News

PCG Digital Marketing won a “Top Rated” SEO award in the second annual DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards, presented at the 2011 NADA Convention and Expo.

Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Digital Marketing said, “We are passionate about helping dealers face and overcome increasing competition on search engines, and a tactical SEO strategy will play a large role in their success. We are proud and honored to have been named a top SEO company.”

The DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards measure satisfaction with services provided by vendors by allowing dealers to rate and review their vendors online at DrivingSales.com. Only vendors who achieved top rankings in dealer satisfaction in each category, as determined by the thousands of auto dealers who are part of the DrivingSales.com community, received awards.

PCG Named Top Rated Automotive SEO Company

“We are proud to present a DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction ‘Top Rated’ SEO Award to PCG Digital Marketing said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “This award is a reflection of the excellent results PCG Digital Marketing has generated for dealerships across the nation, and we are proud to recognize their accomplishment.”

Full award results are available online at. Full broadcast coverage of the DrivingSales Dealer Satisfaction Awards ceremony is available at drivingsalestv.com.

PCG Digital Marketing is a full service digital marketing agency that serves the Automotive Industry. PCG is nationally recognized as a leader in Automotive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and automotive digital marketing.

Brian Pasch, CEO and founder of PCG Digital Marketing is an active blogger, writer and speaker at automotive conferences, 20 Groups and digital marketing forums. PCG Digital Marketing is also the creator of the Automotive Website Awards which recognizes the best automotive websites platforms based on their search marketing effectiveness, the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference and Automotive Marketing Boot Camp.

Every week it seems that a new social media website or micro-blogging platform comes to market and your circle of friends invite you to join.  I don’t know about you but how does the average person evaluate the benefits of using these new digital marketing tools? Are you overwhelmed?  Do you feel that you are dodging bullets?

In the past 60 days you may have been invited and joined:

• IMfaceplate.com
• CarDealerWiki.org
• Amplify.com
• Thoughts.com
• Quora.com
• Branchout.com

I thought I would share with you some of the processes I use to evaluate the many requests that come across my desk each month.  In my experience, some websites serve as useful Automotive SEO tools, others as Automotive Social Media tools, and some just fail to do anything.  The key is to know how to evaluate your investment in these websites.  You must have the tools to evaluate which websites are worthy of your continued investment of time and energy.

Your time is valuable so treat it that way!

Automotive Advertising Strategies

For car dealers, automotive advertising strategies have never been as diverse and confusing as they are today.  Dealers are faced with deciding how to find the correct balance of traditional marketing, social media, SEO, SEM, blogging, email marketing, re-marketing, and the list goes on.  All of the sites that I listed above may have been presented to dealers as “worthy” of their staff time and content.

Which new websites are really delivering on those claims?

All of the sites listed above may be suited for car dealers.  However, some may be better for personal branding.   In either case, the question comes down to your time investment.  Should you engage or not?

Sites You Think Are Good For SEO

If a website is introduced to you as a new Automotive SEO tool, there are some quick ways to measure that claim.  First, make sure you are using Google Alerts, Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools.  Setup Google Alerts for your dealership name and your personal name.

I like to use Google Alerts to see how fast a blog post I created is picked up by Google. This is a measure of how often Google pulls and indexes content.

For example, I posted content on www.Quora.com, recommended by my friend Eric Miltsch, under my name this past week.  One question I posted was about Frank Herbert and Dune books. I received a Google Alert within an hour of posting and from the screen shot below, you can see that it is now in the Google index.  This site is definitely respected by Google.

In contrast, all the social media sign-ups that I have done on Branchout.com in the past two weeks have not triggered any Google Alerts.  In the first case, Quora.com is getting into the Google search stream and Branchout.com seems to be limited to inside of Facbeook.  Branchout.com fails on the SEO front and we will have to see how it does on the networking front.

Automotive Advertising on CarDealerWiki

As I stated in another blog post this week, www.CarDealerWiki.org is showing strong SEO visibility and links.  Take a look at this search query for a dealer who is leveraging the page publishing power of CarDealerWiki:

You Should Be Seeing Increased Links

Secondly, if your posts or articles on micro-blogging platforms are being respected by the search engines, any hyperlinks in your posts should be showing in Yahoo Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools to your main website.   If after 30-60 days your links are not showing, you can assume you are not getting SEO back-link benefits from these posts.

Sites You Think Are Good For Networking

Other websites that are not designed for Automotive SEO may claim to increase your networking potential.  In these cases, I recommend that you use a tracking phone number on all posts to these sites.  This can be in the form of a user profile or a signature block that you add to all articles.  In addition to tracking numbers, you can see how many people are commenting on your posts.

For example, IMFaceplate.com is a new micro-blogging platform.  I have posted about 12 articles on my profile so take a peek:  Brian Pasch.  The comments on my articles have not been very interactive or meaningful.  In addition to low engagement, I have not been seeing Google Alerts coming in for my efforts.  I will give this website another month or content and if I don’t see any positive confirmations form the search engines, I will stop.

As a side note, www.imfaceplate.com has slow website response times which I think is hampering their search engine credibility.

Prioritizing Your Time

With so many new websites in play each month, just be careful about how you invest your time.  Measure the search visibility, link counts, or contacts you get by engaging in any new community.

If you want some proven strategies for content publishing and link building, there are many articles that I have published in the past.  If you need an updated Top 10 List, just send me an email:  brian@pcgdigitalmarketing.com.  I’ll send you my Top 10 Content Publishing websites that can assist car dealers with search visibility, links, and traffic generation.

P.S.  Dealers who want to develop the strongest digital marketing strategies for 2011, are coming to the 2011 Digital Marketing Strategies Conference Feb 1-3rd in the Napa Valley prior to NADA.  You can be there as well, register at: http://www.digitalmarketingstrategies.org

I would like to invite all car dealers and vendors that serve car dealers to add your business to www.CarDealerWiki.org a new project that I have started.

There is no cost to add your dealership or company to CarDealerWiki.  On the flip side,  adding your company information to the website has many benefits.

As CarDealerWiki.org  increases in popularity,  it will provide car dealers with additional Google Page One assets that will protect the dealers most important search phrase; their dealership name.  As more car dealers participate in the website, it will become an important website for car dealers who want to keep Google Page One filled with brand enhancing listings they control.

Membership Requests Require Approval

CarDealerWiki.org requires your account to be approved before you post and the good news is that all employees of car dealerships and employees of automotive vendors should qualify! Please complete the user profile with accurate information about what dealership or company you work for.  I am trying to keep spammers off the site and grow the content with real dealership data.  This will also keep the website content quality high.

Once you create your dealership profile page, you can also create optimize Wiki pages for service, parts, used cars all identified with your brand and town.  I have provided a few examples of car dealerships that are taking their opportunity in CarDealerWiki seriously.

When you create any page on the website, I am recommending your write 400-700 words on each page as a target.  You can upload photos, YouTube Videos, DealerRater reviews, and if you are in the Automotive Advertising Network, you can load live inventory.  The site has the ability to input RSS feeds so you can also add the latest posts from your car dealership or personal blog.

Toyota of Wallingford

Toyota of Wallingford has taken their CarDealerWiki profile page to another level by creating content pages for the models they sell as well as integrating a YouTube video.  You will see that he created sub-pages for specific Toyota Brands with a geo-target of New Haven. Take a look at the page and the powerful URL it created: http://cardealerwiki.org/Toyota_Camry_New_Haven

Lexus of Portland

Lexus of Portland created a page at  http://cardealerwiki.org/Lexus_Of_Portland and added their streaming DealerRater.com reviews.  This is a cool way to keep your CarDealerWiki page updated with the latest reviews.  The great things about CarDealerWiki is that these reviews appear to Google as text on the page.  This helps to fill out the Wiki page with real content.

Marlboro Nissan Example

Marlboro Nissan created a CarDealerWiki page on this URL:  http://cardealerwiki.org/Marlboro_Nissan. Notice that the URL in the Wiki is your dealership name which is great for SEO purposes.  When you visit their page,  you can see that they created sub-pages for each model Nissan used cars that they sell, here is one page example: http://cardealerwiki.org/Used_Nissan_Altima_Marlboro .

Notice that the URL is “Used Nissan Altima Marlboro” and this is important to call out because you want sub-pages on CarDealerWiki to be geo-targeted.  The review process will not allow one dealer to create a Wiki page called “Used Nissan Altima”.   What this means is that members of CarDealerWiki can create geo-targeted pages for user cars, sales, parts and service.  The key is to add good content on these pages.

Capital Ford Lincoln in Canada

Canadian car dealers are also welcome to join CarDealerWiki and Capital Ford Lincoln in Regina has done a great job building out their car dealer profile page.  They have added a block of car dealer testimonial from YouTube.  They have also started to create pages for the cars that they sell, so take a look at their creativity: http://cardealerwiki.org/Capital_Ford_Lincoln

Why You Should Get Started

Since this is my personal project, I have been involved with building links and relevance for this site.  This means in the coming months this will grow to a high PageRank website. Trust me on that promise.

The links that are part of these profile pages ARE even now being picked up by Yahoo and Google.   This means CarDealerWiki.org will be great for Google Page One Management as well as building powerful links to internal pages on your website.

So visit www.CarDealerWiki.org today and create an account.  In the upper right-hand corner, there is a login hyperlink.  Click that and request an account.  It will normally be approved with 24 hours.  When you register check your junk email folder since your password, which is emailed to you, normally ends up there.

Once your account has been approved, please watch the tutorial video on the home page to show you how to use CarDealerWiki’s dealer profile template.  It will save you time with the syntax of creating an attractive profile page.  I hope to see you join and experience the benefits of membership!