Choosing Categories for Your Dealer’s Business Profile & Department Listings
Discover which categories to choose for your parts and service department based on user search interest.
Google your own dealership’s name, and what do you see?
What you should see (on desktop) is your organic search result for your dealership’s website on the very top of the search engine results page (SERP) with the knowledge graph to the right, as shown below:
Inside of Google’s Knowledge Graph you should see department listings labeled for your dealership. Ideally, you should see one for parts, and another for service. If you do not see those departments listed, then you know you will need to find and claim those listings, or create them. Here is a helpful guide to finding or building department listings from scratch for your dealership.
In this article we’re going to share the best categories for your dealership’s department listings based on search volume and user intent. There are a lot of categories to choose from for each of your listings, but you can only select ten. So, you need to make sure you are selecting the categories that best align with each business center.
Best Categories for Your Dealership’s Primary Listing
Before we start, how about we establish the color code for the categories referenced in the below snippet from SEMRush, and each image that follows:
Green – these are the categories that your dealership must use based on search interest and keyword difficulty.
Yellow – there are the more difficult keywords to rank for, but are still necessary to have as part of your ten categories.
Orange – these are usually instance based. E.g. If your dealership offers car rentals, then you can add Car rental agency as a category.
Car Dealer, [BRAND] dealer or Used Car Dealer are pretty much interchangeable as the top three categories. But all three are an absolute must have in your list of ten categories.
Most cases you will want to use [FORD] dealer if you are looking to compete within a metro area with a number of Ford dealerships. However, if your dealership is in a more rural area, and there isn’t another Ford dealership within 40-50 minutes drive, then your best bet is to prioritize your most direct competition. In that case you would want to have your primary category be Used Car Dealer to compete with all the local used car lots. Also, you will want to add Used Truck Dealer as one of your top categories, if you infact sell used or certified pre-owned pickup trucks.
From there you will want to start adding categories for Finance & Insurance services. So, if you offer vehicle leases you will want to add Car Leasing Service or Car Finance and Loan Company. Having these will help your GMB listing rank for leasing and finance search terms.
Helpful tip #1: Google references actual content from your dealership website. So, adding content for bad credit, no credit or lease/finance specials will help your chances in Google Maps for finance related searches.
How to Choose Categories for Your Service Department
First off, stop using car service as a category for your service department: Google created this category for taxi or limousine services, and therefore it doesn’t apply to facilities that fix cars. Instead, you should make auto repair shopyour first category.
From there you will want to add mechanic, car repair and maintenance, auto tune up service, and truck repair shop (if applicable).
Then you should fill out the rest of your categories with any of the following based on your service department capabilities and goals:
Oil change service
Brake shop
Transmission shop
Car inspection station
Wheel alignment service
Auto air conditioning service
Auto radiator repair service
Auto electrical service
Towing service (if offered)
Helpful tip #2: PlePer.com has a great tool that actually has all of the various categories and related categories available for your GMB listings based on “percent occurrence.” For example, here is the related categories list for car rental agency.
How to Choose Categories for Your Parts Department
Much as you did with your service department, you’ll want to prioritize your list based on that business center’s goals, as well as pick categories based on search intent.
In this case, auto parts store is the obvious primary category. From there you will want to likely choose the following:
Tire shop
Truck accessories store (if you sell trucks)
Car accessories store
Car battery store
Truck parts supplier
Then there are a handful of others you may want to consider – but don’t feel that it’s necessary to use 10 sub-categories if you don’t actually provide that many products or services.
Racing car parts store
Auto body parts supplier
Used tire shop
Muffler shop
Auto sunroof shop
Conclusion
Now you know what subcategories and primary categories you can and should choose for your business profile and department listings. This will ultimately increase your search discovery on Google Maps and in the search engine. It also provides users with greater clarity of what your products and services are from the showroom to F&I and throughout your service and parts departments. For car dealers facing inventory issues, relying on your service and parts departments is important. In order to generate revenue through those business centers you need to make sure you’re optimizing for those products and services, not just your vehicle inventory.
Written by: Dicky Phillips, Head of SEO at Media Results