6 posts tagged “car dealer seo”
Friends, I owe you all an apology. This blog, which according to analytics has had a nice amount of traffic over the last several months, has gone terribly inactive. With my workload expanding and new adventures starting helping others improve their status, I have simply had much less time than I would have liked to blog.
That will be changing.
Now.
With my old automotive SEO video desperately needing an update, that will be the first priority. I will shoot more of a tutorial rather than rely on the interview itself. We are rolling out a more comprehensive social media package for car dealers that will greatly increase the visibility for all involved.
Perhaps most importantly (to you) I will be dedicating myself to post at least one blog post a week to help those in the industry, whether automotive or search engine optimization, to learn and grow in this every-changing realm.
Come back soon!
* * *
Read more about car dealer SEO on this blog.
Search engine optimization has been a thorn to many manufacturers. They want their stores to be ranked for generic searches such as New Car Dealers Springfield or New Trucks in Oklahoma City, but they don't want them to compete into each other's market area.
What has been pushed for a long time - competing with other dealers of the same make - may be coming to an end for some brands, particularly imports. Honda has started restricting what dealers can put on their websites. They don't want them straying away from their market areas. They don't mind a Honda dealership ranking well for Used Cars Shreveport or Used Cars Minneapolis, but when it comes to their brands, they want you to stay close to home.
It even goes into their other products such as service and parts. Toyota Service Minneapolis is a no-no as a keyword for a dealership outside of that market area. This makes it tough for dealers whose market area is lightly populated. Take Griffith Toyota, for example. They are in Oregon, but they are outside of the Portland Toyota Dealers market area and soon, it's possible that they won't be able to mention Portland on their website.
Same holds true for First Honda, who is 40 miles north of Los Angeles. It would be nice to rank for Los Angeles Honda Dealers where they would be able to pull thousands of visitors, but it is difficult with the current rules. Even someone to the south like Orange County Toyota Dealers would love to rank in LA. The question is - will they be allowed?
While all of this makes it harder for car dealers to get ahead of their competition, the manufacturers are seeing it as a negative. What they fail to realize is that, with record-low sales of new cars, competition is a good thing. Chances are strong that a dealership savvy enough to know the value of SEO and that is willing to invest in it is probably the type of dealer that should be getting the traffic. They are more likely to understand what it takes to sell a car in today's market.
Selling them short will be a big mistake.
Read more automotive SEO advice on this blog.
After speaking to Paul Rushing, Community Development Manager at Driving Sales, it's apparent that one aspect of the automotive social network is definitely heading in the right direction.
Giving the ability for people in the automotive industry to share their expertise with other interested people, specifically dealers, is one of the best things that has come out for the industry in a while. Car dealers are often a little behind the curve when it comes to what is fresh and new on the Internet. The automotive blogs at Driving Sales gives everyone a chance to get caught up.
"We're building a community, plain and simple," said Rushing. The goal is to offer a venue for dealers and vendors to exchange ideas and discuss what it will take to turn business around in the volatile market that we are in."
Whether you are looking for a Car Dealer SEO blog, a car sales advice blog, or a general car business blog, Driving Sales has expert advice for everyone in the industry.
Read more automotive SEO advice right here.
With so many automotive search engine optimization firms out there selling their products and with a lack of available knowledge about how automotive SEO really works, it has become very difficult for car dealers to know the difference between a true search engine optimization company and one that is selling a cheap product.
First off, let me say that price doesn't say a whole lot. Sometimes, the best services are inexpensive and the worthless ones are very expensive.
With that out of the way, let's discuss what accounts for arguably 80% of the real value, the true "juice" in search engine optimization. It's all about the links. There's no question. It's not even an argument.
Properly formatted links from automotive-related, well-established sites -- those are the real ticket to search engine success. For example, a link that says Used Cars New Hampshire is helping to rank the target site for that term. Sure, the content, tags, and linking structure internally have an effect, but that's the easy part. The things that are done on the site are set up and let go from the beginning with occasional tweaks. In the whole scheme of things, it only accounts for 20% of what search engines look for.
No, search engines want inbound links form outside sites. They want to see properly written content such as this:
"When you are in Connecticut, the place to go for your next Acura would be the local Acura Dealers in Hartford where price and good customer service breed success."
That, in its basic form, is a portion of an article that will have more effect on the search engine rankings for this dealer than anything else they do on the site. By posting relevant and unique stories to blogs, article sites, and press release providers, you stand the best chance of moving up.
Format is important. If you want to rank for your brand in a particular city, you will use an anchor tag format that highlights the keyword as the link itself. For example, using other members of the same auto group, you would put links in an automotive story that would contextually include Dodge Dealers in Hartford, Hartford Saturn Dealers, Kia Dealers in Hartford, and Hartford Nissan Dealers in the text of the article.
For dealer groups, they may want to include their splash page in the mix. "For the largest selection of new and pre-owned automobiles in the area, visit Hartford New Car Dealers and find out how we make things happen for our customers.
That's it. There is nothing to it. Of course, it's the work that has been done of the months and years that truly makes the difference. Creating a blog today and starting to post links will have minimal effect becaue they have no history or relevance. They are not trusted yet by the search engines. You have to find a company that already has established a strong web presence across the board. The better they maintain their own web properties, the easier it will be for them to optimize your site.
* * *
Read more automotive SEO articles on this blog.
Sometimes, finding the best resources to use for a given task is more challenging than performing the task itself. In the case of search engine optimization, especially for the automotive industry, this is ever so true.
First, here's a video that will describe what we do and how we do it in the realm of automotive seo:
Sometimes, the best advice is a quick read away. Here are some articles that will help you in your quest for the ultimate in search engine optimization for car dealers.
This "oldie but a goodie" from PromotionWorld was once the highlighted story on the front page. Since then, it has been viewed over 2500 times by people interested in the Myths Surrounding Automotive SEO. In it, you will learn some of the tactics that various vendors use to promote their products or downplay the products of others.
This, too, is an older one, but all of it still applies. Things can get ugly in car dealer SEO, and this article points out some of the things that make it bad sometimes. Don't worry - we only practice the good stuff here.
For a more basic overview, here are some automotive SEO FAQs. This is very basic stuff, but hey, you have to start somewhere.
Microsites are starting to pop up everywhere. This article that talks about SEO for Automotive Microsites is a quick but informative read.
Sometimes, it isn't how you optimize but for which keywords you optimize. When picking out automotive keywords, having a strong Car Dealer SEO keyword strategy can be the first step to driving the right traffic to your site.
Looking for more basics? Why not start with this article about automotive SEO basics? It just makes sense, right?
Sometimes, SEO is not the complete package. This article that goes into detail about general Automotive Internet Marketing talks about the other aspects beyond SEO that can drive visitors to site and help turn them into leads (and eventually sales).
There is so much more that needs to be said, but this is a good start. By the time you're done reading them, there will probably be more listed here. If not, check out the other articles on this automotive seo blog. See you around!
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
