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.
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.
After sitting in on several Content Gathering Sessions where auto dealers discuss what they want on their website as it is being created, I have come to a few conclusions.
Flashy
So far, only a handful of dealers care about what their website says. Bottom line, as most car dealers are "bottom liners", is that they really want the best looking websites in their market, while content is pretty much irrelevant.
There have been a handful of dealers who take complete control of their content, word for word, but generally, I would be surprised if they actually read any of the content. If the homepage is eye-catching, that's all that really matters. From a designer and an automotive search engine optimization point of view, this is ideal.
A great looking site the is considered cutting edge in the area of flash is Hollywood Honda Dealers. Having their inventory pop up immediately is a nice feature that many dealers are utilizing.
2005
Most dealers are trying to put content on their site that would have optimized it in 2004 or 2005. This is not their fault. Most automotive web design firms use antiquated methods to optimize their websites. SEO is such a dynamic artform that it takes too much research for car dealers and their designers to keep up to date.
Leads
Car dealers don't care what it takes, as long as they are getting leads. From an SEO and design point of view, this is also an ideal stance. Just as many dealership lots are poorly designed, so too would their websites be if they ha complete control of their websites. This isn't a knock against dealers -- they are in the business of selling cars, not architecture and website design.
Most research shows two different kinds of website viewers. There are the Z viewers who look at the top left, move their perspective to the right, then cut diagonally down to the bottom left and back over to the right. See Toledo Pontiac Dealers to see how this looks.
The other kind of standard viewer uses the F style. Top left to top right, then top left down to bottom left, then middle left to middle right. Albuquerque used cars is a perfect example of F-style format.
Either way, dealers will try to show as much as possible in the middle, but for true lead building, it is best to put the lead generating buttons to fit one of the two design structures.
Conclusions
Designing automotive websites is not rocket science. Dealers who go after a good look and feel but who utilize the expertise of their designers (assuming they have a good designer) is their best bet.
It was once possible for a good search engine optimizer to visit dozens, even hundreds of blogs per week and get links from them by posting comments. Nofollow has made comment posting nearly worthless across the board.
Now the theory is, if you can't comment on a blog, build your own.
It is possible and effective for car dealers to create or have someone create a dealership blog that not only brings the all-important link, but also directed the more-important traffic to the dealers' websites directly. This isn't a new tactic, but for many car dealers across the country, it's a novel idea and they're glad they thought of it.
Creating blogs is easy. Getting them indexed is more difficult. Making them popular is hard. Turning them into a viable source of traffic and increasing its status as an authority site with high trust rank in the huge automotive arena is nearly impossible for those who don't know exactly what they are doing and who are willing to spend the time to make it happen.
Automotive blogs like American Car Dealers, Autoblog, Carspace, and DriversDrive are excellent examples of how automotive blogs should look and feel. As you can see, some are very simple and straighforward, while others have a dedicated staff plugging in contact and fixing issues that arise on a heavy traffic website.
No matter what you want to do with your website, get into blogging, even if only on a limited scale. The juice from it can be great, but more importantly, the traffic that you can get can be even greater.
Search Engine Optimization is not difficult once you get the hang of it. Automotive SEO is a little trickier with more useless car niche sites and fewer authority sites who offer links. Those who can deliver top rankings in this competitive market are probably worth every penny if their services aren't outrageously priced.
More and more are offering "Guaranteed Top Rankings". Unlike SEO of old (a couple of years ago), it is possible for a strong service to offer this and back it up with results. Car dealerships and their internet departments are susceptable to scams because there are few who know the questions to ask to make sure the guarantee is delivered.
Which Search Engines?
If it isn't Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and/or Ask, it's pretty much worthless.
Organic Results
There are many people who still don't know the difference between sponsored and organic listings. Now with maps, photos, and other changes to the search engines, make sure that the service offered is for straight organic listings.
My Keywords or Yours?
Getting top ranking on "New Chevrolet Malibu Dealers in Watonga, Oklahoma" is nice, but how many people type that in? A good SEO firm will get the keyword list from the dealership before quoting a price. A great SEO firm will get the keyword list from the dealership and either enhance it with their own research or offer to research it without the dealer's input.
Keyword research is crucial. There are SEO companies and automotive web design firms who really push their ability to get their websites ranked well for particular vehicle searches. These types of searches are common, but ranking well on them is not a benefit anymore. Google, as an example, will put their vehicle locator up top, prompting more people to use it than to scroll down to find a dealership.
Also, vehicle classified sites are starting to dominate those listings again, pushing the car dealers down. People don't search for "Los Angeles Honda Accords" to find a dealer. They want to find a website that lists the vehicles themselves, which may or may not be a dealer.
Define Top Rankings
First three pages of Google? Being on page 2 or 3 yields much less than being on page 1.
First page? Good, but I don't know if I would qualify that as Top Rankings.
Top 3, 4, or 5 listings? Being above the fold is where you want your dealer. This is Top Rankings in my book.
#1? Tough to guarantee. Be wary if they say they can get you to #1 for all of your keywords. Make sure they intend to maintain that position, and make sure the guarantee is an iron-clad money back one. You should be able to get free SEO from any company willing to make that kind of promise.
Most search engine optimization services work the same. They will take any client, perform the same type of SEO tasks that they do for other websites, and at the end of the day, they’re scratching their heads wondering why they can’t seem to breach the top rankings. Automotive SEO is an entirely different beast than any other type of optimization.
Unique Content
Any SEO can tell you that content is king. It’s a catch-phrase in the industry because in reality, it works. Google and the other search engines love content – lots of it, and it must be unique.
The challenge for automotive websites is that most of the top design firms use different variations of the same content for all of their dealers. One website might say this:
“John Smith Ford in is one of the top Ford Dealers in the country. Their selection of new and used F150s, Fusions, Explorers, and Escapes is unmatched by anyone in .”
A different website by the same provider would say this:
“Bob Jones Honda in is on of the top Honda Dealers in the country. Their selection of new and used Ridgelines, Accords, Pilots, and CRVs is unmatched by anyone in .”
Most automotive website providers and general SEO services do not know how to handle this issue.
Stale Content
A website that doesn’t change doesn’t inspire the search engines to give it high rankings. This is becoming more prevalent every passing month. Car dealers rarely if ever change the content on their homepage.
There are ways to keep a website’s content fluid and exciting to the search engines without the dealer having to make changes or add new content all of the time. Very few SEOs and even fewer automobile website providers know how this is accomplished.
For most search engines, a link from a website to another counts as a vote. The more high-quality, relevant links a website has pointing at it, the better it will rank.
Any search engine optimization company and a couple of the auto website providers can tell you this, but it is still much of a mystery how to get websites to link to car dealers. They aren’t the kind of business with which other websites want to associate.
For automotive, many companies are relying on reciprocal linking (link exchanging) to power their link popularity campaign. As the days pass, so passes the weight that Google gives to these kinds of links.
Link baiting, the process of creating something on a website that will compel webmasters to want to link to it, is very difficult for automotive websites. What can a dealership offer in the way of articles or gadgets that would have this effect? Very few can answer that.
Social and Viral Marketing
There is a distinct increase in the power of social media and viral marketing. It is given more weight that other forms of link building because it is controlled by many people. An SEO company can “Digg” a car dealer website over and over and never be able to get it to the front page. Nobody in cares about a car dealer, so they have no reason to “Digg” it.
There are SEO services that offer social bookmarking and other forms of link building through social media, but few, if any, can take an automotive website and get it to the top of Digg or other websites. Getting to the front page is a traffic and SEO goldmine, but general SEOs can never crack that top page position.
If there is more than 1 or 2 auto dealer website providers who even use social bookmarking, it would be amazing. Most wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between del.icio.us, simpy.com, and reddit.com, even if they had ever heard of them.
Conclusions
Automotive SEO is extremely challenging. It requires more knowledge of the intricacies of both the car industry and the SEO market than just about any branch of optimization. Car Dealer Web Design is perhaps the only company who truly knows the formula for putting their dealers consistently at the top of the search engine results.
Checking Google for Toyota Dealers in or New Jersey Chevrolet Dealers will offer proof. Searching for Johnson City Honda, Ventura Car Dealers, or Portland Lincoln Dealers will do the same.
Louisiana Honda Dealers, Honda Dealers, Portland Honda Dealers – all first page rankings for dealers who have just recently started taking advantage of Advanced Automotive SEO Services. Portland Honda Dealers, Los Angeles Kia Dealers, and Los Angeles Nissan Dealers will yield the same results.
Before choosing an SEO company or website provider to do search engine optimization for an automotive web site, a smart general manager and internet sales manager will check the rankings of the prospect’s automotive clients.
The proof is in the results.
