I would advise anyone to shop around if your provider won’t. They are playing you like a fiddle
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One other thing I would like to add concerning bounce rates. Believe it or not, when you look at your visits for long tail keywords the bounce rate will be high and the pageviews per user will be low. If you think about it, it’s not that bad of a thing.

If you give the searcher exactly what they are looking for, they have no need to browse your website further. If conversion analytics are utilized, you will see that they are impressive.

Of course, we can’t count the 50+% of the people that just show up on your lot.

Indexed inventory may not be the best way to engage the user when they arrive at the site, one statistic we see based on this traffic is the bounce rate is the highest based on direct inventory entries.

More important than ranking for terms is how engaged the site visitor is when they arrive. Of all the dealers we work with the vendor with the lowest bounce rate and longest time on site would surprise many, this is based off google analytics data.

The first thing we do with any client is install the G’s analytics.

Anyone can get their home page ranked for a specific keyword. It just takes a lot of in-bound link juice with the right anchor text. The real winners are the ones that are able to get all of their cars indexed quickly and daily, so that specific make + model + city combinations are driving traffic to their site.

Which keyword is going to have a higher conversion rate? One that is “Orlando Dodge Dealer” or “Dodge Journey in Orlando”… I think it’s obvious the more specific one will ultimately convert higher.

Be more concerned about how many different car-specific keywords are getting users to your site, rather than ranking for the one big keyword.

The number 4 position impressed me most. Why? Napleton isn’t even in Orlando. They are located in Kissimmee Florida (which is next door). So should we give credit to Izmo cars? No

If you cannot get your homepage to rank on any “type” of website you use than you lack basic SEO skills. What all dealer website companies need to learn is how to get deep pages to rank, and you should scour your analytics on a weekly basis and find out if your deep pages rank, like your inventory.

If you look at your keyword report, you should have at least a few thousand visits every month from “different keywords”. Focus on long tail keywords, and you will see that your bounce rate is lower and your pageviews and average time on site is higher.

Most importantly, don’t rely on server stats. Insist on Google Analytics. I have a friend in Tampa who runs the internet department for a large dealer. He thought for months he was getting 2,000 visitors a day. I new that was impossible, so I challenged him to install Google Analytics. Well, he did. He gets 400 visitors a day.

Would you turn away business from a large OEM if they wanted you to build them thousands of websites?

Nope

If so, what would you do differently from Dealer.com?

I would take the business but make sure that marketing claims matched the results found with my products. They do not do that very well.

I too look forward to meeting you at the DSES

It makes a lot of sense for a large automaker to want to setup a common web platform by which they can control their product marketing message at the retail level and track/measure how shoppers are engaging online. To that end, they would require a large, capable provider to deploy and manage such a platform. Would you turn away business from a large OEM if they wanted you to build them thousands of websites? If so, what would you do differently from Dealer.com?

Aside from this topic, I like your recent post re: “soft” industry publications and look forward to meeting you next week at the DS conference.

From corporate level it makes sense for Chrysler to have central platform to measure dealer and consumer activity. I’m sure as the dealership learning curve grows realted to online propeties, SEM, and SEO, these dealers will venture out from manufacturer recommendatios to find their competitive edge.

That is the direction the industry should be headed as a whole. Dealers and mfgs owning their online properties versus leasing them from third parties.

As far as a dealer generating 50% of their traffic from type in traffic, that means they are marketing their website with traditional media. I think we both would agree that there are more cost effective ways for dealers to market their website.

Thanks for taking an interest in the Chrysler and Dealer.com dealer website program. Your post brings up many great points from an SEO perspective. What’s missing is the overall bigger picture of OEM marketing and branding.

Chrysler needed a solution to ensure that their dealers had some consistent “operating system” to ensure that branding was being carried through the channel from Tier 1 all the way down to tier 3. If a manufacturer has a fragmented approach to the digital space with every dealer using a different system, there is a disconnect from a marketing perspective. The advertising, incentive, branding and other messages get lost from tier 1 as they make their way down to the dealer base where the actual vehicle transactions occur.

Not only was branding a concern, but if you’re a manufacturer and all of your dealerships are using different systems, how can you get an accurate reporting picture of the performance of your stores? How do you compare one region to another? How do you measure the effectiveness of a digital marketing initiative if none of the systems carrying that message talk to one another. The problems Chrysler was addressing were vast.

Overall, the Chrysler deal with Dealer.com has helped Chrysler dealers in many ways as well… allowing them to see how they stack up digitally against other dealers in their market from a digital marketing and lead flow/management perspective is a big win for them. The knowledge base of best practices that is shared throughout the Chrysler community is now being delivered much more effectively, allowing less competitive dealers to start using tactics that will help them get up to speed.

In my opinion the Dealer.com platform is very much like a windows operating system. Every dealer has the same set of tools at their disposal to merchandise their cars effectively. They have the ability to edit their sites, add video, go nuts on what they want to accomplish to set themselves apart from the pack without losing the importance of the OEM brand and national incentive programs.

I’ll point to a recent post on ADM by Larry Bruce, who we both respect in the industry stated that over 50% of traffic to the dealer sites he’s working with comes from direct hits. These people are typing in the URL of the dealership directly.

This is where the effectiveness of the OEM program really takes shape. Those visitors will have the ability to use a fully functional site and when they cross-shop dealerships, the branding and merchandising message that Chrysler has put in place is not lost.

We encourage our dealers to work with outside vendors for a myriad of products. If a dealer wants to get more involved with SEO, choosing your company would be a smart move for them to help differentiate on the SEO side of things when they need more than what comes inherently with our platform. It would be great to see the relationship between our companies move forward in a positive manner. Dealers would really benefit from such synergy.

Thanks for the post!

Mike DeCecco

It is impossible to treat multiple dealers in the same region fairly when optimizing their sites for better Google visibility. I couldn’t imagine any answer that a platform provider could give a client to make them feel better if their competitors were ranking ahead of them, and all were on the same “package”.

Web platform providers who seek to do everything will create conflicts of interest and eventually lose credibility. They should have a 50 miles, 75 miles or 100 miles non-competete deals for Internet marketing services if they plan to offers SEO, SEM and Social Media.