← Integrations · Vehicle / inventory stock
Your stock, on your own site. Not AutoTrader's.
We connect your stock system to your website as a fully indexable vehicle catalogue: photos, key specs, finance and part-exchange enquiries. Buyers find your cars on Google directly, instead of only through a portal you pay for visibility.
The maths
What AutoTrader and the others are actually charging you.
AutoTrader is the dominant marketplace for UK used cars, and its pricing reflects that dominance. The typical small-to-mid independent dealer is paying somewhere between £400 and £1,500/month for visibility on AutoTrader, plus per-vehicle "premium listing" upsells, plus an "AutoTrader Premier" or "Branded Dealer Pages" fee for anyone wanting to look like they own their listings. Add in Motors.co.uk, Car Gurus, eBay Motors and similar and the marketplace bill alone can hit £2,000+/month.
For a dealer with ~30 cars on their forecourt:
| Platform | Monthly cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| AutoTrader Lite | £400-600 | Listings, basic dealer page |
| AutoTrader Premier | £900-1,500 | Featured listings, branded dealer page, performance dashboard |
| Motors.co.uk | £250-500 | Listings only, smaller audience |
| Car Gurus | £200-400 | Listings, "Great Deal" badging |
We do not sell a fixed off-the-shelf package against that. VerySEOly is a bespoke web, marketing and automation partnership: a build plus website management, quoted to your dealership, run for you, no lock-in, cancel any time, with direct support, not a call centre. The stock system itself is paid to its supplier, at its own price, and we put both next to what the portals take before you commit. The best way to see the numbers for your forecourt is to run the free audit, then book the £300 + VAT Marketing & Automation Deep-Dive, which credits back against any build.
The honest counter-argument: AutoTrader brings volume, buyers searching for "BMW 320d 2018" land on AutoTrader's results page first, not yours. That is real. But: buyers who already know your dealership (from a billboard, a recommendation, a previous purchase, your van) often arrive via AutoTrader simply because they could not find your own website easily. Owning the direct channel is what shifts that.
A sensible route is a hybrid: keep AutoTrader for new-buyer discovery while your own site's search traffic builds, step down a package once your own pages are ranking, and decide from there whether you need the portal at all.
Anatomy of one enquiry
What happens when a buyer wants the silver Audi A4.
- Buyer searches "Audi A4 [your city]" on Google, or types your URL after seeing your dealership sign. Your VerySEOly site loads in under a second.
- They scan your stock page, filterable by make, price, year, mileage, fuel and body, and sortable by newest in, cheapest or lowest mileage.
- Tap the silver A4. Vehicle detail page, a swipeable photo gallery, the full spec sheet, a service history note, a finance example if you offer finance, and a part-exchange form pre-filled with the model they are looking at.
- They send a part-exchange enquiry, their reg, mileage and condition photos. It lands with you by email, and in your CRM if you use one.
- You reply within the hour via email or a call from the contact details on the form. The buyer, the car they want and their part-exchange are all in one place.
- When you sell the A4, you mark it sold in your stock system, and it comes off your site at the next update, so nothing stays listed after it has gone.
The checklist
What to look for in a stock system.
Whether you already have one or you are choosing, these are the points we check a stock system against.
- Stock entry and import, add vehicles one by one or in bulk, and import your existing portal feed so you do not re-key the forecourt.
- Photo galleries, plenty of photos per vehicle, resized and compressed so they load fast on a phone.
- The full spec, registration, make, model, variant, year, mileage, fuel, transmission, body, colour, engine size, owners, MOT, service history and ULEZ status, shown or hidden as you choose.
- Finance examples, a representative example on each car, with the compliance wording finance needs.
- A feed or an API, the part that matters most for search, because it lets your site build a real page for every vehicle.
- Portal feeds, one place to update stock that also feeds AutoTrader and the others, if you keep them.
- Sold handling, sold cars come off the site cleanly, without leaving broken links behind.
- Multi-site, one stock list for several sites or branches, each showing all stock or a slice.
How it joins your site
Every car as a real page, where the system allows it.
Real vehicle pages from a feed. Where the stock system offers an API or a stock feed, your site builds a page for every vehicle, at an address like /stock/yp19xyz, with JSON-LD Vehicle data that tells search engines exactly what each page is. The pages refresh as your stock changes, and the finance and part-exchange forms on them land with you. This is the pattern that wins the long-tail searches.
An embedded stock search. Some stock systems provide a search widget you can embed. It is quicker to set up, though the cars inside a widget are usually harder for Google to read.
A straight link. Your View stock buttons open the system's own stock pages. The simplest route; the trade-off is that the buyer leaves your site, and so does the search value.
New to these terms? See the glossary.
How it goes
From "I want this" to "stock live on my site".
- Email us with your dealership name and, if you have one, your current portal listing. Or run a free audit at /audit.
- If you have a stock system, we check whether it offers a feed or an API. If you need one, we compare a short list against the checklist above, and you choose.
- Your stock goes into the system, imported from your existing feed where possible, so you do not re-key the forecourt.
- We connect it to your site: a stock list at /stock, a page for every vehicle, and finance and part-exchange forms that land with you.
- Go live, then test a part-exchange enquiry and a finance enquiry end to end.
How long it takes depends on the system and the feed it offers. Connecting it is scoped into the quote for your build.
Common questions
What dealers ask before putting their stock on their own site.
Will Google actually rank my cars vs AutoTrader's listings?
For the specific make/model/area combination ("BMW 320d 2018 Leeds"), AutoTrader will outrank you in the short term, they have massive domain authority. But for the long-tail of variants ("BMW 320d xDrive M Sport 2018 Leeds", "silver Audi A4 Avant 2019 LS6 area"), well-structured stock pages outrank AutoTrader within 3-6 months. The SEO play is the long tail, not "BMW for sale".
Can I keep AutoTrader running alongside?
Yes, and a lot of dealers do while their own site's search traffic builds. Choose a stock system that feeds both your site and the portals from one place, so you never enter the same car twice.
What about finance, do I need a separate provider?
Yes. Your site can show finance examples and capture enquiries, but the finance itself comes from a lender or broker, your existing one or a new one. The enquiry lands with you, and you pass it on the same way you do today.
How do part-exchange valuations work?
The customer's form is the front-end of your existing process, they submit reg + mileage + condition photos; you reply with a valuation the way you do today. The form does not try to value the car automatically (cars need a person to look at them). It just structures the enquiry so you have everything you need to give a fast quote.
What about MOT history, service history, V5C, can I display those?
Yes. MOT history can be pulled from the DVSA's MOT history service by registration, service history can be added as documents, and the V5C can be a line on the spec sheet. The more you show, the easier it is for a buyer to move from browsing to enquiring.
Multi-site dealers, does it support that?
Choose a stock system that does: one stock list can feed several sites (a sales site and an auction-only site, say) or split stock by branch, with each site showing all of it or a slice.
Do you take a cut of my sales?
No. We charge for building and looking after your website, quoted to your business, and there is no per-vehicle listing fee from us. What the stock system costs is between you and its supplier, which is why pricing is on the checklist.
Get this on your site
Your site, your system, your customer.
It starts with a free audit. Tell us which stock system you use now, or that you need one, and we will scope connecting it into the quote for your build and website management.