case studies that highlight successful projects or collaborations with other automotive companies. These should include specific data, outcomes, and customer journeys to demonstrate your expertise and the effectiveness of your products or services. 
• Whitepapers and technical guides: These should address complex issues and trends in the automotive industry. And your potential clients should be able to use them to make better purchase decisions. 
• Publish in-depth reviews and product comparisons: Highlight unique features, benefits, and performance metrics.
• Write expert blog posts: Address common questions, challenges, and innovations in the automotive industry. These posts should provide actionable advice and insights that appeal to other businesses. 
• Gather and showcase customer testimonials and success stories: These can be in written or video format and should highlight the positive experiences and results your clients have achieved using your products or services. 

Case Study Break: Lear

Lear Corporation is an Automotive seating and electrical system specialist.

They serve major auto manufacturers with a global reach.

However, they get most of their traffic from their homepage, careers, and contact pages.

They’re missing a tremendous opportunity to publish high-quality content that would get them even more qualified leads.

5. Mobile Optimization

60.5% of your business clients access your automotive website from their mobile devices.

A mobile-optimized website ensures that these potential customers have a seamless and engaging user experience. 

That leads to higher engagement rates and improved search engine rankings.

Besides, Google’s search algorithms prioritize mobile-friendly sites, so mobile optimization is essential for maintaining and enhancing your search visibility.

To conduct mobile optimization, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. This tool analyzes your URL and reports any issues that need fixing.

Then, focus on:

• Responsive design: Implement a responsive web design that automatically adjusts the layout and content based on the device screen size.
• Optimize images and videos: Use appropriate sizes and formats to reduce load times without compromising quality. Tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights can identify media files that need optimization.
• Simplify navigation: To enhance the user experience, use clear menus, large buttons, and easy-to-read fonts. Ensure key information, such as contact details and product pages, is easily accessible.
• Reduce load times: Minimize the use of heavy scripts and complex elements that can slow down your site on mobile devices. Use browser caching and content delivery networks (CDNs) to speed up your site’s performance.

6. Speed Optimization

When your website’s loading speed goes from 1 to 3 seconds, your bounce rate increases by 32%.

That leads to lost sales opportunities. Besides, search engines like Google factor in page speed when ranking websites.

Remember: Your business clients have limited time and expect fast-loading pages to quickly find the information they need. 

Here’s how we conduct speed optimization:

• Optimize server response time: Ensure your server response time is under 200 milliseconds. Do this by choosing a reliable hosting provider, optimizing your server settings, and minimizing the use of plugins that slow down your site.
• Minimize HTTP requests: Reduce the number of elements on your pages, such as images, scripts, and CSS files, to decrease HTTP requests. Combining files, using CSS sprites, and enabling lazy loading for images can significantly improve load times.
• Enable compression: Enable GZIP compression to reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. This speeds up your site’s load times because it makes data transfer from the server to the browser more efficient.
• Implement browser caching: Use browser caching to store static files, such as images and stylesheets, in users’ browsers. This way, returning visitors do not have to reload the entire page, which leads to faster page load times and a better user experience.

7. AutoDealer Schema Markup

AutoDealer schema markup is a type of structured data specifically designed to help search engines understand and display detailed information about auto dealerships.

Implementing this schema markup enhances your search engine listings with rich snippets, which provide potential customers with more detailed information directly in the search results.

This can lead to higher click-through rates, improved visibility, and better user engagement.

Our SEO specialists implement AutoDealer schema markup following the steps below:

1. Determine the key information you want to include in your AutoDealer schema markup. This typically includes details like your dealership’s name, address, phone number, opening hours, available inventory, and customer reviews.
2. Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to generate the necessary code: Select the "Local Businesses" category and then "Auto Dealer" as the business type. Follow the prompts to input your dealership’s information.
3. Add the markup to your HTML: Once you’ve generated the schema markup code, add it to the HTML of your dealership website. Typically, this code is placed within the <head> or <body> section of your HTML. Ensure the markup accurately reflects the information on your page.
4. Test your markup: Use Google’s Rich Results Test to check your schema markup implementation. This tool will verify that your markup is correctly implemented and preview how it will appear in search results.

Here’s an example of how AutoDealer schema markup might look for a dealership:

8. Local SEO for Corporate Automotive Websites

Local SEO helps you connect with potential customers in your geographical area. 

Insider tip: When people search for automotive services, products, or dealerships, they sometimes include location-specific keywords. 

Optimizing for local SEO ensures that your business appears in these localized searches, driving relevant traffic to your site and increasing the likelihood of conversions from nearby customers.

To implement local SEO for your automotive business:

• Optimize your Google My Business profile: First, claim and verify your listing. Then, fill out all sections to optimize your profile, including your business name, address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and services offered. Of course, upload high-quality images of your dealership, products, and team to create a more engaging profile.
• Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews: Respond to reviews to show engagement and improve your reputation.
• Research local keywords: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs to find keywords specific to your location and industry. For example, “auto repair in [Your City]” or “car dealership near [Your City].” Integrate these keywords into your website content, meta descriptions, title tags, and headings to improve local search visibility.
• Create local content: Write blog posts about local events, news, or topics relevant to your community and industry. If you have multiple locations, create a dedicated page for each one with unique content tailored to that location’s audience.
• Build local backlinks: Collaborate with other local businesses for events or sponsorships and get backlinks from their websites. Ensure your business is listed in local online directories and automotive-specific directories. It is crucial to have consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information across all listings.

9. Link-building for B2B Automotive Websites

Link-building involves getting high-quality links from other websites to your own.

These backlinks are seen by search engines as votes of confidence because they prove your website is a valuable resource worth ranking higher in search results. 

Quality links from authoritative websites enhance your website’s authority, drive referral traffic, and improve search engine rankings. 

Remember: Industrial and commercial automotive websites require different SEO approaches.

Therefore, they need different link-building approaches, too.

We recommend focusing on:

• Guest posting on industry blogs: Find automotive industry blogs and websites that accept guest posts. Look for sites with a strong domain authority and an engaged audience. Write informative and valuable articles that showcase your expertise in the automotive industry. Include links back to relevant pages on your website.
  • Insider tip: Engage with blog owners and editors to establish long-term partnerships for future guest posting opportunities.
• Build relationships with industry influencers: Find key opinion leaders in the automotive industry. Provide them with value, such as exclusive access to new products or early-bird access to new tech. Encourage influencers to link back to your website in their content, driving both referral traffic and improving your site’s authority.
• Create link-worthy assets: The purpose here is to attract backlinks from industry sites looking for innovative tools, credible sources, or in-depth information. Consider creating content assets like tutorials or industry studies, as well as free tools that your B2B prospects can use right away. 
• Monitor and recover backlinks: Use SEO tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to monitor your backlink profile. These tools can help you track new brand mentions and identify opportunities for further link-building.
  • Insider tip: If you notice any lost or broken backlinks, reach out to the site owners to request a link update or replacement. This helps maintain the integrity and authority of your backlink profile.

Remember to check what your competitors are doing regularly. This will help you identify solid backlink opportunities.

Just introduce a competitor in Ahrefs and then look at their referring domains.

You can filter by best links, domain traffic, anchor text, and more.

Kickstart Your Automotive SEO Campaign

This article gave you the tools and steps to start your automotive SEO campaign.

Remember to start with a thorough audit to first identify the SEO issues you can fix quickly.

Then, plan a sustainable SEO strategy that starts with understanding your customers’ needs and search intent.

Follow that with quality content based on your customers’ queries, quality backlinks, and UX optimizations.

Insider tip: You can also power up your SEO strategy with search engine marketing to increase your online visibility and attract potential customers quickly.

SEM allows you to target specific keywords, demographics, and geographic locations. Besides, you’ll appear at the top of the search results pages for the specific keywords your customers use.

This is particularly important in the competitive automotive industry because gaining immediate visibility leads to increased traffic, leads, and sales. 

But if you need help getting started, schedule a free strategy call.

We’ll accompany you every step of the way, build a solid SEO strategy for your specific automotive website, and bring you the same solid results we brought our other clients.