How to Get More Attention for Your Online Auto Listing

When you list a vehicle for sale online, you usually have two main goals. You want to sell the vehicle for the highest price possible, and you want to sell the vehicle as quickly as possible.

But to do that, you need to get more people to actually see the listing. If it’s buried on page 15 of search results, or if it’s occluded by much more competitive listings, you’re not going to get the results you’re seeking.

So how can you get more attention for your online auto listing?

List on Multiple Different Platforms

If you’re an individual selling a personal vehicle, you’ll have a multitude of different listing options.
You can try to advertise the vehicle with your own budget. Also, you can partner with an online listing platform like We Buy Any Car. Also, you can partner with an online listing platform. Or you can work with a dealer to simply trade the vehicle in.
If you want to maximize your chances of achieving your goals, it’s important to list your vehicle on multiple platforms simultaneously. This way, you’ll appeal to different target audiences, reach a larger number of people, and possibly appear multiple times to the same searchers, capitalizing on the mere exposure effect.

If you’re a dealership or if you’re selling multiple cars, this can work in your favor as well. You may have a main website or platform where you do most of your selling. But it can’t hurt to also list your vehicles on a separate platform – especially if that platform tends to get more traffic than yours does.

Direct Traffic to Your Listings

Next for your online auto listing work on directing traffic to it. You might have to pay a bit of money (and/or invest a bit of time) to make this happen. But it’s often worth it.

These are just a few of the options you can utilize:

Build links. First, you can practice link building. Link building is a strategy that revolves around constructing links to a given webpage on other, external sources. The link serves as a primary highway, sending referral traffic to your desired destination – as long as it’s placed in a relevant way for your audience.

Over time, links can also work to increase the domain authority and page authority of the destination, increasing the likelihood of that page appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs). This is a long-term strategy that takes a while to show its true potential, so it may be best reserved for dealerships and other multi-vehicle sellers.

Pay for ads. You could also consider paying for ads directly. Google, Facebook, Bing, and dozens of other online platforms make it easy to sign up for an account and start placing pay-per-click (PPC) ads. The idea here is that you’ll only pay for the people who actually click on your ad, so you’re practically guaranteed traffic to your target page.
Share on social media. Of course, if you don’t want to spend any money, you could also simply share your page on social media. If you have a decent following, you could immediately get more attention for your listing. If you ask your friends to share your listing with their friends, you can multiply your reach even further.

Polish the Listing

Spending time making the listing itself more attractive is also a good idea. If your information is prominent and attractive, it will get more attention – even if it’s mixed in with other listings. Plus, people will be more likely to share it with others they know.

These are some of the best things you can do:

Take amazing photos. First, try to take the best photos you can; depending on the vehicle you’re selling, it may even be worth hiring a professional photographer. Make your listing’s primary image something original, that shows off the vehicle’s luster and prime condition. In the body of the listing, include several photos from different angles as well.
Optimize your copy. Next, optimize the copy of your advertising. You should provide ample description of the vehicle and include several keywords and phrases that your target buyers might search for when looking for a vehicle, optimizing for search engines.
Be as detailed as possible. It pays to include details in your ad, even if those details may not seem important. Being thorough shows that you care about transparency and want your buyers to be informed – it’s a great way to build initial trust.

Using these strategies won’t guarantee that your vehicle will sell the next day, or that you’ll get the highest possible purchase price. However, they should increase the number of people who see your auto listing – and hopefully, help you build some momentum in the process.