Google My Business is a critical tool for dealerships that helps inform and attract potential automotive shoppers to your website. Your Google My Business listing is a free service that contains essential information about your business at a glance. This includes information like store hours, directions, customer reviews, services and more.

More importantly, Google My Business can act as a portal for Google searchers to visit your website and even your dealership. To drive traffic to your website and store, you must optimize your listing correctly. To help you out, we put together 10 essential ways you can optimize your Google My Business listing. Here they are:

10. Pick relevant categories that match your dealership

Categories describe what your store is rather than what it does or sells. For dealerships, we recommend making your Primary Category “[your brand] dealership”. For example, if you’re a Ford dealership, insert “Ford” for  “your brand”. If you sell multiple brands, put your best selling brand in this spot.

For your other categories, here are some examples you can use (only use ones that apply to your dealership):

• Used car dealer
• Car dealer
• Truck dealer
• Used truck dealer
• Auto repair shop
• Auto parts store
• Auto body shop
• Car detailing service
• Rental cars
• Chevrolet dealer (choose your brand)

9. Update holiday and department hours 

When a shopper is ready to buy and visit a dealership, you want to be prepared to help them. Make sure you update your holiday and department hours on your GMB profile, so customers know when to visit you.

8. Solicit and respond to all reviews

Reviews and customer testimonials are valuable. Solicit reviews whenever possible. Whether that’s an email after a purchase or a text message, find ways to ask customers to review your dealership on Google. Online reviews spread the word about your business digitally and can help new potential shoppers find you online.

When your dealership responds to your reviews, you can show existing and potential customers that you value their business. People whose reviews you respond to will even receive notifications that you replied. Encouraging and responding to Google reviews allows you to add a personal touch to your online marketing and communication efforts.

7. Include a cover photo and post relevant, high-quality photos

Another way you can optimize your Google My Business profile for website traffic is by adding a cover photo and other relevant high-quality photos under the various available categories. Those categories are pictured in the image below.

Your dealership can benefit from posting photos on your Google My Business profile as businesses that have photos posted on their profile receive 42% more requests for driving directions to their location. In addition, companies with photos also receive 35% more clicks through to their websites than those without photos.

When you post photos to your profile, be sure to add interior and exterior photos of your dealership. Also include pictures of employees, fun dealership culture pictures and anything else you think might be interesting or helpful to potential shoppers or job applicants. Be creative.

6. Regularly add posts

Posts give your customers more access to your dealership’s business information and updates, which allows them to make better decisions as they browse your profile.

The benefits of regularly posting on Google My Business include:

• Improving communications with local shoppers
• Improving your customer’s experience with timely information
• Promoting your sales, specials, offers, events and dealership news
• Engaging with your customers through videos and photos
• Get creative and experiment with different content to see what performs best

5. Enter a brief, detailed description of your dealership

Write an authentic and detailed description that focuses on your dealership’s unique selling proposition (not just “family-owned” or “great experience,” etc.) Include information that sets you apart from competitors, and that’s helpful for customers to know. You can view our business description below for inspiration.

Keep in mind that Google advises against including details such as promotions, prices or sales information in your descriptions. Also, don’t add URLs or HTML code.

4. Ensure all dealership locations are verified

It’s important to verify your dealership’s multiple locations (if applicable) to ensure your dealership is eligible to qualify for store visit conversions — the holy grail of Google Ads ROI metrics. You can learn more about store visit conversions here.

Other prerequisites to qualify for store visit conversions include:

• Have a Google Ads account
• Google Ads account is linked to Google Analytics account
• Locations extensions must be enabled in Google Ads
• 90% of your locations are verified (for groups with multiple locations)

To connect your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts, follow these instructions or you can ask your digital marketing vendor for help. With Dealer Teamwork, we’ll automatically connect the two accounts for you.

3. Set your location pin and enter your service areas by zip code

Take advantage of Google’s location pin to ensure that your customers know exactly where your dealership is located. If your location is hard to find, Google’s location pin can be a valuable tool for maximizing your chance of a quality sales opportunity via a store visit.

2. Add products & services

Adding products and services to your dealership’s Google My Business listing is a key optimization tactic. Doing so makes it easier for your customers to find your products and services without them having to click through to your website.

You can learn how to add products & services to your dealership’s Google My Business with this helpful article: How to Add Products to your GMB Listing.

1. Add the “menu” link & UTM tags to CTA buttons

Menu Link

The “menu” link is the second available CTA (the first being your website link) that lets you add a second URL. For dealerships, Google automatically names this URL “Products & Services”. We recommend directing website traffic to your service specials or vehicle offers pages from this link.

Analyze the results in Google Analytics and change your links based on what works best for your dealership.

UTM Tags

Always add UTM tags to the main website CTA button and menu link, which makes up the second CTA button. Doing so grants your dealership the ability to track Google My Business traffic back to your website in Google Analytics. This also makes it easier to track your branded clicks in your Google Analytics campaign reporting. With UTMs in place, you can manage your paid spend better and save more money.

To properly create UTM tags, use these examples:

Website CTA

Source = google
Medium = organic
Campaign = gmb-website
Content = website_button

Here’s an example URL with the above UTM tag (For the primary CTA button):

https://www.yourdealerhere.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gmb-website&utm_content=website_button

Menu Link

Source = google
Medium = organic
Campaign = gmb-menu

Here’s an example URL with the above UTM tag (For the Menu link):

https://www.yourdealerhere.com/new-honda-lease-offers-finance-incentives-seattle-wa/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gmb-menu

Campaign URL Builder tool

With the free Google Campaign URL Builder tool, you can easily create UTM tags and put them into your Google My Business profile. With this tool, all you have to do is:

1. Enter the correct tags from the UTM tag examples provided above.
2. Insert the link generated from the Campaign URL Builder tool into the appropriate spot on your Google My Business profile.

To help save you time and effort, we can help add both UTM links to your Google My Business profile for you. Have questions? Contact our Sales team or your Dealer Teamwork Account Manager for additional help. 

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