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Anyone looking for a used car almost always starts on a listing site. These sites gather every seller in the country and take the top of the results. You won't replace them, and I don't advise you to leave them. Yet you pay for every listing there, next to your competitors, sorted by price. Your website and your Google Business Profile can bring in a share of buyers directly: those who want to see the vehicle, test-drive it and know the garage selling it.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroSeven results, only one forecourt you can visit
A woman in Ruffec is looking for a used automatic city car. The first six results are listing sites and marketplaces. Your garage, which has two on the forecourt, is in seventh place. Move it up.
Fig. 1. Seven results for an automatic city car. Only one seller is in Ruffec. (The other six showed hundreds of listings. Both cars were at your place, five minutes away.)
What this means for you. I have your stock published on your own pages, with the town, the type of vehicle and what your workshop has checked.
SEO for a car dealership or used vehicle seller is the work that makes its premises and its stock appear on Google when a buyer in its area looks for a car or a van. It relies on an active Google Business Profile, stock where each vehicle has a page Google can read, pages by category and by service, and recent reviews. It is measured by calls, test-drive requests and forecourt visits that don't come from a listing site.
The problem
On “used car” plus a town, listing sites take up almost the whole page. The buyer sees your vehicle among ten others, sorted from cheapest to most expensive. Your welcome, your workshop and your warranty don't count in that ranking.
On many websites, vehicles are displayed in a module supplied by a listings provider. This module is often invisible to Google. Your website has fifty cars on screen and not one page the search engine can offer.
A car is sold, its page is deleted. Visitors who still land on it hit an error. The work that page had built up is lost, and this happens again with every sale.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Choice, quality, price
A wide choice of used vehicles of all makes, selected for you.
See the stockFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Six typical searches for a medium-sized dealership. I give them to illustrate the method. Yours depend on your stock and your area, and the audit pins them down.
What works
I check the category, the sales and workshop opening hours, the forecourt photos and the links to the stock. If you have several sites, each one has its profile. I also check whether showing vehicles on the profile is possible in your case.
Each car has its own address, a title giving the model, year, fuel type and town, photos taken at your premises and a full description. If your stock tool doesn't allow it, I work out a fix with your provider.
By type of vehicle, by fuel, by gearbox, by budget. These pages never disappear and build up their visibility over the months. When a car is sold, its page redirects to the category, and the visitor finds similar vehicles.
Part-exchange, warranty, preparation, delivery, workshop: each has its page, written simply. If you offer finance, the page presents it within the rules that apply to you, with your mandatory notices and no figure pushed to the fore.
A buyer reads the reviews before driving thirty kilometres. I set up a simple request at the time of delivery. You reply to all of them, including the unhappy ones, because future customers read your replies too.
What costs dearly
The module displays your listings, but their content belongs to the listing site and boosts its rankings. Your website is an empty shop window. The vehicles must be published on your own domain name.
The same text on your website and on three listing sites doesn't help your page come up. Add what only you know: the known history, the work done in your workshop, the condition you found.
Three dark images, taken between two cars, don't make anyone want to make the trip. A consistent series, in the same spot and from the same angles, shows the seller is serious before the visit.
“Used vehicle” repeated on every listing tells Google nothing. The model, year, fuel type and town must appear in the title of each vehicle.
The method
Four steps, carried out with the person who manages your online stock. I adapt to the tool you already use.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 900 searches a month for a used car in your town, 2% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €1,200 per client. Click-through rates by position are orders of magnitude, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
Charente is a rural département where a car is essential. People buy a lot of used vehicles there, and will happily drive half an hour for a well-presented one. Listing sites send people to Bordeaux or Poitiers as much as to you. With Newp, which I co-founded here, I work to make sure buyers in the département see you first.
The big dealerships are grouped around the urban area and share the same searches. The difference comes down to the Google Business Profile, the reviews and the accuracy of the online stock. An independent garage has its place there if it clearly names its speciality.
Around Cognac, demand also covers vans and work vehicles. If you sell them, they get a page of their own, separate from passenger cars, with the uses they serve.
In Ruffec, Chalais or La Rochefoucauld, the seller is often also the local mechanic. This double activity reassures the buyer. It must come across on the website: people buy from you and come back to you for servicing.
Beyond Google
Buyers describe their needs to an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral before browsing listings. For example: “I'm looking for a small used automatic car near Angoulême, from a garage that offers a warranty, where should I go?”. The AI explains what to check, then sometimes points to dealers.
It doesn't look at today's stock. It relies on what lasts: your category pages, your warranty page, your Google Business Profile and your reviews. A business that writes “sale of used city cars and vans in Angoulême, vehicles serviced in our workshop, part-exchange available” gives it a stable description. That is why I take as much care over these permanent pages as over the vehicle pages.
Question asked to an AII'm looking for a used automatic city car near Angoulême, with a warranty. Where can I go and see one?
Three places to look for this vehicle:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
I made up these three dealerships. Each shows which job I start with. Your order of priorities will come from the diagnosis of your website.
It publishes everything on a listing site and its website only shows a contact page.
The manufacturer's website handles new cars, and used cars are barely visible.
His customers are tradespeople and he depends on paid listings.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
Google doesn't rank Kévin Papot. Kévin Papot ranks Google. Take the coin, slot it into the machine.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. The facts are slightly exaggerated.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
No, and I don't recommend it. They bring volume. My job is to add a source of contacts that belongs to you, so that one day you can choose your listing packages rather than put up with them.
On “used car” with nothing else, no. On the Google map, on your garage's name and on precise searches with a town, it is possible. I guarantee no ranking, I show you where there is room.
That's normal in your trade. Vehicle pages come and go, category pages stay. I set up what happens when a car is sold, so nothing is lost with each turnover.
In most cases, yes. I start by testing what Google actually reads. If the module is a blocker, I talk it through with your provider. There is often a setting or an export that avoids changing everything.
A few lines specific to each vehicle are enough: its condition, its known history, what your workshop has done. The rest comes from the specifications. I prepare a template your team fills in in two minutes.
It depends on the contract. The Google Business Profile and the reviews are almost always in your hands. For the website, I first read what the brand allows, especially for used cars and the workshop.
By replying calmly, with the facts, and offering direct contact. A buyer understands that disputes happen. What they mostly look at is how you deal with it. I help you write these replies.
Yes. The workshop brings regular customers and future buyers. It has its own searches, local and frequent. I give it its pages and set its hours on the profile.
The Google Business Profile often shows signs within a few weeks. The stock and categories take several months, the time it takes Google to crawl and retain the pages. I won't commit to any figure. The monthly count tells you where things stand.
I have been doing SEO for fifteen years and have co-written four books. I also run my own online shops. Stock that turns over, listings to maintain and sold-out products to handle: I know all that.
See also
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