I've made people angry. They go to this blog, get some advice, and then they have to search around to find me and they can't! A good SEO, I am. A good self marketer, I am not. There is not place on this site to contact me for a quote!
I am terrified by spam bots. They search the internet, looking for pages, finding emails, flooding them with spam. I hate spam. It makes reading emails a truly annoying sometimes. Nevertheless, reducing the annoyance level of potential clients is more important to me than avoiding a little spam, so here it is: jrucker@tkcarsites.com.
We do search engine optimization, search engine marketing, blog marketing, and social media marketing. Lots of marketing. Just tell me what you are wanting to accomplish and I will email you a proposal. No obligations, yadayadayada. Simple.
Talk to you soon!
jr
When car dealers ask how to improve their internet presence, they are normally looking for a simple answer. The simple answer is that there is no simple answer, that each dealership and market is completely different from the rest, and that the cost of marketing on the internet depends on so many factors, it cannot be generalized.
With that said, there are four points that should be considered when putting together an internet marketing campaign. Are there more? Of course! But the four listed below should be the primary methods that a car dealer uses to improve their internet sales.
Two things need to be assumed before continuing. First, the dealership's website needs to be top-notch. Second, they must be willing to spend money. Too often, I see dealers shell out tens of thousands of dollars a month, then balk at a couple of thousand to spend on internet marketing that will actually yield more sales. It could be an ego thing, or it may be just old-school prejudice against the internet, but either way, a successful car dealership that wants to continue to succeed into the next few years needs to loosen the straps on the cash bag (or simply redirect wasteful spending on traditional advertising) and put out a real internet product.
1) Advanced Search Engine Optimization -- People use the search engines to find information about cars and the dealers that sell them. It's that simple. While most automotive website providers offer SEO services, they often do not have a program that really works for their people. It used to work, but it's way to competitive out there to rest on that. Find a good company to help.
2) Search Engine Marketing -- Despite what many say, pay per click marketing is not a waste of money. Even dealers who are at the top of the organic listings still need a strong SEM campaign. Why? Because a good portion of people still click on whatever is at the top, regardless of whether it is sponsored or organic. Being at the top of both is the best way to ensure that clicks are not missed.
3) Email Marketing -- This is butchered by 95% or more of the dealerships and website providers out there. Internet marketing should be real people who want the emails (previous customers, sign-ups, etc.). Spam is not acceptable, especially from car dealers. Also, the emails should be basic. Multimedia emails never make it to the inbox. If it cannot make it past the spam filters, it's useless. Finally, emails should come from a trusted source. The vast majority of the emails used by dealers, whether through their CRM tool or the OEM, or even from their own domain, are completely worthless. If you aren't getting 80% or more of your emails through, you're missing out.
4) Microsites -- It's the buzz word. Why? Because it flat out works. Brielfy, microsites are what the third-party lead providers like Autobytel and Dealix use to get the leads that they sell to dealers. An unbranded dealer microsite will yield the same results, but the leads will be exclusive and much less expensive.
Car dealers, please investigate and learn these things. Ask for more details on Automotive Microsites or call Jim at 714-937-1239 with questions on these products.
For car dealers, Grease is no longer the word. SEO is the word when it comes to buzz in the automotive industry.
As the market becomes exceedingly competitive, dealerships are forced into a battle with each other that goes beyond the standard price wars of the recent past. Positioning on Google and Yahoo! (and a little with MSN) can be the difference between getting deals and not even talking to customers.
People do their research online, especially in the automotive market. Most prefer to keep direct interaction with car dealers to a minimum, so more and more people are searching inventories, reviewing specials, and applying for car credit online. Being at the top of the search engine rankings is the key to success.
Still, search engine optimization remains a mystery to some. They know that they need it, but they don't know exactly how to get it. Many are listening to the "experts" in the field -- the automotive website design firms. This can be disastrous, as most have yet to understand the complexities of the monster that is automotive SEO.
Dealers can be susceptable to sales techniques that bring lesser known, lesser searched terms to the front of thought. As a result, many dealers are being wowed by poor techniques and inadequate service. Most companies are still operating with 2005 SEO tactics in mind.
It is important to have a company that is familiar with the newer terms, such as Universal Search, Social Marketing, and nofollow attributes. Most couldn't tell you a thing about these, yet their services are still high in cost and low in results.
Ask questions. Check references. A dealer like Fort Collins Used Cars is able to place for search terms not only in their area, but in competitor's areas as well. Perhaps a better example is Mechanicsburg Ford. With 9 Ford dealers in a small metro area, it is important to place in town, around the area, and across the state.
While some companies are touting their ability to place for the long tail searches, dealers like Boston Toyota are able to place well for broader searches such as "Toyota Dealers" While that in itself does not create more leads, it is a good sign that the SEO is working properly on the optimization.
As always, the best advice I can give -- check references.
Car Dealer Network
For the past couple of years, TK Carsites has been emerging as one of the top Automotive SEO firms in the United States. Their standard SEO for car dealers has helped hundreds to sell more cars.
In August, 2007, TK is launching their new Advanced Internet Marketing service for clients and non-clients alike. Through a new, enhanced Marketing Department, recent hires of top SEO professionals, and integrated technologies and techniques, TK Carsites has a stand-alone service that will complement their current efforts and bring in auto dealers hungry for the increased rankings.
Search engine optimization for car dealers is possibly the most competitive and unique niche in the optimization field. There are challenges facing automotive websites that combine for an extremely difficult task. Most optimization companies, automotive or not, are not equipped to handle the upcoming changes in the search engine algorithms.
By combining optimization, pay-per-click marketing, and blog marketing, TK Carsites Marketing Specialist Jim Rucker has plans to lift dealers to the top and solidify their positions.
"We have put two solid months of research into this," Rucker said. "Reading Google patents, testing resources, building networks -- it has yielded a strategy that goes so far beyond what anyone else is offering."
Costs will range from a la carte services around $200 per month to complete campaigns over $2,000 per month.
"Car dealers who have been looking into it will hear different numbers," he continued. "Some companies have nearly worthless programs that they sell in the hundreds that will not stand up to the changes coming. Solo SEO firms may quote thousands per month, not knowing the complexities that face automotive marketing now and more importantly in the near future."
The complete campaigns will include onsite SEO, traditional link-building, social media optimization, pay per click marketing, article marketing, online press releases, microsites, automotive networks, social bookmarking, and blog channels.
"We are working with professional automotive blog companies to offer our clients channel marketing, as well as blog shielding."
A new website, separate from their auto website design homepage, is being built and will be up by mid-September. For more information now, contact Jim Rucker at jrucker@tkcarsites.com or call 714-937-1239.
Search Engine Optimization Automotive
If you have an hour and you are wanting to create and optimize a blog for your dealership, this is a must-see. Keep in mind, this is advanced stuff. If you do not already have the basics of blogging down, this video will probably not help.
Car dealers really need blogs. So few have them, and even fewer understand that they help on so many different levels. I will post again soon about this, but for now, if your dealer does not have a blog, please either make one, hire someone who can, or post a message here and I can help.
Everyone has an opinion. Which is better, SEO or SEM? Some say search engine optimization is the way to go, getting great rankings on the natural listings of searches. Others say being at the very top through the paid search sponsored results will get more leads.
The real answer is, “Yes”.
In today’s extremely competitive automotive internet marketing world, it pays to invest in both SEO and SEM. The ever-so-important factor is in finding the right company who understands the car business, understands the car buyers, understands the dealer’s website, and knows how to position both SEO and SEM properly.
They are not competing disciplines and should work in conjunction with each other. SEO takes time, so if a website isn’t optimized already, it is imperative with any launch to have some sort of search engine presence. PPC marketing is the best and fastest way to achieve this.
Once the website is found on the search engines, a lower budget for search marketing may be in order. Some dealers choose to never pull the SEM plug, as a lead through PPC marketing often costs under $10. Compared to 3rd party lead providers, this is dirt cheap, even less than half of what dealers pay for their 3rd party leads.
Just look at the lead providers themselves. How do they do it? They create sponsored ads, micro-sites, and portals to draw the customer in. Then, they start a PPC campaign. If they are paying $6-$10 per lead, it makes sense for them to charge the dealer over $20. Why? Because so many dealers will pay it.
So where does that leave SEO? If SEM will get cheap leads, what can SEO do? Optimizing a website to place at the top of the search engine results pages under the natural listings will get more leads for cheaper.
On average, 60% of internet shoppers and researchers will click on the natural listings if they are not looking for a specific website. While it takes longer to get ranked on the organic search, it can be more rewarding. Also, the investment is normally lower in the long run.
Many firms operate under the assumption that SEO and SEM are competing markets. It’s the few who do both (and do them well) that truly understand what making the most out of search engines really means.
Two new words are emerging in the English language and spreading across the world like the Macarena. Okay, that was a slight exaggeration, but I want to introduce these two search engine optimization terms to you nonetheless.
Glinks refers to Google’s love of links. Earlier this year, I tested an established website that had under 25 words of content and no meta tags on the front page. Its title tag was a single word, the name of the company, and there was no way for a spider or bot to determine what the page was about.
In a month and a half of concentrated, advanced link building, I took the site to the front page of several medium-competition terms (1,000-50,000 monthly searches) and achieved #1 ranking for several of those terms. MSN gave the website even stronger results.
After two months, the results stuck. On Yahoo!, the website was nowhere to be found.
The website had three major assets working in its favor before I started building links. The domain had been live and registered to the same company since 1998. The registration was held until 2014. Finally, while it only had 3 inbound links, 1 of those links was a PR7 .edu homepage link.
Simultaneously, I ran a similar test with another website. It, too, was aged, had only a couple of links that were strong, and didn’t have content or tags until I touched it. I proceeded to load it with content, throw in appropriate tags, and worked on the internal linking. No inbound links were created.
After 2 months, it was at the top of its keywords on Yahoo!. It was nowhere to be found on Google or MSN.
Glinks and Yontent. Most good SEOs are familiar with this. For those who weren’t, here you go.
This article brought to you by the automotive marketing team for Hollywood Honda, Los Angeles Kia, and Glendale Nissan. In California, buying an import car, truck, or SUV is the best way to go.
Perhaps more importantly, this article brought to you by those who don't like seeing poor SEO tactics (other than those who are competitors.
Rather than repost the article here, I figured I would just link to this other automotive SEO blog that I do to offer a strange, obscure look into the underlying cause for search engine optimization in the car business being so hard.
The gist is that they don't understand the benefits and requirements to get it to work. Because search engine optimization on a proper level is often more expensive than the website itself, it is viewed on the same scale and is therefore dismissed because it is too expensive. What dealers don't understand is that sometimes, marketing a product costs more than producing a product.
Despite it's many uses as a lead generator and inventory aggregator, a dealer website is actually a product that they sell. True, they sell it for free in hopes of its presence being useful in selling their primary product -- cars -- but it is a product nonetheless.
You have to market products to be able to sell them. To "sell" the website to the customers as a free resource that they can use to solve many of their automotive needs and answer some of their automotive questions, a dealer must use the marketing that SEO and SEM provide.
Few do.
Read the complete article by clicking on SEO for Car Dealers.
Auto Dealer Search Engine Optimization
Car dealer websites often miss one of the most obvious parts of their website that can help them in Google rankings. The funny part is, it isn't even part of their website.
Google sitemaps are one of the easiest ways to get pages within a website indexed. By indexed, I mean that Google goes through the page and puts it in its listings based upon where it thinks the page belongs. Without indexing, a page will never be found on the Google search engine ranking pages.
Keep one important thing in mind -- if your automotive SEO is really good, then submitting a sitemap to Google will not be necessary. The on-page sitemap should get indexed and should include everything that the SEO wants indexed. Links can also get a page indexed, especially ones from an authority site. Still, the majority of automotive SEOs and car dealer website design firms are not really good, so having them make and submit a proper sitemap is one way to ensure that it works.
Click Here to read the article with instructions on creating a Google sitemap.
Every search engine algorithm works differently. They each give different weight to different criteria such as content, meta tags, internal linking, inbound links, age of domain, length of domain registration, and literally dozens of other factors. Within each criteria, there are different standards that the search engines consider when giving weight.
In the end, it can be a big mess trying to make the "perfectly optimized website." Automotive websites have the additional challenges of static content, flash, different vendors providing lead generating tools, and problems inherent to the search engines and their treatment to car dealer websites.
What is an automotive SEO to do? My tactics over the last few months have proven to be very successful:
Google - My Google optimization is based around link building. I find quality, relevant links and build my campaign around those.
Yahoo - My content is based around Yahoo! likes and dislikes. Text, headers, meta tags, and the like are guided by my Yahoo! results. The better the content, the better Yahoo! seems to like the website.
MSN - Nothing. I optmize for MSN because I do what I do with the other two major search engines. I link build for Google, content build with Yahoo!, and MSN seems to fall into place with them.
Ask - Nothing. Somehow, nothing I do gets me anywhere near the results that I get with the other search engines. As much as I would likemy clients to place in Ask, it just isn't worth the changes for a company that controls 6% of the searches (and probably less of the automotive searches).
In the end, a strategy like this works best for car dealers. The problem is that most car dealers do not do what it takes to folow these guidelines, or more likely, their website providers haven't a clue.
My Groups
-
Algorithmic SEO Updated: May 26, 2008
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
Recent Comments
-
Terry (used car finder) Bolton said:
[this is good]Thanks for an interesting article. It's on time that the car industry as well as the market understands what a... read more
on Internet Marketing for Car Dealers is a Four-Point Attack -
AC Jones said:
[ciò è buono]Hi there. Read the article. You suggest the dealer fee for a "real campaign" in a metro area would run... read more
on A Cute (but strange) Look at Car Dealer SEO -
Web Guy said:
Ya you are right Google site maps are one of the easiest ways to get pages within a website indexed.... read more
on Getting Your Dealer Pages Indexed by Google
on TK Carsites Launches Complete SEO, SEM, Blog Services