Keeping Up with SEO Trends Remains Essential for Auto Body Shops in 2023

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BodyShop Marketing, a full-service marketing team with a decade of experience, dedicates its marketing expertise to helping local auto shops keep their lots filled with cars and lobbies filled with customers. To do so, the company provides comprehensive online presence management for auto body shops. BodyShop Marketing’s team discusses upcoming SEO trends they plan to integrate with all their services for successful results.

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What Are the Current SEO Trends?

SEO trends change quickly, and small, locally owned auto body shops need to keep up or risk losing business to the big corporate collision centers. In 2021, Google performed over 800,000 experiments to change its search engine over 4,000 times. Here are the latest trends that auto body shops should know in 2023.

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E-E-A-T

Google used to use the acronym E-A-T when outlining the overview of its ranking parameters, with the letters standing for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. In December 2022, Google added an extra E to the acronym, making it E-E-A-T or Double-E-A-T. The new E stands for experience.

What does this mean for auto shop owners? Google weighs the experience level of the author or creator behind the content. Auto shop owners creating content on changing a tire must prove their experience on the matter with author bios, a history of similar content, and more.  

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Video-Based Content

Video-based content continues gaining popularity as users opt for visual experiences. Google’s Featured Snippet enhancement shows a portion of a YouTube video directly in search results where searchers can immediately see an answer to their question without leaving the page.

Auto shops can incorporate this SEO strategy by creating more video content relating to vehicle repairs or comparing makes and models. Then, when someone searches “how to replace wiper fluid,” the video will appear already tuned to the exact answer. Marketing teams can add chapters to the video, closed captions, and optimization keywords for the best results.

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Answers to “People Also Ask” Questions

The “People Also Ask” (PAA) section in Google shows frequently asked questions surrounding the key term in a search query with a drop-down box highlighting a simple, succinct answer. Google features PAA sections in nearly half of searches.

Optimizing content to land in that highly-desirable answer box increases website traffic. Essentially, PAA sections are SEO gold.

Auto body shops can hop on PAA SEO trends by creating content that answers commonly asked questions in a simple, direct way. Doing so requires ample search engine results page research but can yield excellent results.

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AI Content Tools Driving More Personalization

AI is on the upcoming trend list for nearly all industries, with the automatic intelligence platforms tackling endless tasks. In SEO, small business owners can expect to see more AI-generated content optimized with the right keywords for ideal performance levels. AI-generated content doesn’t write itself but helps content creators develop engaging outlines filled with targeted keywords at the correct frequencies.

The surge in AI content may also come with a bit of backlash. As some companies rely on automatically generated content, Google may prioritize articles that sound more human, speaking to a real audience rather than an algorithm. Striking the right balance here might be 2023’s biggest challenge.

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Voice Search Gaining Popularity

Technology advancements and SEO are inherently intertwined. As more tools allow for features like voice search commands, Google will rank websites optimized for voice search higher. Analysts predict that by 2026, more than half of internet searchers in the U.S. will use a voice assistant.

Optimizing content for voice searches is simpler than it seems. Most voice searches occur on mobile devices. Google ranks websites with mobile-friendly experiences above those without responsive designs.

Auto shop owners designing their websites’ user experience must consider all audiences, including searchers on all device types, people with disabilities, voice search users, and more.

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Local SEO Reigning Supreme for Small Businesses

Small auto body shops may feel tempted to rank for the big terms that corporate stores dominate, but local SEO exists for a reason. Competing against global brands as a small business is an uphill climb no one wants to start. Local SEO allows smaller companies to rank for more specific terms in their areas like, “auto body repair near me in Wilmington, NC.”

Local SEO remains on-trend for 2023 and the foreseeable future. Local shops need to focus on terms and strategies relating to their unique area and customer base.

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Is SEO Still “On-Trend” in 2023?

SEO is still relevant in 2023 and the foreseeable future. As long as search engines remain relevant, SEO will too. SEO is the only way to control how a website appears in search engine results, so its practices will only become more refined over time.

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Schedule a 15-minute discovery call with Daniel Burkholder of BodyShop Marketing by calling (855) 667-9648 to see how the experienced team can help your shop grow.