3 posts tagged “google”
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.
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.
