How to choose automotive keywords
Start with intent. Searches that name a service and a place (“brake repair near me”) come from people ready to buy. Searches that start with “how”, “what” or “how much” come from people still researching. Bid on the first group, and answer the second group with pages and posts. Then use the two numbers in every table: CPC tells you what advertisers will pay for that click (a good sign it makes money), and difficulty tells you how hard it is to rank for organically, from 0 to 100.
Volume or value: the makes question
Every list includes make-specific searches. In auto repair, luxury-make keywords average $4.47 a click against $3.33 for common makes, with far fewer searches. If you need more high-end work, target the makes you specialise in and accept less volume. If you need more volume, cover the common makes and the generic service searches.
Build ad groups by theme
Each list is already sorted into themes. Use one theme per ad group and one landing page per theme, so the search, the ad and the page all say the same thing. Keep near-me, make-specific and price searches in their own groups so you can bid on each differently.
Negative keywords every automotive advertiser needs
Whatever your business, start with these negatives: jobs salary school diy how to free manual game toy. Each list adds negatives for its own industry.
Keywords are half the job
A keyword list tells you what people search for. Winning those searches takes pages that answer them, a strong Google Business Profile, reviews, and tracking that ties each keyword to calls and sales. That is what our automotive SEO, AI visibility and revenue operations teams do, using our Max Acquisition™ methodology.
How we built these lists
We exported every list from Semrush’s US database on October 28, 2026. We removed brand names, other companies’ names, specific towns, DIY product searches and job searches, then sorted the rest into themes. Monthly searches are Semrush’s 12-month average. A keyword is marked Rising when its last three months were at least 30% above the nine months before.
