As someone who’s been doing different aspects of digital marketing for over 10 years – I’ve seen outdated things that shouldn’t work, work (and vice-versa). This makes me hate speaking in absolutes and saying things like “video backgrounds are hurting SEO on your car dealership website”.
But, after working with many different new car dealerships – I have yet to see any proof that a video background has improved engagement and ultimately leads.
However, I have seen proof that video backgrounds are bad for SEO.
So, in this post, I’m going to share my thoughts on why having a video background hurts your website’s SEO as a car dealership.
Recommended Reading: Car Dealership SEO: Best Practices For Results
Table of Contents
Let’s start with the problem
Some of the new car dealerships I do automotive SEO for love to put videos that autoplay as the background on their homepage “hero” section.
Look, I get it. They look cool and allow you to further differentiate your website from your competition. And, if you were shooting a video anyway for more traditional advertising like TV – it’s a smart idea to re-purpose it for your website.
But here’s the problem…
If you don’t have someone internally or a vendor responsible for the speed of your website – your website was likely very slow before you put the video background on the website. And, now that you’ve put the video background on your website – your website is almost guaranteed to be even slower (if you’re using any of the major website providers).
The slower your website, the worse it is for SEO.
Not only are slower websites bad for user experience but slow websites also tend to have technical problems that make search engine optimization harder.
Recommended Reading: Verify Your Website Is Good For SEO
The solution
As a new car dealership, you have 2 options:
- Don’t use video backgrounds
- Use video backgrounds and properly optimize the website
Those are your options. However, only one of those options is practical for car dealers – and that’s #1.
Option #2 isn’t practical for new car dealers because you don’t actually own and control your website. You lease the website from a website provider (which is often mandated by the manufacturer).
Since you lease the website, the website provider has control and is the only person who can properly optimize the website.
For example, there have been plenty of times I’ve recommended solutions and ways to further optimize the websites to a few website providers. But, due to how they make programmatic changes/updates to all of their clients, optimizing their system or “website templates” is a big undertaking and risk. Especially since, to them, I’m just some random dude who may or may not know what he’s talking about.
I get it and understand the position they’re in.
So, instead of trying to properly optimize the website – the next best solution is to avoid adding things that make the website worse; which means don’t use video backgrounds.
Recommended Reading: On-Page SEO Tips For Car Dealerships
