A false and misleading article was just published about using a blog network to build inbound links.  Some of the misconceptions that really stuck out were:

• Links from a low page rank blog would cause a dealers website to be banned in the search engines. If this were the case then dealers would not need to work on their own sites they would just need to sabotage their competitors.
• A blog network is a “link farm”. Not if it is constructed properly and the content on the network brings value to humans that visit it.  Which the network that was critiqued is.
• Page Rank Matters. Page rank is a number from 1-10 assigned by Google.  For the niche in which we operate in, automotive SEO, most search engine traffic is geo located long tails and if Page Rank was the determining factor in search engine rankings a dealers website would never beat OEMs and aggregation sites for terms link Jersey City Chevy or NH Ford dealer.

Using a blog network to build links to a dealer’s website is just one of the resources an Automotive SEO firm can use to build links and should not be the only link building resource.

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Blogging for Car Dealers

Setting up a blog for your dealership is just as important as having a dealership website.  Just as important as picking the right website vendor car dealers need to pick the right blogging platform and host it in the right place.

Where to not host your dealership blog:

Free Blog Hosting Sites

Everybody wants something for nothing and free hosting sites do give you the ability to launch a fresh blog in minutes but they come with some serious downfalls.

Major Downfalls of Using Free Blog Hosts:

1. You don’t own it. While the content is yours and copyright laws do apply if a free host decides they don’t want you using their platform anymore they can delete your blog at will.
2. Their subdomains. If you set up a blog at the free hosting sites you will always be on a subdomain such as dealerblog.blogspot.com or dealerblog.wordpress.com
3. Lack of Flexibility. There are many things that can be done with the popular blogging software wordpress however you cannot do it if you are on the wordpress.com platform.  The same thing applies to any of the popular hosts.  You are not given the ability to make changes that will make your blog more search engine friendly, many don’t allow promotional material, limited number of layouts and almost impossible to do a custom design.
4. Loss of Credibility. Consumers who wind up on your blog will be able to easily identify that it is on a free host and it shows that your business is not willing to invest the time or money needed to have a professional blog presence.  If all you are willing to do is a free blog host we suggest you do nothing at all.

Free Blog Hosts that Your Dealership Should Avoid:

• Wordpress.com – Do not confuse this with the open source software that is available at wordpress.org, which is our preferred platform.  The terms of service at wordpress.com make it a really tricky do any really promotional pieces on a blog hosted there and if they don’t like what you are doing there they will delete your blog without warning and all is lost.  The excerpt blow was taken from their TOS notice the type in red.
  

  the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

  Wordpress.com has upgrade packages available that will allow you more storage and to use your own domain but at the end of the day you still have to follow their very subjective rule and the value received for the same amount of money or less makes it a pass.  Not to mention wordpress.com puts ads on your content that you may never see.

• Blogger.com – Blogger or Blogspot is Google’s free blog hosting platform.  It should be avoided like the plague for a business blog.  It is relatively simple to map your own domain to a blogger blog or you can even use it to publish to your own hosting account but it is not very flexible, it does not have the support community that wordpress does, nor is it very search engine friendly.  Google’s own Matt Cutts uses a self hosted wordpress blog and not the blogger platform, ’nuff said.
• Vox.com – Vox blogs are more search engine friendly that blogger blogs but then again you are giving your content for them to display ads on.  Vox is more of a community site, a social network, than a blogging platform.  You give up to much control.
• Ning.com – Ning is very much like Vox with some added social networking features and is primarily a point and click social network.  It is not a blogging platform that dealers should be using.
• Dozens of others.  Everyday almost there is a new blogging platform launched that will give your a free blog.  Many of them use a Multi-User version of wordpress, known as wordpress mu, you are still tied to the whim of a webmaster that controls the site and are giving away to much equity for your time.  Stay away from them.

Other Blog Platforms Car Dealers Should Avoid

• Typepad.com – Typepad has multiple packages for you to set up a blog on.  Even their most basic one at $8.95 per month pales in comparison to what you can do on your own with a cheap hosting account.  We have worked in the backend of Typepad to move dealers from that platform to a self hosted version of wordpress and it does not have anywhere near the features.  Many things such as automated backups, image control and theme enhancements are a real PITA.
• Website Vendor “Integrated” Blogs – There are a couple of website vendors that sell “integrated” blogs with their dealership website packages.  Once again you are giving up to much control to a company to control your content and you lose all flexibility.  At times you need FTP access to make critical blog changes and I have yet to find a website vendor that will give that to their customers.  Some vendors are offering blog packages comparable to ours and those we can live with.  While this may be the simplest way to get started for most car dealers it should be avoided if you are planning to use a blog as part of your marketing strategy.

As you have probably noticed that control of your content is the underlying theme of this article.  If you are going to set up a dealership blog you need to do it right from the very start.  If you have made the mistake of setting one up on many of these free hosting sites or paid sites all is not lost, we have successfully helped dealers migrate from these platforms to their own self hosted blog.

The best place for a dealer to set up their blog is on a self hosted version of wordpress bar none.  We are working on a free report that will be released on December 15th on how to set up your own dealership blog using wordpress, drop us a comment below if you want a copy of it or use the contact form above to have us set one up for you.

Stay tuned to Dealerbytes.com for more practical tips on blog marketing for car dealers.

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For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. – Google’s Webmaster Central Blog August 10th, 2009

One of the most noticeable changes with their new initiative is index size.  There will be many more sites competing for your money keywords.

With the larger number of results produced it would appear that Google.com search engineers are mastering index build based on Latent Semantic Indexing, which will allow the search engine to return results based on keywords and phrases that conceptually mean the same thing.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text. LSI is based on the principle that words that are used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings. A key feature of LSI is its ability to extract the conceptual content of a body of text by establishing associations between those terms that occur in similar contexts.

Another feature of the improvements, in the eyes of google, being made with this new initiative is “temporal relevancy” with the addition of social networking updates being returned in search engine results.

-  real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.  Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.   Official Announcement from Google

Bing is including social networking profiles and updates in their results and made the same announcement prior to Google doing so.

What does all of this mean for car dealers?

Current dealership website technology will need a major overhaul and search engine optimization will require more effort.  Content production and social media interaction will soon be the driving force in marketing your dealership in organic search.  Dealers will need to create multiple points of entry to their marketing funnel and this cannot be accomplished with one website.

It will take dealership blogs, social networking / media and multiple dealer microsites to maintain relevance and out pace your competition.

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Many in the industry discount search engine optimization efforts and it perpetuates ignorance in the marketplace.  This causes dealers to miss a great low cost way to drive traffic to their websites and inventory.

Before you hire an automotive seo firm, even if it is not us, you need to ask these questions and you will see our answers.

10 Questions to Ask Your Automotive SEO Firm

1.  What is the first thing you will do when you take over our SEO?

Research.  Our firm will conduct market area and keyword research relative to your brands and direct market area.  Because automotive seo is more of a localized effort not only should your seo consultant look at your presence they should also look at where you rank in relation to your competitors.  This effort will help us determine which keywords will deliver the most traffic to your website based on your location.  We will then assign those keywords to groups to create silos that match the proper categories on your sites and work on optimizing those internal pages for conversion on those “money” keywords.  We will also set your car dealer website in Google’s Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing’s Webmaster Center. We will also request that Google analyics be added to your website.

2.  How will you help us build local relevance?

We will make sure your listing in the major search engine directories is properly optimized for the money keywords discovered in the research stage.  This part of the automotive seo job may have already preformed to some extent by your car dealer websites company, but chances are they are not optimized for more than just your dealership name and direct market area and brand.

We will also look for local one way links from other sites in your direct market area based on your affiliation with other organizations such as local chambers of commerce, television stations, radio stations and newspapers you advertise with, local forums and vendors you do business with in your local market area.

3.  Will you set up an XML sitemap and robots.txt file?

If the vendor will up load files for us to your website we will set up both an xml sitemap and robots.txt, many claim that these do not help seo but your xml sitemap will be set up to let the search engines know when you schedule regular content updates to your website.

4.  Will you make changes to our site?

Yes.  Based on the keyword research in the first step we will make the proper changes to your title tags and meta descriptions and look for ways to improve the content on your static pages.  Many times car dealer website companies use templated content in these areas with change in dealership name only.  We will recraft that content based on latent semantic indexing and semantically related words thus giving your landing page a better representation for humans and improving the relevance of those pages.  We will also work to canocalize navigation and internal linking structure to avoid confusion in your sites visitors and search engine spiders.

5.  How often will you recommend content updates?

We will monitor competitive websites updates and market conditions.  While most car dealer website templates do not facilitate easy inclusion of new content we will work with your dealerships website vendor to facilitate this process to create well optimized internal landing pages to help meet market conditions.  Certain areas of your website will need regular updates to help meet the goals established in the research stage to help improve long term results.

6. What kind of results should we see in the first month?

Automotive seo results are not easy to predict, however depending on many factors we may be able to see improvements almost immediately.  This will depend on how fast recommended changes can be deployed, age of the domain name and length of domain registration.

7.  How can we monitor progress?

While many car dealer website companies provide some form of analytics we will accentuate that reporting with Google Analytics in step one.  This will integrate with our reporting software that will allow us to establish goals and provide weekly updates of progress.

Click to See Larger Image of Results for a Honda dealer not in Indianapolis - First 2 weeks

8. Will you represent others in our market area?

Yes and no.  We will not work with a same brand dealer in your direct market area in relation to automotive seo, however we do offer other services such as craigslist inventory distribution that if a dealer in your market area contacts us for we will sell them that service.  The only reason we will accept this business is because it is widely available.  However the nature of our business we do not make outbound sales calls so we will not solicit  your competition for any of our services.

9.  What else will you recommend and will you prioritize activities?

Because of the dynamic nature of search engine optimization we also listen to our clients.  Automotive SEO is not a set it and forget it process.  We will continually look for ways to expand your reach via the search engines and take the most direct approach in helping you increase traffic.  So depending on the goals we will prioritize efforts to match.  We will continually work to optimize content and perform keyword research.  Sometimes we will make other recommendations such as a dealership blog, paid directory inclusion, low cost banner placements and dealer microsites.  We will prioritize these recommendations based on your commitment and budget.

10.  Do you require a contract?

We do not require a contract.  Our business is built on service to our clients and a contract has the ability to place us in an adversarial relationship if you are unhappy with results.  We are also confident in our ability to help you meet your online marketing goals so we feel that a contract is not required.  Many firms that request contracts are selling them to factoring companies to get an immediate injection of cash just as you sell your retail installment contracts to lenders.  All that we ask for upfront is a 90 day commitment because the first steps is us understanding your business and individual goals.  Improving search engine rankings is a nurturing process and not always immediate.

What else do we need to know about automotive seo?

A long term search engine optimization strategy pays long term dividends.  When you chose your website seo consultant you need to make sure it is a firm that you want to use for the long haul.  As the founder of dealerbytes.com I hope you chose us as your online automotive marketing consulting firm.  I got my start in the car business in 1990 selling cars for a single point Toyota dealer and have worked in every position in the front end of a dealership from sales to general manager so we understand the challenges you face day in and day out on the front lines.

Maximizing your presence in the search engines is an ever changing process.  Your seo firm should be the one helping you stay abreast of these changes and initiatives so you can concentrate on selling cars and service.

To often automotive seo is looked upon as search engine manipulation and many firms will rely on less than ethical tactics, if you are ok with this you are probably not a client we want and are glad you stopped by to read this article.  We view our efforts as being your automotive marketing partner that helps bring more traffic to you dealership’s website, increase conversion and generate more leads.  We know if we service you properly referrals from our efforts for you is our biggest payoff.  We will not take unnecessary risk that places your online presence in jeopardy or our business model.  We use our own sites to test theories before placing them into action on our clients websites.

If you have any questions or would like to request a no obligation seo review of your dealership’s website please use the contact form below or give us a call at 800-406-1794.

Leave other recommendations and questions you would like to see publicly displayed in the comments below.

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At the Drivingsales Executive Summit there was some great speakers in and out of the auto industry.  There was some great takeaways that I posted about at my Drivingsales.com blog but no speaker really delved in how to establish a social media plan for car dealers even though Arron Strout alluded a key point that dealers should take account when devising their strategy.

You are better off to be on your A game in one location such as facebook than try to be spread over many locations with nothing more than a presence. (Not verbatim but close)

It is in my opinion that the easiest way for a dealer to start their trek into social media will be with a blog and a facebook fan page.  Not only will they be the easiest to work with but they will allow you to get your name out there to insure your online reputation.

Both will offer high rankings into the search engine if they are set up properly and the content is structured to match your audience.  The question many dealers will ask is how long before we start to see sales and fixed opps ROI?  The answer will really depend on your involvement.

Not everything in today’s social media world can be quantified into direct ROI, just as traditional branding messages are not easy to measure.  With a blog and proper facebook management your number of direct inbound inquiries will rise if you seek to engage others using these mediums and you have the proper tools to measure results in place.

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What dealers hate to see happen with their craigslist ads

Everyday we are contacted by car dealers who have tried to use craigslist to generate leads for their dealership, the most common problem that we hear is their ads are flagged and no longer show.  Once the flagging starts it may be impossible to get your ads live again unless you take some proactive measures.  Here is a list of quick tips:

• Stop allowing multiple dealership employees to post ads on craigslist.  Craigslist looks at the IP address postings are coming from and if more than one account is created on your stores IP address then it looks like you are spamming their service.
  

  With a client of our craigslist service we ran into a situation where all ads for two stores were flagged off craigslist. After several hours of trying to determine the reason why we discovered both stores shared the same IP address. Once determined the problem we were able to take corrective action and they now have 100% of their inventory live on craigslist.org

• Pull your identifiable information out of the text display – If your competition is aggressive in flagging your ads off you need to make adjustments to your ad templates so it will be harder for them to locate you ads in craigslist searches.  You can do this by creating images that has your contact info, phone number and dealership name where human eyes can read it versus text.
• Don’t over post – Craigslist has terms of service in place that limits the number of cars that a dealership can post in one day.  This limit is determined by your individual market area.  If you go over this limit your ads will come down.  One of the biggest mistakes dealers can make is trying to post all of their inventory each day on craigslist.
• Don’t use your inventory providers hosted images – If you use images hosted by your inventory provider then it establishes a footprint that is easy for craigslist and your flagging competitors to identify.  While there is nothing wrong with using the images you already have you need to host them on a different domain name.

This quick list of tips to help curtail flagging of your ads at craigslist will help however it may not solve your problem completely.  If you wish to know more about our service that works to help dealers get around flagging and keeping thier inventory live on craigslist visit our craigslist service page.

If you have any other suggestions, tips or questions leave them in the comments below.

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False representation of Automotive SEO Services

Part of the pitch they use to sell this service is a shell game and weak representations of results.

29.6% Average Increase in Traffic:

While this number may accurately represent the increase of web traffic their service  delivers they make the claim without providing accurate benchmarks.  Sure a website that has some very basic optimization services provided will see a 30% increase in search engine traffic but that small jump can be accomplished with a one time event, not a monthly ongoing cost and maintained with basic content updates.  A disciplined search engine optimization strategy should increase traffic on an ongoing basis where over time it will bring in increases of traffic and additional keyword targeting.  You should see increases month over month relevant to market conditions and statistical analysis.

The Shell Game:

51.7% increase in form submissions and a 23.2% average increase in conversion?

Web form submission is the definition of conversion on a car dealer’s website with the other variable being calls to the dealership.  It’s double talk at it’s best.  If you saw a 51.7% increase of form submission then you should see a 51.7% increase or more in conversion ratio.  The numbers given by the provider of “Dynamic SEO” are attempting to define the same metric with different measurements.

If you are a dealer who has fallen victim of hype being defined as “Dynamic SEO” all is not lost.  You can opt out of this service and have found an automotive seo provider that produces month over month results.  We take a proactive approach to researching your market area and competition as well as we have researched ours.

Some other smoke and mirror representations in Automotive SEO pitches:

1. Indexed Inventory – It can help bring additional traffic to your website but having 200 cars indexed in the search engines does not mean they will rank well for the keywords that convert.
2. On site Video Optimization – Search engines do index video but having an on site video indexed takes a spot away from your your website in the search engine results pages.  It would represent that you only have one or two offers that the search engine user may be interested in thus the dealership missing more opportunities than it may receive.
3. Sitemap Creation – HTML sitemaps are not what the search engines look for when using it as a map to index your site.  They require it to be delivered to them in a different format for them to keep coming back to reindex your content.  If your content is not dynamic or they are not notified of changes then it provides no value.
4. Reporting – From what we have seen all reporting by other automotive seo vendors is a recap of history based on traffic that is delivered.  Keywords that will bring traffic to your site that have yet to deliver any traffic are not identified nor can goals be set to optimize for them.

Just as important as your dealership website in the search engines is other properties that contain the dealership name and or products and market area.  Your automotive seo provider should also work with you to lock down the dealership’s online reputation by incorporating these assets in their efforts and pushing other 3rd party lead gen sources out of your space.  you do not want sites like Autotrader, Edmunds and Cars.com competing with searches for your name and you defiantly don’t want Rip Off Report, Pissed Consumer or even Dealerrater.com occupying these spots.  Even if all of your ratings are positive on dealerrater.com your traffic and brand name could cause the surfer to seek out other offers in your market area and it will happen with the other entries on lead gen sites as well.

To find out what a difference a diligent seo strategy and our no competitive representation strategy for your dealership use the contact form below or give us a call at 800-406-1794.

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The list of speakers and things discussed will give dealership operators valuable information that they can bring back and put into action.  This conference style is unlike any dealers have seen in the automotive marketing space and will set the precedence that other conference organizers should follow.

We will be blogging from the event so make sure you subscribe to our feed to get up to the minute updates.

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Same brand same market dealers only have one keyword(s) that they do not compete with their neighboring dealers, their name.  Other than that they all are going after the same search phrases and keywords.  Terms such as Doug Henry Chevrolet are owned uniquely by the dealer where as terms such as Greenville Chevy are terms that several dealers will compete for.  One vendor cannot ethically represent dealers that are competing in the same market with website solutions, automotive SEO or search engine marketing.

The recent deal between Chrysler and Dealer.com in many markets creates a huge conflict of interest.

Here is an example take for the search term on Google for Jacksonville Dodge Dealer

The question is if all dealers are paying for the same car dealer website service via Chrysler’s deal how does one dealer get two entries in the top spot and the others dealers websites lag behind them.  Is this dealer paying dealer.com for seo service, did they hire and outside automotive SEO firm or did this happen naturally via search engine algorithms?  From our research it shows that it is the latter with a little more emphasis based on search engine trust and offsite seo efforts.

In dealer.com propaganda marketing style they made the following statement on Automotive Social network Drivingsales.com

It all comes down to Google.
In an industry dominated by search engines, your account reps have to know the ins and outs of that business. And these days, that means they’d better be Google trained and Google certified. You might hear vague promises about how that doesn’t matter so much or how there are ways around it, but there’s one truth in the search engine business: Google rules. And until that changes, and there’s no reason to believe it will any time in the near future, having the training and certification necessary to run your ad words program and to help you with search engine marketing and optimization is an absolute necessity.

While we are not going to take the time dissect the comment specifically other than Google does not provide Search Engine Optimization training or certification and their adwords certification is geared to help them, Google and Dealer.com, sell more pay per click advertising.

Google says this about Search Engine Optimization:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

In another search engine query for Orlando Dodge dealer it completely negates Dealerdotcom’s marketing hype.  All of the Dodge dealers in that market have Dealer.com SmartSites as forced on to them to get leads and links from Chrysler but only one dealer.com website shows on page one at position #5 despite their alleged “relationship” with Google.

It makes us wonder what Chrysler’s cut is in forcing dealers to take these non effective websites. The conflicts of interest runs deep and wide and all dealers are not receiving the same level of service from dealer.com.  Even in the Orlando Dodge dealer example if all dealers are treated equally there are four dealers that are not being properly serviced by dealer.com.

If you have a dealer.com website we can help you out run your competition even if your are competing with other dealers using their platform.  Drop us a note in the comments below or give us a call at 800-406-1794, you’ll be glad you did.

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Search engines and directory sites pull data from many sources to determine what information they display to their users.  If you do not control your listings properly then they can be populated with incorrect information like the listing shown here.

The info is correct except the most important part,  the phone number.  This is costing the dealer several lost opportunities per day in sales and service.  The saving grace is the surfer clicks through it is taken to the dealers website where the right information will be presented to them.

If the dealer cared about their online presence then this would not be a problem.

Another Bad Google Map Listing

Your google map listing is probably the most important online directory listing, but it definitely is not the only one.  There are hundreds if not thousands of directory sites that populate business information.

In the example shown above if  you were to dig down into their google map listing you will also find a listing for their old location.  That shows their correct local phone number but has an incorrect address.

When your directory listings are not properly managed then other sites pick up and display bad data.  It would be the same as having the wrong phone number or address listed in the phone book.  It will also create lost opportunities when others are search for competitors as well.

Data aggregation companies will pull listings from different locations and resell that information which further propagates bad information.  Your online listings should should be the same across all mediums.  The challenges that a dealer would face is finding every location that their information is displayed or even worse not displayed at all.

We have a very low cost service that distributes your business profile to major data services and directory sites so your listings display proper contact info and branding or you can track them all down.  If you want to know more give us a call 800-406-1794 or use the contact form below.

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