Five years ago, every business needed a website. These days, every business needs a blog, and automotive dealerships are no different. Blogging is booming in the dealership community as the strong benefits and low barrier to entry are becoming more and more apparent.

One of the most important parts of having an online presence is making sure your website shows up prominently in relevant search results. When someone types in "car dealership" and the name of your city into a search engine, you want your dealership to show up front and center. The more contextual and relevant content you have, the more likely that is to happen as the search engine "crawlers" visit your site more and more frequently. With free back-end analytics software, you can see exactly what search terms readers are using to find your site and optimize accordingly.

According to a recent article in Dealer’s Edge, readers and customers are finding blogs through highly specific search terms, which can include particular makes and models, as well as more local queries. Checkered Blog, the offshoot blog of Checkered Flag, was found recently using the search query "pictures of a midnight blue Audi AB with automatic transmission." With specific, detailed, and targeted search terms like this one, even smaller dealerships are finding themselves more able to compete for search engine traffic.

The beauty of these kinds of visitors is that they would likely never end up at your main site through their search queries. Static websites tend to only carry the information absolutely necessary to the average visitor, including the hours that you’re open, or the models you carry. By blogging for your car dealership, you can open your traffic up to visitors who may not be in active buying mode, but will be in the future.

In order to properly take advantage of this traffic, it helps to have solid knowledge of search engine optimization, or SEO, strategies -- the proven methods of helping your blog get more prominent placement in search results. "Search engine optimization...is the practice of using relevant content to inform your audience and to establish credibility with search engines," explains Ryan Gerardi, founder of the internet marketing and advertising firm web2ologies and an industry specialist.

You can do optimize your website by hiring an SEO expert, but much of the information is available online for free. With a few hours of targeted research, you could be optimizing your blog and your website by lunch.

An active blog is part of what marketing professionals call a "long-tail" strategy, meaning the sales cycle is a lengthy one. The content you publish on your blog today may not turn into a sale for months or even years, but the cumulative effect of dozens or hundreds of blog entries can be astronomical. In tandem with a full social media strategy, blogging can have a dramatic impact on your sales and repeat customers, and it costs virtually nothing. Can you afford not to blog?