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.

Platforms Dealers Use That Could Benefit from our Services

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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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What is social bookmarking?

If you have ever used the bookmark feature of your browser you should understand the basic concept of using the social bookmarking sites. You save the sites you want to remember but in this case you do it online. You also tag what you save and you share it with other members.

On most bookmarking sites others can also vote as to whether or not what you saved is valuable.

Each of these bookmarks can create an extra listing on the search engines that can help drive traffic to the site you bookmarked. As Google tends to like some of the bigger bookmarking sites quite often your bookmark will rank higher than the page you saved. At least initially.

Using sites like Digg, Propeller, and Stumble can result in quite a bit of additional traffic if you have a popular bookmark.

The important thing to remember is that this is a community. If you are not contributing by bookmarking sites of value that aren’t yours you will be seen as a spammer and the community will not support you.

This needs to be something that you do regularly and not just for your sites. Add the little favorite icons to your browser and any time you see an item of value in the course of your normal surfing you can quickly bookmark it.

Bookmarking along with using the long tail of search can bring you great benefits. Check out this article on using the long tail for automotive seo for more ways to drive very targeted traffic.

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