2 posts tagged “car dealer website design”
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.
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.
