Going Back to the Basics of Dealership SEO with Lindsey Shaker 

Lindsey Shaker is the fourth generation at Shaker Automotive Group. She is a firm believer in the importance of transparency in the customer experience. Her goal is to smash the car dealer stigma, one person at a time by giving honesty and transparency in all she does. She is also an avid mental health advocate.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• The experiences that shaped Lindsey’s automotive experience 
• Lindsey’s role in marketing for Shaker Automotive Group
• How Lindsey uses ChatGPT at the dealership to improve workflows 
• Why SEO is so critical to dealership success
• Lindsey’s predictions for the future of the automotive industry.

In this episode…

SEO is key to building trust with your customers before they even walk in the door. 

You want to provide clear information and answers to the questions they are looking for. When creating your web pages and web content, it is important to follow the structure and rules of SEO provided by Google to make sure you are the answer that shows up when a shopper is looking for information. 

In this conversation, Ilana Shabtay interviews Lindsey Shaker, a fourth-generation member of the Shaker Automotive Group and an expert in SEO. They discuss Lindsey’s early experiences in the automotive industry, the importance of honesty and transparency in car dealerships, and the role of SEO in driving quality traffic to dealership websites.

Resources Mentioned: 

• Ilana Shabtay on LinkedIn 
• Fullpath 
• Lindsey Shaker on LinkedIn 
• Shaker Automotive Group
• ChatGPT

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Fullpath (formerly AutoLeadStar).

 Fullpath is the automotive industry’s leading customer data and experience platform (CDXP).

Fullpath enables dealers to turn their first-party data into lifelong customers by unifying siloed data sources and leveraging that data to create exceptional, hyper-personalized customer experiences.

To learn more, visit www.fullpath.com

Episode Transcript:

Ilana Shabtay 

Ilana Shabtay here, host of Inside Auto Podcast where we interview top dealers, GMs, marketers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in and out of the automotive industry. And before we introduce today’s guest, this episode is sponsored by Fullpath.com

Ilana Shabtay

Fullpath is the automotive industry’s leading customer data and experience platform, CDXP. Fullpath enables dealers to turn their first party data into lifelong customers by unifying siloed data sources and leveraging that data to create exceptional hyper -personalized customer experiences. To learn more, visit fullpath .com. Today we’re welcoming a special guest, Lindsay Shaker. Lindsay, how are you doing? Lindsay Shaker, shaking.

Lindsey Shaker

Hi. I think you can do a little shimmy. Do a little shimmy. I am honored to be here, my friend. Very excited to be here.

Ilana Shabtay 

Shake it. Love it. I’m so excited for you to be here. So, Lindsay and I go way back. I’m so excited to have her on the podcast. She represents the fourth generation at Shaker Automotive Group in Connecticut, sets out to smash the car dealer stigma with honesty and transparency. I love that. We’re going to get into that. And she’s also an expert in SEO and an avid mental health advocate.

She belly dances, she’s super interesting, so let’s just get right to it. Usually I open the podcast by asking how did you get into automotive, but since you were born into automotive, I’d love to know, I’m gonna spin the first question and talk about what are some of your early experiences in automotive that you feel like shaped you or really brought you into the industry?

Lindsey Shaker

So it’s funny because I actually started not in all in fact. I wanted to not be an automotive that was like I did not anticipate this but you know, the life has a lot of really fun lessons and one of them was teaching me about Plans and how they need to be malleable. So when my dad, you know said yes, it’s an important one

Ilana Shabtay

Great life lesson. Yes.

Lindsey Shaker

So my dad suggested, while I was interviewing, I did medical marketing and medical science liaison roles at a pharmaceutical company. And I was interviewing, but it’s a really tough job to interview for. So while I was interviewing, my dad suggested, hey, you can always work at the dealership. And I’ve always really not wanted to be a.

You know a pop has a dealer kid, you know, I didn’t want to be like that stigma of like she’s just going in and out. So, I told them that if I come in I’m coming in for good and I did so I I think some of the early Experiences, you know, I’ve done a lot of the roles in in the business One was service writing and I think that’s given me a lot of respect for that role. It’s a very

Ilana Shabtay 

Thank you.

Lindsey Shaker

difficult role and I was at our quick lane. We have a quick lane in Nogatuck, Connecticut. So I, and it’s slower, you know, it’s not as like high paced as like one of the dealerships, but it really kind of gleaned to me the demand of the job, interacting with customers and empathy. Empathy is a big one.

but knowing where the boundaries are. So that was one. And then I had a really great sales manager. You know, when you start, when you’re the, you know, like the owner’s kid, quote unquote, nobody really wants you there. And so I think that I, knowing that, you know, I was fine with that. I get that. So it made me work hard. It made me work really, really hard. So I was in sales for a couple of years. I had a great sales manager who was eager to teach.

And so I saw the dichotomy of that relationship and he was very in tune with what was going on in the floor. So that really kind of set that standard for me in sales. But it stressed me out. It stressed me out a lot. So I started getting ulcers and then marketing started. I swear to God.

Lindsey Shaker

And I started, I was cleaning the license plate. It is stressful. And so I think that’s also coming to now, every experience in sales and in service writing and car washing and all of that has really fed into marketing in a way that is sort of amenable to both sides of…

Ilana Shabtay 

I’m in a stressful position.

Lindsey Shaker

the desk, if you will. So like, from a customer experience side, you know, my customers liked me. I wasn’t a great negotiator, but they liked me. So, so, so I understood that aspect. And then I understood, you know, from the dealership, you know, pain points, what I like to do now is go on the floor and listen to what’s going on. But I think, yeah, I love it. It’s like one of my favorite things to do that way.

Ilana Shabtay

interesting. That’s actually really smart, like stay close to the field.

Lindsey Shaker

They have to stay close. I have to listen like if there’s like pain points that I can hear or even comparisons of vehicles that are sort of unexpected or then we can communicate with our customers in a way that both internally and externally like outbound communications that is that you know sort of covers those pain points. So.

Ilana Shabtay 

Right.

Lindsey Shaker

That’s kind of how it started and all of it cultivated up to now, but it’s been 11 years, which is kind of crazy.

Ilana Shabtay

Wow, so now what are your main responsibilities? After you’re cured of all the ulcers.

Lindsey Shaker

I am cured of all the ulcers. In fact, yes, so is sales. Shout out to all the sales people out there. Huge shout out to all the sales people out there, or as we like to call them, product consultants. So I do the marketing for Shaker Auto Group, which is, there are six stores, four in Connecticut, two in Massachusetts. And I have a really awesome partner in crime who’s at the Jeep location right now who does our social media. Her name is Hannah. And she…

Ilana Shabtay 

Great.

It was so… Huge shout out.

Lindsey Shaker

does a lot of the content creating. So we sort of, so she handles that, a lot of customer or outreach and community outreach and sort of working with a lot of the nonprofits that we work with. And then so it is cool and organic content. We, yes, like the community, it’s so important.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, this is great. Organic content showing your connection to the community.

Lindsey Shaker

so, and I’m not great at that. So I’m pretty self -aware. I’m not great at planning. I’m not great at detail, like planning details, or events. And she is very good at it.

Ilana Shabtay 

Well, it’s the best when you have someone to compliment you on your team. So that’s incredible. But you are great at SEO, right? You are the SEO, you are the automotive SEO queen. So we could talk. So I know that you were writing a lot on LinkedIn about all the stuff that you do for Shaker on SEO. I know that you have a lot of tips. I’m interested in hearing a little bit about that. I’d also love to know if you’re leveraging chat GPT at all these days for your SEO.

Lindsey Shaker

It is, it is a great tool to have. A lot of people are like afraid of it. I am not afraid of it. So SEO, I was doing more, but now my role shifted a little bit, but I still dabble. So the SEO and the chat GPT function, I think it just comes down to knowing. So my background, we have a similar background. You were also psychology. I was psychology and creative writing. So one thing that that sort of complimented was writing, structure, structurally. And the other thing that I sort of set out to find was are questions being answered? And I quickly found that they’re not. So I’m gonna give an example about a Ford F -150. There’s…

probably a billion ways to build a Ford F -150. And it’s been like that since forever. And the crazy thing is, when I was in sales, I would be like, okay, you know, a customer’s coming in on a Limited, right? Because they think they need it to get leather. But that is not necessarily true. And this was back in the day, so the packages are different. So when I started writing, I was writing in a way that…

I was like, okay, this doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist. The manufacturer hasn’t put this out in a way that explains all of the packages and trim levels. So it takes a lot of time and it’s laborious. However, with chat GPT, I think the thing that, and it’s still limited. That’s the other thing. People are afraid of it, but it’s still limited. So when I’m, you know, and I tried to like do a couple queries about,

Ilana Shabtay

Right, it is still limited. 100%.

Lindsey Shaker

You know, because if you ask it, what are the differences? It relies a lot on the limited information that’s available. It doesn’t just know it, you know? So, and you have to know how to prompt it. So, so I think that like, you know, especially in automotive, I think there’s a great place for it as far as where the labor intersects with knowing how to write and structure a piece in a way.

Ilana Shabtay 

Correct, and you have to really know how to prompt it. And if you’re not prompting it, correct.

Lindsey Shaker

that not just resonates for Google, but in a way that people consume it so they get their answers. People are afraid of putting the answer out there. No, don’t be afraid of putting the answer out there. So I’ve done, I’ve made it easier on myself by using ChatGPT. The other place that I really enjoy with ChatGPT is consolidating data.

that I find that usually I would have to figure out how to do to manipulate it to put it on a page Whether it’s in a let’s say it’s a graph, you know, just like here’s all this information. Can you make this? In a way that is aesthetically appealing So like that has been really helpful. I don’t think that people are utilizing that enough. I even use it internally for reports because

Lindsey Shaker

I did too. And I, so, and.

Ilana Shabtay 

Because sometimes it’s just like the structure or the outline. Like if you can prompt it, it’s not the best writer in the world, right? So anyway, when it’s spitting out text, we have to edit it. So I use it more for like the structure, guidance, ideas, and then I’m gonna do the writing. So that’s how we should be using ChatGPT And again, it’s all about the prompt.

Lindsey Shaker

It’s all about the prompt. And I think that like when you ask it to do something SEO related, what it’s going to give you, and I’ve noticed this consistently, it’s going to give you a very clean structure. You know, it’s going to give you title, you know, H1, if you will, H2, if you will, H3, if you will. And then it’s up to you to understand how that sort of translates into a piece that resonates with Google and the reader.

Ilana Shabtay

Yeah, yeah, and it hits the keywords that you’re trying to fill. Yeah.

Lindsey Shaker

And it’s the keywords that you’re trying to do. But what it comes down to is like, especially in automotive and I’m, I could, I could soap box all day long. A lot of people say that they do SEO. A lot of companies do, a lot of big companies do.

It’s not, it’s not that. It’s not that for what they’re charging, but they’re still charging and they get away with it. And they get away with it. So it’s too laborious, even with chat GPT to have.

Ilana Shabtay 

Right.

course. And also it’s ever changing, right? You’re always going to have to look at the keyword search volume and match them against the content and that’s going to change. So it’s not something that you could just set up and set and forget. To a certain extent, you can cover your bases and you know, the setup might be more intense than the maintenance, but there is maintenance. And so if…

Lindsey Shaker

there is the 100 % maintenance. And people forget, you know, like if you write like an F -150 page, like, which I did intentionally, it wasn’t, you know, the 2020 F -150 page, it was the F -150 page. And then very quickly I started to realize like six months in, I was like, I forgot I’m gonna have to do this. And you do, like you have to update it. There’s constant changes of packages and trim levels and I put cost.

Lindsey Shaker

in the original one, but it ranked. It ranked nationally. It ranked above cars .com. And, you know, I think that people shy away from it because they don’t think they can, but you can, you can, you can.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, you can, you can. And I think once you have more and more content, you backlink the content. That also increases your SEO, which is great. And I think dealers need to start really focusing on the value of SEO, right? And organic content, because that’s what’s driving loyalty these days. If someone is looking for answers and your dealership is giving them the answers, they’re going to find trust in your dealership. That’s, I mean, we got to go back to the basics on SEO. So,

Lindsey Shaker

Back to the Based on SEO, it’s tried and true. So, and I relate it to Google. Google’s original paper, their EOS from way back when, it’s actually a great read. I have a hard copy of it somewhere, but the whole thing talks about relevancy. It’s one of the, like Google does a lot of weird things, a lot. But what they, have established really, really well is that their search engine is set to provide the most relevant and accurate information to the end user. And in this paper, it’s like a lot of science and in that order. So if you are writing in a way that is truly authentic in your endeavors, you’re going to, you know, like, you won’t have the whole issues of when there’s a change to the Google algorithm. Yeah, sometimes it’s annoying, but it’s only annoying if you’re trying to game it, if you’re trying to like get around a step. And that’s where it really kind of comes down to. It’s laborious. It’s a laborious task, but it’s fun. It’s just kind of fun.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah.

Yeah, well, you seem to, yeah, it is fun. It is fun because also once you actually can figure it out and you’re providing the answers and you’re the dealer show that’s showing up, you’re the business that’s providing the answers. I mean, what can be better than that? You’re building trust with your customers before they even walk into your door. So huge priority. OK, before we sign off, I want to hear from you a little bit on any predictions you have in the automotive market, whether it’s specific to marketing or beyond that. I like to just talk to our experts and understand a little bit what they’re seeing and where the industry is going.

Lindsey Shaker

Sure. So I think we’re at this very interesting little crossroads of, all right, so we had the COVID mania of like the media. The first time that the media has been kind to the car business was them talking about a shortage in vehicles, which then led to this hysterical, like we all need new cars. So we had that. Then we had this inventory thing. And then now we have inventory.

but we have a lot of manufacturers are operating scared. And I get it. Nobody wants 2008. You know, like nobody wants that. But so I think what will be interesting will be the banks maybe getting a little bit more creative, like the financial institutions getting a little bit more creative, not where rate comes in, but in a way that enables our partnerships to get people in cars that they actually want. So I think that will be really interesting. There will be some sort of shift. I don’t know if it’s going to be, you know, least programs or, but, but that’s also touchy because of the residual value factors that, so like, it’ll be really interesting to see who gets creative and things outside of the box.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, and I think that’s really the key for the rest of the year, actually. Yeah.

Lindsey Shaker

I think so too. It’ll be interesting. I don’t know what it is, but it’s going to be something creative. Someone’s going to step in and they’re going to be like, all right, we have to, I’m going to do something. We might as well just do it. And it’ll either fail, but they’ll do it and we’ll be grateful for it. So that will be pretty interesting to see. I’m excited.

Ilana Shabtay

Yeah, I love that perspective. I like that perspective. All right, we’ll have to watch for the rest of the year. I mean, automotive has been up and down since COVID. So, I mean, we’d be blessed for a boring year. We’ll see. Let’s see.

Lindsey Shaker

Right, right, right. Like give me stasis or give me something wild. I’m ready.

Ilana Shabtay 

Exactly, exactly. Well, Lindsay, thank you so much for joining. You’re such a wealth of knowledge and I am so happy I got just one on one time with you. This has been excellent.

Lindsey Shaker

my God, thank you so much. I’m so excited to finally see your face and talk to you. It’s great, it’s awesome.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yes, this has been great. So if our listeners, to our listeners, if you liked this, tune in and subscribe, InsideAutoPodcast .com. You can find us on all your favorite podcast channels. Thanks again. and you can hit up Lindsay if you want to get some belly dancing lessons because she’s a professional belly dancer at this point. So forgot to mention that. Yes, belly dancing, automotive and swirls. Thank you, everyone.

Lindsey Shaker

Yes. Thank you.