So you need to increase your fixed ops business, but how do you optimize for service in search?
Well, there are two ways, there’s organic search and there’s paid search but the Google search landscape is filled with misnomers and confusion. Time and time again, we see vendors focusing very heavily on fixed ops specific keywords. Of course this makes intuitive sense. Why? Because it makes sense to bid on ‘(Brand) service’ or ‘(Brand) oil change’ if you’re looking to do more fixed ops business, as opposed to the more general ‘(Ford) dealer’. Right?
Well, not necessarily…
The majority of your opportunity for increasing your fixed ops traffic to your website actually lies in much broader keywords than you think. Roughly 70% of service-intent searchers search ‘(Brand) dealer’ or ‘store name’ because they’re already a service customer. That doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to bid on service keywords, or to use SEO to optimize for service keywords. Just be careful to measure your opportunity.
On the organic side, you may want to focus more on the broad keywords that are the catch-all for both fixed ops and variable ops gains. You might have hundreds of searches per month being performed on ‘(Brand) dealer’ where they intend to come to you for service, versus those performing searches for ‘(Brand) oil change’, ‘(Brand) service’, ‘(Brand) brakes’ ‘(Brand) tires’. Optimizing for the latter in paid search is important, you can better control your costs when you’re going after those very service specific keywords.
Let’s recap:
- Most service based searches specify brand dealership or dealership name.
- While you can and should optimize for specific services, optimizing for broader keywords may actually be your best shot at increasing your volume for fixed ops business.