Your Guide to Start Blogging Your Automotive Business

More and more people are now familiar with the concept of blogging for business. It's been talked about for years now, and the chances are most of you reading this have tried blogging, whether in your free time or for a business.

And although the uncertainty around blogging has died down as it becomes more acceptable, there are still few people out there skeptical about blogging and its potential benefits. In this article I'll show you how to get started so you can be on your way to developing a more advanced and successful digital marketing strategy.

Every business's site should have a set of main pages that act as the gatekeepers of information. This is true for any business; whether small or large. These pages offer information about your business, its products and services, and help assure potential customers that they're choosing the right business based on their needs.

With these pages, you're doing the bare minimum as regard to marketing. For some business owners, that's fine. But if you're looking to surpass your competitors and increase your market share, a few pages just aren't going to cut it. You need other internal pages that link to this content in order to better establish authority with search engines and hence reach more prospects.

You have to start thinking of your site as not just a place for customers, but a resource for anyone and everyone interested in information about your services or products. That's easier said than done, though, right? This is how you'd start:

1) Create a list of your products and services.

This is the very first step you should take. Creating a list of your products and services will give you strong insight at what you should be promoting and will allow you to figure out exactly what people are searching for in order to find businesses like yours.

2) Do keyword research.

Using the Adwords keyword planner tool, take your list of products( the list you created in step number 1) and one by one use them to gather related keywords and search volume. I recommend creating a spreadsheet for this data, as it's the easiest way to stay organized while doing keyword research.

To get started, simply click "Search for new keywords" and enter your product or service in the field labeled "Your product or service". If your business serves only local customers, or you simply want to target a specific location, click the first box under the "Targeting" heading.

In the field labeled "Enter a location to target", type the location and the keyword planner should automatically suggest a few locations based on your search. You can be extremely specific with your targeting, so feel free to experiment.

Once you're ready to see your ideas, click "Get Ideas". This will send you to a results page that shows the overall search data for keywords related to your search, related keyword groups (typically used for quick paid search campaigns), and individual keyword ideas that are related to your original search.

After gathering the data I encourage you to break keywords down into two different categories: transactional and informational. Transactional keywords are those that users search when they're looking to make a purchase. Informational keywords are used when someone is looking for information on a specific topic.

For example, "used cars for sale" would be considered transactional, while "buying a used car" would be considered informational. You don't want your blog posts to be centered on transactional keywords because that should be the focus of your main/navigational content. We'll be linking to the main content from these blog posts in order to supplement that content.

3) Outline topics based on high volume keywords.

Now that you've got your keyword list, let's create a few ideas for individual blog posts based on those keywords. For our example of topic that centers on "used cars for sale", I'd pick the following keywords:

• Best used cars.
• Buying a used car.
• Best used car deals.
• Used car valuations.
• Certified used cars.

From here, you want to develop an idea around each of these items. Think about all the relevant information people might be looking for when searching for these keywords and try to answer some of the questions you anticipate they'd ask.

4) Create a blog schedule.

After you have completed a few posts; now let's work on creating a schedule for blogging. This will not only help you or your business stay consistent with content efforts, but will also help you stay organized with topics and other focuses. Here's what we need to determine:

• How often you want to blog?
• What topics you want to cover?
• When you want to cover specific topics?

5) How often you want to blog?

The frequency of blog posting depends primarily on your resources. If this is something you'll be handing off to an employee to handle in addition to other work, you may want to only require one or two posts each week. But if you have a dedicated content writer or editor, you're likely to see better results in less time with a schedule of one post each day. Determine your own pace and stick to it.

6) What topics you want to cover?

As a car dealer, your blog should be covering a variety of topics in order to better compete for a variety of search terms related to your business. New cars, used cars, car loans, service, and repairs are probably the most basic, and you should have keyword sets and topics ready for each of these.

7) When to cover specific topics?

If you want to stay organized, it's a good idea to focus on certain topics during certain times. So if one week you want to focus on used cars and the next focus on new, you'll have an idea of what's coming up and can plan ahead accordingly. If you have a lighter blog schedule, it's a good idea to focus on one topic for an entire month before switching the focus.

You may also want to cover some topics based on the time of year. So if you know the new models are coming in around April of next year, plan on writing about them in March to prepare for that.

• Conclusion

As long as you follow these steps, blogging for your automotive business should be a breeze. A lot of work goes into the production of great blog content, but as long as you're committed and consistent you should have no problem keeping up in order to get results.